Wars, like the Philippine-American War, are things government absolutely loves. One might say it loves it more than the Chicken Hawks do.
Why should we care about the Philippine-American War? For the same reason we should care about everything the government and military do – the truth.
Why Don’t We Know About the Philippine-American War?
It’s safe to say the average American citizen doesn’t know the history behind the Philippine-American War. It’s even safer to say one doesn’t know or even care about the American atrocities of the war.
The average student doesn’t care a lot about history. Most American K-12 students most likely don’t care about a lot of subjects. They just do the grind to get that precious high school diploma.
For those that do care, though, the unabridged truth should be presented. But, would the government want its citizens knowing about the truth?
One young Joshua Petrikat has a 5-minute YouTube Video in which he covers the Philippine-American War. At the end of the video, he shares that following stats from his U.S. History textbook:
Spanish-American War
Words: 1,171
War Length: 3 Months
U.S. Soldiers Died: 400
Philippine-American War
Words: 164
War Length: Officially 3 years, with 11 years of sporadic fighting
U.S. Soldiers Died: 4,000
Filipinos Died: 270,000
To be fair, the American Office of the Historian claims only 200,000 Filipinos died.
The One Giant Lie
The Filipinos had been under Spanish rule for centuries. Spain influenced the Philippines so much, you hear a lot of Spanish in the language.
Spain’s rule over the Philippines was near its end in the latter 19th century. Of course, this is when the Americans saw an opportunity.
The Americans made contact with the Spanish Governor, and they negotiated a deal in which the Spanish would submit to the Americans. However, this would be a fake battle.
According to curator Theodore S. Gonzalves, neither American General Wesley Merritt or new Spanish Governor of the Philippines General Fermin Jaudenes had a positive outlook on Filipinos. Merritt saw Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo as “just the same to me as a boy in the street.”
General Jaudenes had similar feelings, as Gonzalves writes, “The Spanish commander held a similar attitude; he was “willing to surrender to white people,” but never to Filipinos.“
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To further read in greater detail about the fake battle between the Americans and the Spanish, read A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. The book is a great resource on the war and is worth the time to see what Chicken Hawks deem as “OK” because its war.
One of the amazing facts about Chicken Hawks (he doesn’t call them Chicken Hawks) author David J. Silbey documents in the book is how Americans reacted to the American Navy defeating the Spanish Armada in Manila Bay.
The Spanish Armada, world renowned for its dominance for centuries, was a shell of itself when the Americans showed up. The American dominated the battle easily.
However, with how the Chicken Hawks celebrated stateside, one would think the Americans fought tooth and nail to defeat the greatest Navy the world had ever seen in its prime.
A Sample of Torture In the Philippine-American War
With “enhanced interrogation techniques” coming to the forefront of anti-war rhetoric after September 11th, 2001, one can only imagine how atrocious torture has been throughout humanity.
One source of war atrocities come from the soldiers themselves. Numerous accounts have been documented through letters sent home from war.
On Episode 861 of The Tom Woods Show, Tom reads one such letter sent from PVT A.F. Miller of the 32nd United States Volunteers. He explained what the “Water Cure” torture was as follows:
“…lay them on their backs – a man standing on each hand and each foot. Then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up, pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I tell you, it is a terrible torture.”
Dr. Woods reads more letters, but if you got the time or have a road trip, you should give the episode yourself a listen.
However, another great unnerving realization of inhumanity from the Philippine-American War was the fact Dr. Woods shares that the Anti-Imperialist League “often found that the public was unmoved.”
Would a Chicken Hawk be unmoved if family and friends had the “Water Cure” put on them? War is super fun and exciting when it is far from home, but is an entirely different story when it is in your backyard. Chicken Hawks won’t possibly realize that until it is too late.
More Soldiers’ Letters from the Philippine American War
It’s sometimes hard to take words of soldiers to heart because soldiers do blow a lot of smoke to make themselves look way more important than they are. However, it’s hard to not take them at heart as well.
There are many letters written by those in the Philippine-American War about the atrocities in the Philippine-American War. This George Mason site reprints a lot of the letters that were printed by the Anti-Imperialist League during the war.
One letter that stands out from the site is a letter written by F.A. Blake, who was in charge of the Red Cross, who found out that the bodies of the fallen had been stacked up for breastworks. Breastworks are temporary fortifications about breast high.
An American Turncoat In the Philippine-American War
One surprising detail about the Philippine-American War that isn’t brought up more often is how many black American soldiers connected with the Filipinos. Even in these racial-centric times in the United States, this, and most likely other similar situations, has found silence.
One black American soldier in particular that ended up siding with the Filipinos was David Fagen. The “N-word” was used by American soldiers often to describe the Filipinos, and the treatment of the Filipinos was something some black American soldiers took personally.
Silbey’s book also goes into detail about what life was like for the black American soldiers during the war.
How has a movie not been made about David Fagen?
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