"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.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday July 27, 2003 Home Edition Opinion Part M Page 2 Editorial Pages Desk 0 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Occupation of Cuba -- An article that ran July 20 stated that the U.S. military did not occupy Cuba after the Spanish-American War. A U.S. military government ran Cuba from 1899 until 1902.
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.
A peace might have held, if the U.S. government had agreed to a protectorate. Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of what was fast becoming a Philippine national army and not yet fiercely anti-American, liked the idea because it would allow his country to develop with a goal of ultimate independence. But McKinley dithered. When he finally decided on annexation (after an intensive prayer session), the opportunity for compromise had expired. By February 1899, Aguinaldo's army and newly arrived U.S. infantry reinforcements were shooting it out.
McKinley's assurances of "individual rights and liberties" for Filipinos went up in smoke, as village after village was torched. Angered by guerrilla ambushes, U.S. volunteers, most of them racist to begin with, eagerly executed the "kill-and-burn" orders of their Indian-fighter commanders. In turn, Aguinaldo's men slaughtered isolated American units, whose comrades responded in kind. U.S. reinforcements kept arriving. By mid-1900, 75,000 U.S. troops were in action, almost two-thirds of the entire army.
Worried about the slaughter -- "the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart" -- McKinley turned to civilian leadership. William Howard Taft was dispatched to the Philippines to become the archipelago's first civilian chief executive, to the chagrin of Brig. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, who as military governor had sought to keep civilians out. Under Taft's leadership, the Americans sponsored huge programs in education, public health and economic improvement. Meanwhile, MacArthur's army ruthlessly pacified the country, ignoring its civilian advisors. Filipinos were alternately terrified, gratified and confused.
On July 4,1902, President Roosevelt officially declared the end of the "great insurrection." It had lasted more than three years. American casualties were 4,234 dead, almost 3,000 wounded. Thousands more died later of diseases they had contracted in the Philippines. The American casualty count in the Philippines was almost 10 times what it was during the Spanish-American War. Some 20,000 Filipino soldiers were killed. Nearly 200,000 civilians died in the insurrection, either from the actual fighting or from the disease and pestilence it spawned.
