2006-03-15

Iraq: the Phillipines analogy

Paul likes to paint the Iraq War as a replay of the Civil War, with GWB as Lincoln and Hussein as, I don't know, John C. Calhoun. The analogy never made much sense to me. Here is an attempt to draw an analogy from another period of US history: the conquest of the Phillipines. From an article by Tom Bissell in the Jan. 2006 Harpers, "Improvised, Explosive, and Divisive: Searching in vain for a strategy in Iraq":

Although the war in Vietnam is the usual metric used to compare what is today occurring in Iraq, the U.S. war in the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century is a far more appropriate point of comparison. The United States occupied the Philippines on exquisitely false pretexts, as President William McKinley's lovely, godstruck thoughts to visiting clergymen on why the United States had moved into the archipelago reveal: "I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance on more than one night." God told McKinley 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 best we could by them.., and then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly." The Bush Doctrine, a century foretold. (The Philippines, incidentally, had been Christianized already.) The debate about what to do next became paramount. President McKinley dispatched a commission to the increasingly insurgent-plagued islands. It came back with this report: "Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy. … Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippines Commonwealth at all conceivable." Harper's Weekly shortly published a dispatch from the islands: "Some of this territory we have occupied; the rest we have returned to the insurgents in a more or less mutilated condition, depending on whether the policy of the hour was to carry on a bitter war against a barbarous enemy, or to bring enlightenment to an ignorant people, deceived as to our motives."

The war in the Philippines was won through several tactics. "In this country," William Howard Taft, McKinley's appointed head of the Philippine Commission, argued, "it is politically most important that Filipinos should suppress Filipino disturbances and arrest Filipino outlaws." Another tactic was brutality. As one U.S. general had it, "An eight p.m. curfew went into effect. Any Filipino found on the streets after that hour would be shot on sight. Whenever an American soldier was killed, a native prisoner would be chosen by lot and executed." A young lieutenant witness to these atrocities later wrote, "The American soldier in officially sanctioned wrath is a thing so ugly and dangerous that it would take a Kipling to describe him." In time, Taft's softer hand--trials rather than executions, infrastructure-building rather than crop-razing--generally won the day. Although the insurgency lasted for another decade and a half, by 1902 the most organized and deadly of the insurgent groups had been defeated. More than 4,000 American soldiers had been killed in combat, thousands more perished of disease, and close to 200,000 Filipino civilians were left dead. As a U.S. senator said on the Senate floor, "What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and sentimentality? You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives. … You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit …. Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people … into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate."

9 comments:

Paul Hue said...

Tom: No comparassions are complete and perfect. I have acknowledged many differences between the US civil war and the US invasion of Iraq. This article comparing the US invasions of Iraq and Phillipines does contain some similiarities, and thus offers some lessons. But they all apply also to the US civil war, including the need for US troops to enforce democratic development. In some resects the Phillipines is more similar, as only a few thousand US troops died there as in Iraq, versus hundreds of thousands in the US slave states. Also this article describes US troops conducting atrocities, which was very typical of the US civil war, and less so in Iraq. Accusations of contrived excuses for conducting an unneccessary war attend also to all three conflicts. I don't know how genuine the establishment of democracy was in the Phillipines, but it certainly was in the civil war, and is so in Iraq.

Nadir said...

The US Civil War bears no similarity to the Iraq War except that the combatants still use bullets.

"Also this article describes US troops conducting atrocities, which was very typical of the US civil war, and less so in Iraq."

Obviously you've neither been watching the news nor reading the posts on your own blog.

The United States military occupied the Phillipines for 48 years (though one could argue the bases that are there still constitute occupation).

Hey! Wasn't McKinley assassinated?

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: The atrocities committed by US troops in Iraq are indeed much less frequent and intensive than those committed by US troops in the US civil war.

I have posted extensive lists of similarities between the US civil war and the US iraq invasion. Yet the best that you and Tom can do to overturn those lists is to merely declare that the two conflict bear no similarity. Can you even acknowledge that unlike the Philipines war, the Iraq and Civil Wars divided the electorate and were at times very unpopular? Did Lincoln not get accused by his political adversaries of engaging in an unneccessary war? And of launching the war under false pretenses? Did Lincoln like Bush not say that he was fighting to establish democracy? Were Lincoln's troops not also accused of abusing prisoners? And weren't those accusations accurate? Didn't Lincoln not get harsh criticsm for not making enough progress fast enough? Wasn't Lincoln losing the war for its first 2 years? Weren't opponents of Lincoln's war claiming that he should let the people in the slave states work out their own troubles?

Paul Hue said...

If I can admit that the Phillipines war has many useful similarities (I even listed some!), why can you guys do no more that simply declare that the US civil war and the iraq invasion have absolutely no similarities.

Nadir said...

"Can you even acknowledge that unlike the Philipines war, the Iraq and Civil Wars divided the electorate and were at times very unpopular?"

The electorate isn't as divided on the Iraq war as you might hope. Most of us are and have always been against it, contrary to the designs of you, Six and our elected representatives, both Democrat and Republican.

"Did Lincoln not get accused by his political adversaries of engaging in an unneccessary war?"

Yes, but Lincoln was reacting to a secession within his own country, not waging an aggressive war of imperialism thousands of miles from home. And many people believe that all war is unnecessary. I'm sure you could find opposition to every war in world history.

"Did Lincoln like Bush not say that he was fighting to establish democracy?"

Lincoln said he was fighting to preserve the union, and was willing to use totalitarian and military measures or to free the slaves in that effort. Bush said he was fighting because Iraq was a military threat and only changed his story after the notion of that threat was dispelled.

"Were Lincoln's troops not also accused of abusing prisoners? And weren't those accusations accurate?"

As is the case with most wars. The Civil War and Iraq are not unique in their atrocities. Remember My Lai? Aushwitz? Wounded Knee?

"Didn't Lincoln not get harsh criticsm for not making enough progress fast enough? Wasn't Lincoln losing the war for its first 2 years?"

Yet Bush claimed victory from the start and still claims victory. According to Bush, it isn't going nearly as bad as the world sees it is.

"Weren't opponents of Lincoln's war claiming that he should let the people in the slave states work out their own troubles?"

Certainly, but in that case, the problems in the slave states were actually Lincoln's problems because he was the president of the country in question. Bush is not the president of Iraq or the world, though he thinks he is.

"If I can admit that the Phillipines war has many useful similarities (I even listed some!), why can you guys do no more that simply declare that the US civil war and the iraq invasion have absolutely no similarities."

Because you are trying to evoke the abolition of slavery within the context of the conflict in Iraq to give the latter war some sense of benevolence and justice. You are simply wrong. The similarities aren't enough to justify so many frequent comparisons.

The one similarity that I will give you is that both wars were waged for economic and political reasons, but people like you like to paint them both as some battle of good against evil or of right against oppression. Though Lincoln freed the slaves as a political and military tactic, that was not his goal. Similarly Bush's institution of a puppet government in Iraq is not about freedom for the Iraqi people. Operation Iraqi Freedom is about opening Iraq for looting and pillaging by the likes of Halliburton and others where Saddam closed it off to those pirates, and about opening a new military outpost for the US empire in the Middle East.

Another similarity: Halliburton as carpetbaggers in Iraq.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: You and Tom keep labeling Iraq's govt as a US puppet, but the presumed US candidates keep losing! How does y'all's charactorization jibe with this fact?

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: I appreciate you taking the time to address my points. Your response here is much more convincing than a one sentance dismissal. I think you make some very good points.

Nadir said...

"You and Tom keep labeling Iraq's govt as a US puppet, but the presumed US candidates keep losing! How does y'all's charactorization jibe with this fact?"

They were still successful in excluding certain possible candidates from the ballot and they supervised the whole process to make it more amicable to US goals. The preceding provisional authority set up the very mechanism through which Iraq's new government was established. Who is pulling the strings? Certainly not the Iraqi people...

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: Your description doesn't much seem that the US is "pulling the strings"; it rather resembles how the US supervised the elections after conquering Germany, Japan, and the confederacy.

Tom: In your intro to this, you can't figure out who in the US Civil War analogy plays the Huessien role, who plays this role in your Phillipines analogy.