Adapted from the
Political Literacy Course
of the Common Courage Press
In 1898 the United States went to war with Spain, taking over the Philippines. America defeated Spain with the help of our allies, the brave Filipino nationalist guerrillas.
The U.S. government had promised independence to them.
The U.S. government lied. Of course.
Writes Gore Vidal in his book, The American Presidency:
"President William McKinley decided we ought to keep the Philippines in order to Christianize the natives. When reminded that Filipinos were already Roman Catholic, the president responded, 'Exactly.'"The United States betrayed the nationalists who had helped us fight Spain, and we began our own conquest."
Mark Twain was deeply disturbed by the resulting inhuman war crimes which
were committed by the brutal United States Army, Marines and Navy in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902. He was also disgusted with the rampant, jingoistic racism in which most Americans shamelessly wallowed throughout those benighted turn-of-the-century years.
(The very years which some creeps in America even now call "The Good Old Days.")
Twain cynically "saluted" the bloody, racist American genocide of 200,000 Filipino men, women and children "by suggesting that we replace the stars and stripes in our flag with the skull and crossbones."
In February 1899, the Filipinos rose in revolt against American rule. It took 70,000 American soldiers, marines and sailors three years to brutally crush the rebellion. The death toll of Filipinos was enormous, both from battle casualties and disease.
In A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn writes of these American war crimes in the Philippines. Following are some excerpts:
"In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:
'The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog....'Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.'
"In Manila, a U.S. Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:
"The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied 'Everything over ten.'
"In the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease.
"American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks.
"A British witness said:
'This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery.'"
Mark Twain said further of the brutal American genocide:
"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag."And so, by these Providences of God — and the phrase is the government's, not mine — we are a World Power."
Thus began
"The American Century,"
consecrated in the blood of civilian people and innocent children.
(With much more to follow.)
Related site
Lessons of the Spanish-American War, the first US "humanitarian" intervention
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/span-m17.shtml
The press and US militarism — a lesson from history
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/aug1998/main-a21.shtml
Bibliography
A People's History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn
Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James Loewen
The American Presidency
by Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
by Gore Vidal
The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky