Now I'm not much of a history buff, but I was shocked by something this week, and I've done my best to condense it down into a myspace/blog sized digest....
So yeah, listening to a lecture by Howard Zinn this week (author of A People's History of the United States) and apparently, the USA had a 12 year war with the Philippines at the turn of the last century?!? Since when was this public knowledge or am i just WELL out of touch?!?!
Yeah, guided by the eventually assassinated William McKinley, 25th President of the USA, who felt 'led by God' to 'take' the country, as a supporter of the president remembers (though there's debate over the accuracy of this quote, the sentiment is there...) :
"there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos (sic), and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly."
Ahhh, yes 'Christianize' them, by shooting, imprisoning and torturing thousands of them....that would be JUST like the Christ that i know then......and still he slept soundly? Really? Well that's a relief then?!? Is this ringing any bells with anyone, a (not so) elected leader of the 'free' world feels that 'God' is telling him to invade a countries to keep the world safe....hmmm....
And why did the USA even have any interest in the Philippines in the first place, ahhh, well in the 1800's you could BUY countries if you happened to be uh, white and ohhh, rich too. So the USA had purchased the entire country (as a colony) from the Spanish in December 1898 for the tidy sum of $20 million....only problem was, the Filipino’s had been fighting for their independence from the Spanish for years already and took issue with this so called 'purchase'....the cheeky little B&S*^(£'s !
So then, as you do, the USA sent in 11,000 troops who proceeded to 'occupy and subdue' the country, although they never officially declared the war as a 'war'....under the ground that the Filipino’s (who happened to be fighting what they viewed as an occupation) were classed as 'insurgents'..........insurgents? really....now where have we hear that term used before?
ARE THE ALARM BELLS OF FAMILIARITY RINGING YET?!?!? And they say history repeats itself, what a nostalgic little phrase, wonder if there's any truth in it?
Filipino casualties on the first day of Philippine-American War Feb 5th 1899Well despite America's far superior military strength and firepower, the 'official' unofficial war lasted two years although fighting continued for a further decade, with the USA loosing over 4,000 soldiers and the Filipino's suffering losses of over 16,000 + an additional 500,000-1 million civilian casualties of war, to famine, concentration camp detainment and disease... I’d be interested to hear what Filipino’s of today think about America’s little insurgency scuffle, and the similarities with the current Middle East climate are more than a little obvious....
Funny that we never got taught this at school.....after Harold got an arrow in the eye in 1066 i can't really remember much apart from how the Americans saved the day in WWII and how unfair the stock market crash was on middle America.... Unfortunately the ‘powers that be’ in America so frequently seem to sell the people they claim to represent painfully short. Again and again. Those poor American leaders, they've been so nice to the world for so, so many years, wonder why there's such hostility towards them now? (pssst.....all is not as it seems folks....)
Shrug....well, sorry for the history lesson, i just found that all a bit interesting...oh well, back to Fox news.....
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