Washington
The Spanish-American War lasted less than a year. For a few hundred combat deaths in 1898, the United States remembered the Maine, routed an outclassed enemy, pried Cuba from Spain and seized Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Just weeks after leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, Col. Teddy Roosevelt was back home, successfully campaigning for governor of New York, en route to the White House.
History textbooks typically record the judgment of U.S. Ambassador John Hay, who called it “a splendid little war; begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.”
In other words, mission accomplished.
It’s only now, as we slog through the aftermath of another splendid war, that Americans are recalling what happened next.
As in Iraq, the American liberators in the Philippines were attacked by a fierce insurgency. Though totally outgunned by U.S. military technology, the guerillas fought on for three years, taking the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers, and wounding thousands more.
U.S. retaliatory tactics were sometimes brutal. Crops were burned. Massacres occurred. Prisoners were tortured. At home, Americans tired of the war, and deplored the brutality. Congress held hearings on U.S. atrocities, and soldiers were court-martialed.
Eventually, the American forces subdued the insurgents, but at a heavy cost. It took decades for democracy to take root.
“You have sacrificed … American lives,” roared Sen. George Hoar of Massachusetts, criticizing U.S. imperialists in 1902. “You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps.
“Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who, three years ago, thronged after your men … with benediction and gratitude into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.”
As we confront the war in Iraq today, can we learn from its parallels to the Philippine Insurrection?
Brian McAllister Linn, a leading American authority on the Philippine war, thinks so. Indeed, he wishes that America’s leaders had studied their history before launching the invasion.
“I was very pessimistic at the beginning,” says the Texas A&M University history professor. “And I’ve been vindicated.”
America’s political and military leaders stormed Iraq with insufficient regard for the hard-won lessons that were taught in the Philippines, says Linn. They downplayed the need for order, security and secure borders.
U.S. troops stood by amid looting and lawlessness, and were easily provoked into counter-productive retaliatory measures at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Americans in Iraq grew isolated, working behind fortified walls. Iraqi institutions that provided stability, like the army, were disbanded.
Amid the chaos, the U.S. occupiers of Iraq could not match the successes of their counterparts from a century ago, who built roads and dredged harbors, enlisted Filipino help and garrisoned hundreds of towns, restored the Philippine economy, fought pestilence in Manila and cut the civilian death rate from disease almost in half.
“From the beginning, President McKinley made it very clear the Army’s job was to pacify,” says Linn. “And we imposed law and order and security on the countryside. And from the beginning, you had a military establishment that recognized restoring order and making the Philippines secure for the average person was the most important task.”
At an awful cost, the U.S. Army has re- learned many of these lessons in Iraq, and may now be getting things right. But counter-insurgency operations are never easy, nor predictable. And success flows not from arrogance, but from humility.
“You will undoubtedly have times of peace and quiet, or pretended submission,” Hoar warned a century ago. “You will buy men with titles, or office, or salaries. You will intimidate cowards. You will get pretended and fawning submission.
“But the volcano will be there. The lava will break out again. You can never settle this thing until you settle it right. Government without the consent of the governed – an authority which heaven never gave – can only be supported by means which heaven never can sanction.”
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday in Perspective. Read and comment on past columns at The Denver Post’s Washington Web log (denverpostbloghouse.com/ washington).
