đ¨ The first US war overseas was a genocideâit was erased from history đ¨
During the Spanish-American War, which was largely created by US propaganda, the US went after Spanish colonial territories â one of those being the Philippines. In the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, the US won a decisive victory, destroying the Spanish Pacific fleet. Afterward, one might think the Americans would turn around and sail home, singing sea shanties with grog in hand. âŚBut no.
President McKinley decided it made more sense to try to take over the entire Philippines even though few Americans knew what it was or where it was. About this decision, McKinley stated:
âOne night late, it came to me this way. There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and uplift them and Christianize them, and by Godâs grace do the very best we could for them, as our fellow men for who Christ also died.â (Quotes are from the book "Overthrow".)
Itâs unclear if the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who would die in McKinleyâs pursuit felt uplifted by the experience. Also interesting is the fact that McKinley believed there was ânothingâ else he could do but subjugate, oppress, convert, and control the Filipino people. Apparently no one made him aware of the idea of leaving them alone. (I bet when he heard about that years later, it was a real head-smack moment.)
Prior to the arrival of the Americans, there were already Filipino guerrilla forces fighting against the Spanish colonizers. After the Battle of Manila Bay, the head of those forces, Emilio Aguinaldo, met with Commodore George Dewey, the head of the US naval force. The two of them differed on what happened at that meeting. Aguinaldo believed they had agreed to defeat Spain together, at which point the Filipino people would have their independence. Dewey later claimed thatâs not at all what happened. But then again the two of them didnât speak each otherâs language, and there was no interpreter. Also, the United States has broken every promise it has ever made to indigenous people â so this was just par for the course.
A few months later the US and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, which brought the Spanish-American War to a close. In the agreement, the US paid Spain $20 million for the entire Philippine archipelago, which consisted of 7,000 islands and was home to 7 million people who had no idea theyâd just been sold from one colonizer to another. (That means the US paid $2.85 per Filipino.)
The Filipino people proceeded with implementing their newfound independence. They approved a constitution, created a republic, and proclaimed Aguinaldo president.
âTwelve days later, this new nation declared war against the United States forces on the islands. McKinley took no notice. To him the Filipinos were what the historian Richard Welch called âa disorganized and helpless people.ââ
Oddly, at this time in American history, some percentage of Congress believed the US should not be a dastardly and repulsive imperial hegemon. (I know. Iâm as shocked as you are.) Therefore, the Senate (for a bit) refused to ratify the Treaty of Paris.
âSenator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts warned that it would turn the United States into a âa vulgar, commonplace empire founded upon physical force, controlling subject races and vassal states, in which one class must forever rule and the other classes must forever obey.ââ
Ha! Can you imagine that? The US would never do something so grotesque! âŚexcept for the next 125 years and counting. (Also, my man George gets extra credit for having the middle name Frisbie.)
Hmmm, so how can Americaâs ruling psychopaths get Congress to play along with the subjugation of 7 million Filipinos? I bet those pesky politicians would change their tune if the US forces in the Philippines were attacked by the barbarians who lived there. Oh, what do you know?! Thatâs exactly what happened next!
During the Senateâs debate, the Filipino rebels attacked the American forces in Manila. This helped push the Senate to finally ratify the treaty. âŚBut it was later revealed that the American troops actually fired the first shots. So we can see the US tradition of false flags used to drag us into bloody wars goes back quite a way. (Apparently, the long arc of history bends towards repeating itself.)
In the battles that followed, the Filipinosâup against superior US weaponryâused every guerrilla tactic they could think of in order to defend their land, families, villages, and lives. The Americans responded with genocide. In just one example:
âGeneral Wheaton ordered every town and village within twelve miles to be destroyed and their inhabitants killed.â
The US military worked to stop any reporting of the ethnic cleansing from getting back to the home audience. Eventually, in 1901, some of the extent of the horror made its way into US newspapers. Average Americans found out the troops were using torture, rape, and ethnic cleansing to subdue the local population. They rarely differentiated between combatants and noncombatants.
ââWe have actually come to do the thing we went to war to banish,â the Baltimore American lamented. The Indianapolis News concluded that the United States had adopted âthe methods of barbarism,â and the New York Post declared that American troops âhave been pursuing a policy of wholesale and deliberate murder.ââ
Of course, plenty of US newspapers fell all over themselves to defend the genocidal colonizers. Can you guess which rag led the way?
âThe New York Times argued that âbrave and loyal officersâ had reacted understandably to the âcruel, treacherous, murderousâ Filipinos.â
In early 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt had succeeded the recently assassinated McKinley. In yet another moment of foreshadowing, Roosevelt â pretending to care â pushed for hearings in the Senate to address the charges of misconduct by American forces. Teddy then got his allies to steadfastly limit the scope of the hearings. The committee never even issued a final report. As with the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK and the 9/11 Commission, the mere appearance of an effort to âfigure it outâ was enough to distract the American public. The commissions never got to the truth, nor were they meant to.
By July of 1902, Teddy Roosevelt announced that the Philippines had been pacified. Most of the rebel leaders had been killed, and the indigenous population had given up its resistance.
âIn three and a half torturous years of war, 4,374 American soldiers were killed⌠About 16,000 guerrillas and at least 20,000 civilians were also killed. Filipinos remember those years as some of the bloodiest in their history. Americans quickly forgot that the war ever happened.â
Britannica puts the death toll higher:
"An estimated 20,000 Filipino combatants were killed, and more than 200,000 civilians perished as a result of combat, hunger, or disease."
The first time US troops ever fought overseas they committed genocide. It does not seem that much has changed over 125 years.
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