[lit-ideas] Re: The Philippines and Iraq
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 19:50:23 -0700
Omar, did you read your reference before you posted it? The author makes
none of my points, but instead implies 1) we don't plan to leave Iraq and 2)
We are suppressing Iraqi self-determination. This note was Bush-Bashing
fare back when it was written on 5-03-04. Modern Bush-Bashers have honed
their attacks quite a bit since then. Fie.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 7:06 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Philippines and Iraq
The comparison has been made before. Check out:
http://hnn.us/articles/4915.html
--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In discussions of whether or not the U.S. is or ever
> has been an empire, the
> matter of the Philippines always comes up. We did
> after all possess the
> Philippines much as any empire might.
> Interestingly there was considerable
> resistance against our acquiring the Philippines and
> when the body count
> started going up, many Americans wanted us to get
> out, but our getting in
> had its justification. [I've made some comments
> below the Bevin Alexander's
> material comparing the Philippine and Iraqi
> invasions.]
>
>
>
> Bevin Alexander in his How America Got it Right, The
> U.S. March to Military
> and Political Supremacy, 2005, on page 67 wrote,
> "While some had been
> vocally advocating a strong U.S. presence on the
> world stage, it would be a
> civil war in Cuba that thrust the United States into
> imperialism. In 1895
> Cuban insurgents rebelled against the Spanish
> colonial government,
> destroying cane fields, sugar mills, and other
> property in the hope of
> rendering the island worthless to Spain. In
> February 1896 a new Spanish
> captain-general, Valeriano Weyler, ordered the
> entire population of large
> districts in central and western Cuban into
> concentration camps surrounded
> by trenches, barbed wire, and blockhouses. There he
> provided neither
> adequate food nor sanitation. Cubans who disobeyed
> the 'reoncentration'
> were shot on sight. Famine and disease spread in
> the camps. By spring 1898
> 200,000 reconscentrados had died out of a total
> population of 1.6 million.
>
>
>
> "The plight of the Cuban people aroused tremendous
> sentiment in the United
> States. . . A rising demand came from Americans to
> intervene, but they
> wanted no U.S. colony, only a free Cuba.
>
>
>
> "Any chance for a compromise was ruined by the
> explosion of the U.S.
> battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15,
> 1898, in which 260
> American seaman lost their lives. . ."
>
>
>
> "On March 28, 1898, President William McKinley
> demanded independence for
> Cuba. The Spanish government desperately sought
> allies in Europe. But
> Britain refused, and all the other capitals said
> they'd act only if someone
> else took the lead. Spain tried to compromise but
> rejected Cuban freedom.
> When the U.S. Congress passed a resolution
> recognizing the independence of
> the island, Spain declared war.
>
>
>
> "The conflict was pathetically one-sided. The
> Spanish navy had nothing to
> match the four new U.S. battleships that had been
> authorized under President
> Harrison, and Spanish crews were wretchedly
> inefficient. Theodore
> Roosevelt, the assistance secretary of the navy, had
> already targeted the
> Spanish-owned Philippine Islands for occupation and
> had alerted Commodore
> George Dewey, chief of the Asiatic squadron, to move
> immediately after war
> was declared. Dewey sank or burned the entire
> Spanish flotilla at Manila,
> and at the end of July, 11,000 American troops
> entered Manila against only
> token resistance. On the way, Americans occupied
> Guam in the Marianas,
> another Spanish colony."
>
>
>
> Soon "the Spanish asked for peace."
>
>
>
> "There was no dispute about acquiring Guam and
> little about annexing Puerto
> Rico, a relatively small island inhabited mainly by
> people of European
> culture, though they spoke an alien tongue. Puerto
> Rico's strategic
> location at the outer edge of the Caribbean could
> shield any ship canal in
> Central America, and this reason alone was
> sufficient to ensure annexation.
>
>
>
>
> "Nor did the U.S. government waste much time
> discussing annexation of
> another group of islands, Hawaii. Dewey's victory
> at Manila had turned
> American eyes on the Pacific, and it would be
> essential to keep a naval base
> at Hawaii. With little argument a joint resolution
> passed both houses of
> Congress, and on August 12, 1898, Hawaii passed
> formally under the flag of
> the United States.
>
>
>
> "But the Philippines were another matter. The
> archipelago was 6,000 miles
> from San Francisco, and its 7 million people were
> Malays, with a vastly
> different culture. Many of the people were pagans
> and Muslims. Moreover,
> the Filipinos had also been trying to win
> independence from Spain and didn't
> want to become subjects of the United States. Here
> was a dangerous venture
> into imperialism, a violation of time-honored
> American principles. While
> the Social Darwinists endorsed annexing the islands,
> opponents formed an
> Anti-Imperialist League, and in the Senate many
> Democrats and a few
> Republicans made clear that they would vote against
> annexation.
>
>
>
> "Then a couple of disturbing events took place.
> Japan proposed that it join
> with the United States and a third power to
> administer the Philippines. In
> light of Japan's recent aggressions against China,
> no one in the U.S.
> government wanted Japan to have any hand in the
> islands, for its intentions
> were obviously to gain a permanent position there. .
> . "
>
>
>
> "The debate in the Senate was long and hard. But on
> February 6, 1899, the
> Senate voted 57-27 to acquire the Philippines, just
> one vote above the
> two-thirds necessary for approval. Two days before
> the Filipinos had opened
> hostilities in Manila against the Americans. It was
> not until July 1902
> that resistance finally subsided.
>
>
>
> "The Philippine insurrection soured most Americans
> on the idea of empire.
> The Social Darwinists' dream of joining with Britain
> and establishing
> 'Anglo-Saxon' domination of the world evaporated in
> the reality of a nasty
> guerrilla war in a faraway tropical archipelago.
> The insurrection took
> 4,200 American lives, and 2,800 more were wounded;
> in contrast, the Spanish
> American War itself had claimed just 379 American
> lives. Americans also
> killed 16,000 Filipinos in battle, and as many as
> 200,000 civilians died,
> victims of disease, famine and cruelties on both
> sides. Possessing the
> islands became an embarrassment to the United
> States. We toyed with plans
> to free the Filipinos on several occasions, and in
> 1934 Congress finally
> passed a bill that promised independence. On July
> 4, 1946, less than a year
> after the end of World War II, the United States
> actually granted it.
>
>
>
> "The decision to free the Philippines was right, but
> the decision in 1899 to
> annex the islands was also right. It kept imperial
> competition in the Far
> East from getting any worse than it already was.
> Japan had embarked on a
> drive to acquire a great empire and to oust the
> Western powers from the Far
> East. . . ."
>
>
>
>
>
> Comments: It is interesting to compare the
> Philippine and Iraq invasions
> for several reasons: 1) Both invasions were
> justified but Americans paid
> little attention to the justifications and just
> wanted out.
>
>
>
> 2) Americans have shown no more inclination to
> study foreign affairs in the
> present time than they did back in 1899. They rely
> upon an unreliable press
> today as they did back then.
>
>
>
> 3) Hearst in the oft quoted example told his artist
> Frederick Remington in
> Havana, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish
> the war." [Page 67]
> The difference between Hearst's press and the modern
> one is that Hearst
> wanted war (regardless of the consequences) and the
> American Press of today
> wants us to terminate our war (regardless of the
> consequences).
>
>
>
> 4) We probably don't need to engage in one of Eric's
> Counterfactual
> exercises to accept the idea that allowing Japan to
> annex the Philippines
> wouldn't have been a good thing, but at the time few
> Americans understood
> foreign affairs well enough to recognize the danger
> Japan presented.
> Americans could have known Japan was a threat had
> they studied Japanese
> political affairs, but they didn't. A similar
> situation prevails today. We
> ought to recognize that Islamism with the broad
> support it gets from Islamic
> Fundamentalism is a threat to us, but we don't - at
> least not well enough.
> Of course many do realize it just as many realized
> the Japanese threat back
> in 1899, but not enough, not a majority of voters.
>
>
>
> 5) Americans don't possess the ability to make
> long-term military
> commitments probably because they don't possess the
> ability to understand
> foreign affairs. Looking back we can say it was
> prudent for America to
> occupy the Philippines in order to prevent Japan
> from occupying it. We did
> have experts arguing for that course, but the
> "American Street" saw little
> more than the casualties and the expense and they
> wanted out.
>
>
>
> 6) We paid severe penalties for being militarily
> unprepared to deal with
> hostile actions against us in the past, and we have
> learned from our
> mistakes and possess a very prepared military today,
> but we haven't learned
> the lesson of having an unprepared populace. What
> good does it do to have
> an excellent military if the populace is too
> ignorant to know when to use
> it? Granted, the experts can send the military to
> war, but the populace
> must vote to pay for it and as long as their
> ignorance prevails, they won't
> be willing to pay for a very long war.
>
>
>
> 7) We tolerate children asking, "Are we there yet?
> Are we there yet? Are we
> there yet?" But this approach seems to lack
> something when it comes to the
> conduct of foreign affairs. It was the approach
> that got us out of the
> Philippines - albeit not until the Japanese threat
> had been eliminated, and
> it is an approach being applied today. Whether it
> will be of sufficient
> coercive force to get us out of the Iraq prematurely
> remains to be seen.
>
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
>
>
>
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