by Martin H. Levinson
letter to the editor, New York Sun, 9/1-3/2006
Seth Gitell ("Instant Gratification" August 25, 2006) claims that America's three year battle against Philippine rebels in the early twentieth century is evidence that insurgencies can be successfully handled if one stays the course. The Phillipine Insurrection, which offers some eerie parallels to the current Iraq war, can also teach us other things.
In 1898, as a result of Commodore Dewey's naval victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, the United States assumed control of the Philippines. No one had planned for this and President McKinley, who was a devout Christian, said he prayed to "Almighty God for divine light and guidance." In the end, McKinley decided that America would "Christianize" and "civilize" the Filipinos.
The American army entered into a brutal war against Philippine insurgents who wanted to run their own country. An unfortunate part of the conflict was the army's use of torture-unlike former American wars against white Europeans, fighting "brown" Filipinos removed all justifications for civility. The most notorious form of that torment was the "water cure." (Dirty water was dumped into bamboo sections that were forced down the throats of prisoners. Soldiers would then jump on a prisoner's stomach to force the water out. This procedure would be repeated until the victim either informed or died.)
A great debate arose in the United States over the torture issue. By the time the controversy reached its pinnacle, in the early months of 1902, President McKinley had been assassinated and replaced in office by Theodore Roosevelt. T.R. chose his close friend and ally Henry Cabot Lodge to mount a defense of the troops on the Senate floor.
Lodge ran Senate committee hearings on American misconduct in the Philippines. There was much testimony on operational tactics, but no exploration of the broader policy that lay behind them. The committee did not even issue a final report.
On July 4, 1902 President Roosevelt declared the Philippines pacified. American casualties in the Philippine conflict totaled 4,374 soldiers, more than ten times the toll in Cuba. Approximately sixteen thousand guerillas and twenty thousand civilians were also killed.
The insurgency lay dormant for a few years but quickly reemerged. A low-level civil war has been under way in the Philippines ever since. Rebels have recently joined forces with Al Qaeda, and today the Philippines is one of the most unstable countries in Asia.
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