NYT: Bush cites Philipines as Model in Rebuilding Iraq: what a looney

[La_Serpiente]

Ok people, Bush probably said the stupidest thing in the Philipines.

After the 1898 Spanish American War, American took over the Philipines. However, America occupied the Philipines for five decades and contributed to the Philipines instability by supporting the Dictator Ferdinand Marcos. What an idiot.

"MANILA, Oct. 18 — President Bush told the Congress of this former American colony on Saturday that Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a vibrant democracy. He also pledged his help in remaking the troubled and sometimes mutinous Philippine military into a force for fighting terrorism."

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"While the administration often speaks of the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Mr. Bush used the visit here to make a less explicit analogy to the American administration of the Philippines, which also led to the formation of a democracy. But the comparison has less power to reassure, given that the Philippine government did not gain full autonomy for five decades."

Here is the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/asia/19PREX.html

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[DisgustipatedinCA]

1. From another thread on this last night

I posted this on a thread in LBN last night, which has already sunk below the horizon:

I'm typing directly from my copy of A People's History of the United States, by Anthony Zinn.

(page 315)
A captain from Kansas wrote: “Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native.” A private from the same outfit said he had “with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire.”
A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: “Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill ‘niggers.’…This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces.”

…

(further down on page 315)

In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:

“The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog…Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.

And on page 316:

In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:

“The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied “Everything over ten.”

[DrBB]

2. 100,000 dead Phillipinos, thanks to US Imperial occupation

Filipino losses have been estimated at about 16,000 killed in combat and, perhaps, another 100,000 dying of famine and disease.

Pretty good parallel, actually.

That ol' White Man's Burden--funny how it always seems to land hardest on the people we're conquer--er, "liberating."

[DisgustipatedinCA]

3. 100,000 or 600,000?

A Filipino-American War broke out as the United States attempted to establish control over the islands. The war lasted for more than 10 years, resulting in the death of more than 600,000 Filipinos. The little-known war has been described by historians as the "first Vietnam", where US troops first used tactics such as strategic hamleting and scorched-earth policy to "pacify" the natives.

http://www.tribo.org/history/history3.html

[DisgustipatedinCA]

4. Bush cites our killing of half a million people as a model

A model for the rebuilding of Iraq.

That deserves another bump.