By Fred C. Wilson III
The Dirty Little War - Part One
After I read Little Brown Brother by author Leon Wolff, I said to myself “this guy had some nerve…it took a lot of guts to write this stuff and in 1961 during the Eisenhower years. Wolff’s book is a detailed study of U.S. expansionist policies at the end of the Spanish-American War through the first few years of the 20th Century. Well researched and to the point, this writer think his book should be mandatory reading in the Philippine educational system. The book is a classical study in American historiography and how the infamous ‘doctrine’ of Manifest Destiny worked itself out in the Philippines. With this book as a guideline, this article will examine the Philippine-American War the revolution that preceded it, the battles, atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict, the ramifications of that long forgotten event and what modern Americans and Filipinos can glean from it.
Wolff’s book opens during the waning years of the 19th Century. It continues through the bloody no-holds-barred Philippine-American War a genocidal conflict so barbaric and ruthless its aftermath left indelible scars on the Filipino psyche. This war set the stage for the current neo-colonial mentality that pervades modern Philippine society.
Wolff’s book traces the origins of the Filipino liberation movement’s victory over Spain and how the islands were rapidly re-colonized by an expansionist America. Wolff gives readers the complete physiological profiles of the heroes of the Revolution. He points out while Dr. Jose Rizal was a catalyst for the budding republic, the embodiment of the movement resided in the streetwise Emilio Aguinaldo. The book tells of Aguinaldo’s intense hatred for Spain, intra-island infighting among other revolutionists who contested his presidency, his poor generalship, and his earnest attempt to prove to the world that Filipinos was morally and mentally light years ahead of anybody Europe and America had to field against him.
But America was smart. Though new to the ‘game’ of international political piracy she was a fast learner. In quick time the United States discovered that only countries that controlled the high seas ‘called the shots’ an example being the world wide ‘tour’ of The Great White Fleet in December of 1907. This naval demonstration showed the world America’s growing military might. With millions of African-Americans enslaved economically and politically despite the long signed Emancipation Proclamation with remnants of once proud Amerindian tribes safely tucked away on reservations, America focused its attentions on Spain’s ‘castoffs’ Cuba and the Philippines.
Spain was tired of the Islands and wanted out. Aguinaldo’s forces were tightening the noose. The only way for Spain to save her honor was to stage a mock exit battle. Spain had one more Joker up her sleeve. After staging the ‘farce’ Battle of Manila Bay, though thousands of sailors were killed, a secretly agreement existed among Admiral Dewey, Generals Wesley Merritt and Otis, and Governor-General Jaudenes that after America claimed ‘victory’ Aguinaldo’s troops would remain outside Manila after Spain formally surrendered the islands to the United States. This move insured that the victorious Philippine revolutionary forces would enjoy none of the spoils of their hard-fought war. The book makes another point clear; though colonists may war with each other they automatically bunch together against those colonized having dark skins.
Wolff goes on in graphic detail how churches were looted, vandalized, desecrated, religious orders were exiled, prisoners tortured then shot, women raped, entire villages burnt to the ground, populations starved, with nearly half the male population of Luzon were butchered by genocidal Americans as reprisals for being ambushed at breakfast by ram-charging elements of Philippine guerrillas who left many American soldiers sitting headless and limbless as they ate their morning meal.
Fighting in the Philippines was a nasty affair; the weather was miserable, disease decimated the ranks of raw poorly trained and ill equipped US troops, the incessant rain, ankle deep mud, troopers meeting sudden and horrible deaths along jungle roads, dysentery, diarrhea, rotten food, fetid drinking water, the rats did not for contented soldiers make. All of the above were contributing factors for the cruelty on both sides.
Modern sulfa drugs and antibiotics didn’t exit in 1899. Life was a hell in the Philippines with more than enough to go around. Though Brian Linn in his book The Philippine War 1899-1902 attempted to dismantle the commonly held view that US forces largely won the Philippines by brutalizing the population, but with no end of the war in sight, the barbarity became a shared experience.
Wolff and others compared the Philippine-American War to Viet Nam in the 1960’s in terms of sheer savagery. The authors give accounts of how both sides conducted the war. The Philippine leaders Gregorio del Pilar, Antonio Luna, and President Aguinaldo; US Marines, Muslim Moros, the ‘Buffalo Soldiers,’ American commanders Lawton, Meritt, Pershing, Funston, Arthur MacArthur father of famous Douglas MacArthur, and Otis, and the 250,000 – 1,500.000 plus lives that were sacrificed on that blood red altar of revolution and a struggle that started long before America’s involvement in the 1890’s to when parting shots were fired in late 1913. Viet Nam and the Philippine struggles were fought in similar terrains, were combinations of conventional and guerilla warfare, pitted white colonial powers (France and the United States and her allies) against determined Asian foes, and lasted between 12 to 14 years apiece.
The popular media of the day cited how the Philippine war divided America into to two warring camps: the anti-imperials William Jennings Bryant, Mark Twain on one side, the politicians William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt on the other.
How bloody was this crusade in the name of Western Imperialism? “…our soldiers here and there resort to horrible measures with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes judges, sheriffs and executioners…’I don’t want anymore prisoners sent to Manila,’ was the verbal order from the Governor-General three months ago…It is now the custom to avenge the death of any American soldier by burning to the ground all the houses, and killing right and left the natives who are only ‘suspects.’” and this list goes on all this and much more from two US officers who leaked their stories to the New York World. A British publication wrote: “There have never been a more wicked war than this…but never a more shabby war.”
Wolff and the then American press blame a few cruel men for the war. Linn’s study contends that while America could have easily lost that war, the real blame lay on the Filipino’s disunity and inept generalship. Both authors did their homework. In writing it the author drew from archival documents, Aguinaldo’s personal writings, and from contemporary writing of the day. Wolff’s work concludes by warning us that unless we correct the faults of the past we will commit them again. In 1963 less than three years after Wolff’s book went to market the United States and Viet Nam went to war and did commit them again.
When I finished reading Wolff’s book and other accounts of that troubled era, I had a few questions. Was the United States’ treatment of the Philippine people as harsh and barbaric as one author contented?
According to Wolff’s epic study the United States Army’s policy of pacification was downright genocide. Given the Viet Nam like situation of that war when an American soldier’s house servant by day could eagerly slit his throat during the night coupled with white America’s hatred for all things brown and black (except comely women) I would venture to say YES and then some. Cases in point: during the summer of 1968 after this reviewer applied for service in the Peace Corps, I had to take a complete physical at then Glenview Naval Base. The examining physician an elderly white military gentleman told me that he had served in that war. He described in vivid details the number of Moro’s he used to blast with his Army 45 a colossal handgun invented specifically for the purpose of dispatching ‘drugged up kris-welding Moro’s though in all honesty he never mentioned the more ‘finer points’ of his service during that war. A few years earlier I met a person who served during the Spanish-American War and was one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. This Black gentleman, a usher at my parish (Corpus Christi) church when I was a boy, him and I used to have some Interesting conversations about what went on way back then.
When we continue with Part Two of THE DIRTY LITTLE WAR a review of Little Brown Brother by author Leon Wolff, we’ll take up where we left off.
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