One of America’s Forgotten Wars

Most Americans have little or no knowledge about the Spanish American War, which is understandable since the conflict could easily have been avoided and it was largely fought for the wrong reasons.  It was also a brief war, lasting only four months, during which only 379 died in battle.  Unfortunately, since the majority of the battles occurred in tropical locations, fourteen times that number perished from malaria, typhoid, dysentery, or yellow fever.

Strangely, a larger and far more deadly war was the result of the peace negotiations.  That war, the Philippine Insurrection, has been almost completely forgotten by most Americans—if they ever heard of it.

The peace negotiations ending the Spanish American War specified that Spain would give up Cuba, the United States would annex Puerto Rico and the US would continue to occupy Manila pending the final disposition of the Philippines Islands.  While we knew we wanted Spain out of the Philippines, did America really want to keep the islands as a territory?

The problem of what to do with the Philippines touched off a huge debate, with even President McKinley being unsure of what to do.  (Privately, the president admitted that he couldn't find the Philippines on the map the first time he looked.)  While some Americans railed against America's growing Imperialism, others saw Asia as a fertile market of millions (note that is millions with an ‘m’, not a ‘b’) waiting to buy American goods.

Some Americans were worried about how such an alien culture could be blended into the American way of life.  As one senator said, "Bananas and self-government cannot grow on the same piece of land."  Still others saw keeping the islands as a chance to "save the heathens" of Asia by extending missionary activities.  

McKinley finally reached a conclusion.  As he later explained to a gathering of missionaries:

And one night late it came to me this way--I don't know how it was, but it came:  (1) that we could not give them back to Spain--that would be cowardly and dishonorable;  (2)  that we could not turn them over to France or Germany--our commercial rivals in the Orient--that would be bad business and discreditable;  (3) that we could not leave them to themselves--they were unfit for self government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4)  that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.  And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.

That's quite a statement.  It neatly summarizes all of American Imperialism.  It encompasses national honor, business commerce, a feeling of racial superiority, and even a little altruism—it might even have been real.

When Spain pointed out that, technically, America had no claim by right of conquest because the United States had not actually occupied Manila until the day after the armistice, we settled the point by giving Spain $20 million in compensation:   Kind of “shut up and leave us alone” money.

The final treaty, the Treaty of Paris, signed December 10, 1898, added Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to American territory.  

Note.  If you are ever on a quiz show and they ask you the name of the treaty that ended a war, and you have no idea of the correct answer—just say Treaty of Paris.  Since 1299, there have been more than a dozen of that name.

The Treaty of Paris did not make everyone in the United States happy.  Most Democrats, and some Republicans were against it.  The occupation of a foreign country was counter to the ideas of democracy, countered American traditional isolationism, and could easily involve us in foreign entanglements.  Some military experts even pointed out the impossibility of defending a possession so far from home…a prediction that would prove true 40 years later.

The same month the treaty was signed, Rudyard Kipling published the poem, The White Man’s Burden.  He calls the American people to a new duty:

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send for the best ye breed--

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captive's need;

to wait in heavy harness

On fluttered fold and wild--

Your new-caught sullen peoples, 

Half devil and half child.

I wish I could say that Kipling wrote this in irony.  He did not.

President William McKinley issued a proclamation on December 21, 1898, declaring the United States policy to be one of "benevolent assimilation" in which "the mild sway of justice and right" would be substituted for "arbitrary rule."  Unfortunately, by this time, our helping our "little brown brothers" had taken a strange turn.  Very shortly, we were to be at war with them.  We had forgotten to ask if the people of the Philippines wanted our help and they really, really didn't.

It is ironic that before we could impose colonial rule to help the Filipinos, we had to fight a violent war in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 to crush a Philippine nationalist insurgency.  Filipino insurgents had already been fighting the Spanish for independence long before American forces arrived.  Indeed, part of the reason for the American Navy’s success in driving out the Spanish had been because the Spanish forces had been also fighting a Filipino revolutionary force led by Aguinaldo.

Although it was later disputed by the Americans, many Filipino patriots, including Emilio Aguinaldo, believed they had been promised independence for their efforts and they felt betrayed by the terms of the Paris treaty.  

Aguinaldo declared the Philippines to be an independent republic in January, 1899 and in response to McKinley's proclamation issued his own.  In it, he said that "violent and aggressive seizure" by the United States was wrong and threatened war.  Hostilities between the two groups began almost immediately.  

As the fighting escalated, the United States began shelling the Filipino forces from naval ships in Manila Harbor.  For months, the Filipinos tried to fight back the best they could using conventional warfare but this was suicide, because the Filipinos lacked the arms, the artillery, and the training to stand up to the American military.

The Filipino troops, armed with old rifles and bolos—and carrying anting-anting (magical charms)—were no match for American troops in open conventional combat, but when they finally switched tactics to guerrilla warfare, they proved to be highly effective fighters.

Suddenly, the United States was facing a problem that was totally new to American warfare.  How do you fight an enemy and win the people over at the same time?  It is, of course, a thorny problem for which we are still attempting to find a solution.

Aguinaldo fought back as he ordered the establishment of decentralized guerrilla commands in each of several military zones.  More than ever, American soldiers learned the miseries of fighting an enemy that was able to move at will within the civilian population in the villages.  "Pacified" ground only extended as far as a soldier's Krag rifle could shoot.

The guerrillas would not attack unless they were sure they could win.  If chased, they hid their weapons, went home and pretended they were the friendliest natives on the island.  But if they captured an American soldier, he would be horribly tortured.  And, inevitably, the American soldiers began committing horrible atrocities of their own.  

In September, 1901, guerrillas in Samar, which was one of the last remaining uncontrolled provinces, massacred a company of US infantry.  The troops that were ordered in to “pacify” the area were told to take no prisoners.  In fact, their orders included the following:  “I want you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me.  I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.”  

When the officer in charge of the unit asked for clarification about what “capable of bearing arms” meant, he was told that it meant, ‘anyone over ten years old’.

Eventually, American forces came under the command of General James MacArthur (the father of the World War II hero), who had extensive experience fighting Native Americans in the American Southwest.  MacArthur, working with American civilian leaders like Judge William Howard Taft, began building a new civilian government.  The American army began building a new infrastructure for the Philippines:  New roads, schools, hospitals, bridges, railroads, telegraph lines, and telephone lines.  Disease, especially smallpox, cholera, and plague practically disappeared.  Slowly, an increasing number of Filipino people became  tolerant of, if not quite accepting, American occupation.

Eventually, most organized resistance to the American military simply dwindled away.  Aguinaldo—convinced of the futility of further resistance—finally surrendered, swore allegiance to the United States and issued a proclamation calling on his compatriots to lay down their arms.  

On the 4th of July, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the war was over and that the United States had won.  No one argued the point with him.

The war the Americans called, “the Philippine Insurrection”, lasted nearly three years and claimed the lives of 4,234 US troops and 16,000 Filipino soldiers.  Another 220,000 civilian Filipinos died, largely of famine and disease, by the end of the war.  The cost to the US was $400 million—twenty times what the United States had paid to Spain for the islands in 1898.

The United States promised independence for the people of the Philippines as soon as the preparations for self-government were completed.  Those preparations were still underway when World War II started and the islands were seized by the Japanese in 1942.

How this war ended—with Roosevelt’s simply declaring that America had won—has been in my mind all week.  Is this the way that the Covid Pandemic will finally end?  Will the President just declare one day that it is over and that we have won?   We don’t seem to have a real exit play for this war and there seem to be no realistic achievable goals…

Already, many of the things done in reaction to the pandemic seem to be done more for show than for any real need.  We all know that cloth masks are useless, that there is no science behind “six-foot social distancing”, and that walking into a restaurant wearing a mask, only to take it off while you eat is ridiculous.  Or, in other words, anting-anting.

I believe in the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters.  But, I also believe that some of the measures we are taking to fight the pandemic may be causing more problems than the virus.  Drug use, suicides, child abuse, crime in general, business failures, and a host of other problems have been rising for two years now.   Maybe it is time to declare the war over.  It may be a little early for us in the United States, but perhaps the time is coming.

Simply declaring the pandemic over seems to be what Denmark has done.  According to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the pandemic will officially end on February 1, 2022, and the people of Denmark will be free to live their lives as they see fit.