Philippines Quotes
In 1898 the President was faced with a great dilemma in the Philippines. Giving the islands back to Spain after the war was unthinkable. Germany and France were waiting to step in. Self government was viewed as impractical, given the state of affairs at the time. The President decided to take the islands.
There was an interesting parallel to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. When American troops would explain their mission to locals, many were actually fearful of terms like democracy, freedom, education, development and modernity. Religious and cultural forces had made these concepts fearful and undesirable and while there were many who saw these as desirable, there were also many who perceived these as undesirable and even evil. The American military faced the same problem a century ago.
General Otis, the commander of American troops in the Philippines regarded this proclamation as tantamount to a declaration of war and prepared his forces for such.
He had concluded that Spain, who then ruled the Philippines, was incompetent, cruel and immoral in its rule, but that the Filipinos were not educated or sophisticated enough to rule themselves. However, he felt that he had to protect our commercial interests in the islands and the region, and was worried that commercial interests of other countries would take over and control the area. Another reason that this is a very important quotation is that it indicates the anti-Catholic bias in America at the time. Note that the President stated that one objective was to “Christianize” them. However, Spain had been in the islands for over 300 years and most Filipinos were already Roman Catholic. However, Roman Catholics were then a much smaller proportion of the American population and many Protestants didn’t think Catholicism was a legitimate Christian Religion. When the majority of Americans thought of Christianizing other people, they thought of Protestant missionaries much like England. At the time there was very little criticism of the President for the “error” of stating that Filipinos should be Christianized when they were so already Spanish Colonial Policy and Practice was generally terrible and particularly so in the Philippines, See {629450}.
The American army which had occupied the Philippines before Taft was appointed Governor General was extremely racist and discriminatory towards the Philippine people. Taft and his wife invited Filipinos to the Governor’s mansion and socialized with them whereas the Army officers and men never did. See {639174}.
When TR came to office, the U. S. was in the midst of war with Philippine insurgents who were fighting an asymmetric , guerrilla war against the U. S. Army. The war had become very brutal with the insurgents using terror and atrocities and some Army units executing prisoners and torturing captives. Roosevelt, actually fired the General who was in charge of the field troops rather than just discipline lower level officers as usually has happened.
Ford was then a member of Congress. This was known as the “Domino Theory” and was the strategic reason that sending troops to Vietnam was in America’s vital Interest. However, the Domino Theory was incorrect. Vietnam did fall to the Communists, and yet NONE of the countries became communist. Actually, they became even more democratic.
A few weeks after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded the Philippines and occupied the country. They thought that because of the original American occupation and some American war crimes in the American Philippines War, the people would welcome Japan, thinking that Japan had freed them from the United States domination. However, by that time, most of the Filipinos had become pro American and despite many posters like this one, the Japanese were hated by almost all of the Filipinos for their atrocities were much worse than the worst of the American army at the turn of the century. The American outrages were committed by a minority of the soldiers and officers while the Japanese atrocities were universal and institutional.
