In Century-Old Misadventure, a Caution for U.S.

"A splendid little war," the secretary of State called the brief, victorious action. "Benevolent assimilation" was the name of the White House policy that guided U.S. occupation forces. "It should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration," the president wrote, "to win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants ... by assuring them in every possible way [the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of a free people ... substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule."

Not a bad description of the war and postwar goals of the United States in Iraq. A bit dated, however. The year was 1899. John Hay was secretary of State; the president was William F. McKinley and their subject was America's occupation of the Philippines, after our victory in the Spanish-American War. Hay's and McKinley's current successors should have given their experience some careful study. The strategic confusion, administrative backtracking, mixed signals and mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq bear a striking -- and worrisome -- resemblance to what happened in the Philippines a century ago.

The decision to go to war with Spain, as was the case with Iraq, was made and marketed in a hurry. McKinley had a real incident to deal with: an explosion had severely damaged the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. A hastily convened Navy inquiry concluded that the probable cause was a mine -- obviously Spanish, the press and pro-war politicians concluded. (Ultimately, it was found to have been a fire in a bunker adjacent to a magazine.) War fever soared, fueled by atrocity stories about Spain's harsh treatment of Cuban rebels.

It was not Cuba, however, but Spain's colony in the Philippines that the victorious Americans occupied. McKinley's expansionist advisors -- Theodore Roosevelt and the Navy strategist Alfred T. Mahan -- had long advocated a U.S. strategic presence across the Pacific. It was Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, who ordered Adm. George Dewey to engage the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. Victory was swift and complete.

What, then, to do with the Filipinos? Many distinguished Americans, among them Mark Twain, former President Grover Cleveland and Harvard President Charles Eliot, opposed the idea of an anti-colonial country acquiring a colony. Most Filipinos wanted independence. Well-armed local militias had already fought the Spanish governors, and Dewey, for one, wanted to support them. In the end, however, Washington's hawks won the argument: McKinley, who had to search for the Philippines on a map, decided its people needed American guidance to be really free.