Posted on 10/23/2016 4:41:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
SOMETIMES AMERICANS THINK we have won a war, only to realize years or decades later that our victory was incomplete. Now we are facing an eruption of anger over a war we waged more than a century ago. Rarely has blowback from an overseas intervention come back to haunt us so long after the shooting stopped.
This unexpected challenge has emerged from the Philippines. The new president, Rodrigo Duterte, recently announced plans to pull his country out of America’s orbit and adopt an “independent” foreign policy. “I am anti-West,” he explained. “I do not like the Americans. It’s simply a matter of principle for me.”
Duterte’s grievance is rooted in history. Americans, he asserted, unjustly seized the Philippines in 1899, waged a horrific military campaign to suppress native resistance, and “have not even apologized to the Filipino nation.” He waved photographs showing bodies of Filipinos killed in that war.
Soon after Duterte made that startling speech, his foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, went even further. In 1899, Yasay asserted, the United States “arrogated our victory in the struggle for freedom” and then used “invisible chains” to bind Filipinos into “shackling dependency.” Americans, he said, treat Filipinos as “little brown brothers not capable of true independence or freedom.” To escape from that humiliation, he concluded, the Philippines must end its “subservience to United States interests.”
Most Americans would have no idea what these new Filipino leaders are talking about. We forgot the Philippine War long ago. Filipinos remember it vividly. It stands with the horrors of Japanese occupation during World War II as one of their great national traumas. A very old debt is finally coming due.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
I think I saw it there!
BS from the Philipinno president, let him go the Chinese and see what will happen in a few years.
It was until 1948.
Their culture is too different, letting them go to stand on their own was the right thing to do.
For good or ill Duarte is their choice. Now they have to live with it.
Pivot to Asia. Another failure in the long list of Obama failures.
Well, that's clearly what the Boston Globe wants to believe, but it's probably quite a bit more complicated.
That was their mistake to make. It’s amazing how many people don’t appreciate how good they have it, until it is gone.
My uncle was MacArthur’s cook.
Ome of my favorite images from the Army Historical Series. The debut of the M1911 knocking down drugged up muslims.
That is it exactly.
The US is an uncertain ally, so time for making deals with someone else, insurance.
Well, see, the US failed to keep those Japs from showing up in the first place.
The US was a “bad ally” in 1941, it had an obligation to protect the place, including that baby, and it failed.
The Boston Globe is always very attentive when it’s someone ranting against the U. S.
A word to the Globe, think you’d get away with what you have been doing in other nations?
Its PR.
Duterte needs a propaganda campaign to justify what he has done.
And it is complicated. Filipino attitudes are complicated and in some ways they dont make sense from a US point of view.
Read Karnow, “In Our Image”
1946
The point is you arent going to help him take them back.
Therefore you are no use to him.
So he has to deal with the bully as best he can.
Thats correct, this is just PR to justify an unpopular policy.
If Hitlery gets on I want the US to lose its global reach and influence. If we have a Hitlery dictatorship, Christians and conservatives will be enemy #1; we will be 1930s Jews.
We will need a place to escape or we will need support from a foreign power to aid in secession efforts.
If the US is to become a full on tyranny, I pray that it is a weak power in a multipolar world.
I’m not going to be a fool shouting USA!, USA! in a Hitlery dictatorship.
Another fight against globalism is what I see here. The people of the Philippines, like those of the usa, sense that the best interests of the people are not is what in the minds of the American government NOR the Phillipine govt.
Duterte is almost surely a Communist. Expect much shock from us officials who didn’t know, a la Castro.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/147375/trillanes-calls-duterte-a-communist
Whoops ok
I should have looked it up instead of shooting from the hip!
:)
The converse sin is starting a war with the Japs, as Roosevelt did with sanctions(against strong objections from the Phil gov of the day), and then failing to protect the Phil from the inevitable result.
And THAT spin is not usual in the Phil, but its the truth.
The Filipinos were way less conscious or bitter about it than the American “battling bastards of Bataan” btw.
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