Posted on 09/08/2016 6:12:21 PM PDT by knarf
All I can say is that history, politics, war, are way messier than these simple tales.
Everything you say about the US, Spain, and the Muslims is not correct, and in the case of the Muslims it is wildly wrong. To get the real, complex, ambiguous thing you have to go to original sources, because this stuff is not available in potted histories. It takes a really good library to carry the Blair&Robertson collection for instance, or anything like manuscript collections of 1898-1910 which you need in order to make sense of the “Philippine Insurrection”.
Let me flip something around for you - Mr. Dutertes town and province, Davao, used to be Moro territory. It was conquered for Spain and Christian settlement by an ancestor of mine, capturing the Moro cota there, with a small ship, a few borrowed cannon, his mistress, seventy Visayan sailors and a pagan tribe of jungle-fighters. In 1847.
There are streets there with his name on it, but the history is a bit inconvenient, so its not well known. The bare bones are in the Wiki on Davao.
And Spain kept it, no need for the US to reclaim it from the Moros either, because the truth is the Moros were getting swamped at the time by a sea of Christian Visayans.
Realize that something as wild, or wilder, in a hundred incidents, was how the Moros were subdued. In the 19th century. On their turf. It was the wild, wild East, complete with pioneers.
As for WWII, thats even messier.
Consider this - were the WWII Japs as evil as the ancient Romans?
If you know something about Romans, you should hesitate before answering.
Consider that most of you are the descendants of people who surrendered to the Romans, because most who fought were exterminated.
In Asia, most peoples are those that surrendered to the Mongols. If you were to run a contest of evil, Japs vs Mongols, well, it isnt a contest.
History and its choices arent reassuring.
Curiously, the Mongols, while quite maligned, had an internal order that we would call civilized. Ghengis Khan, for example, was a fair and honorable leader that established order, was religiously tolerant, and — while ruthless against those that opposed him — was equitable to those who submitted to his rule.
Indeed.
But those who didnt cooperate were more thoroughly erased than even the Romans managed. Carthage was small potatoes vs Khwarezm, just for one. Yeah, obscure for really good reasons, because of how thorough those Mongols were.
While we are mostly in agreement, I would raise a point of order: The Khwarezm and others like them were not erased from history.
It is the tribes that we DON'T know of that were erased from history.
By definition.
So your argument is the Japanese are OK because the Romans were worse?
The French Resistance could not defeat Nazi Germany. Singlehandedly.
But they did cause the Germans to devote resources to them that were needed elsewhere, and they helped make the D-day invasion successful.
All over the pacific, people did the same thing. They resisted the Japanese, partly because they were so brutal there was no surrender to them. They carried on killing, raping, and brutalizing whether there was active resistance or not.
I have no idea what motivates people like you to act as apologists for evil. I don’t know what motivates your ilk to attack the US reflexively.
It is not a matter of apologizing for anyone. We are talking of war, not morality. These arent stories for children.
I am not an apologist for the Japs. What they did, so often, is too sickening to relate. Two of my relatives testified against Yamashita. The poor Chinese lady who wrote the excellent recent book on Nanking killed herself in her ensuing depression. History is detail, often very disturbing.
My point is that there is more than one strategy for surviving such an enemy. If there is no one coming to the rescue, fighting may be counterproductive. If the cost is excessive even if someone is expected eventually, ditto. You will find exactly these ideas in several of the memoirs of Philippine guerilla leaders of 1942-45. Lapham, Anderson, Ramsey, Fertig, the intelligence reports of Chick Parsons, etc. All through these, a constant theme, was questioning the value of inciting the often very willing people to fight, knowing that the result would just be a wave of savage retribution. Those were the people on the spot, under pressures we can only vaguely imagine.
Your (and most of my) ancestors survived the Romans through submission, and so did the other colonial peoples of East Asia expect to survive the Japs. They were already surviving the British, French and Dutch, of which they had many bad memories.
If you want a taste of real history, what isnt popular, what really went down, I recommend “By Sword and Fire” Alfonso Aluit, the best history of the civilian side of the destruction of Manila, Feb-March 1945.
I grew up in the ruins of that, physically and emotionally, as all my relatives were survivors.
That was exactly what the Philippine government of 1940-41 were afraid could happen, and their fears were entirely correct as it happened, and they did what they could to prevent it.
If the French, the Russians, Filipinos and many others had followed your “strategy” (which is nothing more than joining the axis), they would all be living in subjugation to this day.
You keep mentioning the Romans. Many people lived under Roman subjugation for hundreds of years. Many did not — what is not Scotland and much of Northern Europe successfully resisted.
You would have had the world preemptively surrender to evil. You are nothing more than a craven apologist for tyranny, oppression and brutality.
Heh, the Danes, Czechs, Albanians, Bulgarians, and a whole lot of others, besides the Thais and every other native people of East Asia, did not fight. So, what ?
Does the Philippines get some cosmic points for its futile defense? Some benefit after? Thailand got out of WWII intact, with few to mourn and no economic loss.
What did the Philippines get for its million dead, levelled capital, shattered society and twenty years of economic recovery?
Do all these others somehow lose in that theoretical contest?
What price medals?
No, this is not a game of honor, this sort of thing is life and death for hordes of innocent people, women and children and the knock on effect for who knows how many later generations.
If there is a prospect of success, you fight.
If it is clear it is futile and your people are in the firing line, if likely costs of fighting>likely cost of bending, fighting is insane.
As I have pointed out, someone has to fight. Your “I don’t care” and “Let someone else do it” attitude would have left the world in the hands of Hitler and Tojo. So you want to abase yourself and lick their boots, thinking that your craven cowardice will cause them to grant you safety.
You cite a few examples of this and ignore all the bloodshed and brutality that came on unexpecting people who never even got the chance to think about a response. The Japanese showed up and immediately commenced the slaughter and the rape.
Siam became an Axis ally and declared war on those trying to fight Hitler and Tojo. It is a good thing the rest of the world was not so craven.
But the “craven” won, by any measure. What price glory?
If you are a small, weak country, you have different interests than a huge, mighty one.
Like I said downthread, this all is not some romantic fiction.
You are the craven, but you did not win. The Roman empire did not win. Japan did not win. Germany did not win.
And the Christians persecuted did not ally themselves with Rome, as you claim. They resisted with their lives, suffering violent and gruesome deaths.
Dude, Rome won.
Thats a half-millenium of running the Med basin and most of Western Europe, besides everyone and his brother copying them for the next 1500 years. 3/4 of everyone speaks their language or versions thereof. You cant win more than that, in this life.
And, specifically, I am looking at Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. I see zero downside to them of NOT fighting the Japs. They have done quite well frankly, vis the Philippines. Is someone going to go over there and charge them some sort of cowardice fees? Deduct cosmic game points? No?
Like I said, we fought, and what did we get out of it? Zip.
You guys made us fight with nothing, and left us to the wolves.
Rome did not win, the empire fell apart and was overrun by barbarians.
Doing good has a cost, but the Filipinos did make the decision to resist because it was the right thing to do. Many in the French Resistance died fighting the Nazis because it was the right thing to do. Even in Siam there was a resistance against the Japanese, contrary to your propaganda.
Freedom is not the natural state of man without struggle and sacrifice. It is said that America is land of the free because it is the home of the brave.
It is plain that neither description applies to you. Why don’t you move to China, North Korea or Iran so you can grovel all you want?
Why are you here spewing this anti-American tripe?
This isnt “anti-American tripe”.
The facts are the facts, they are in your own official documents. The utterly shameful neglect of Philippine defenses pre-1941 is a matter of record. This problem is known in minute detail. Like I said, if you want the truth, go look.
Start with the US Army “green book” official history of the campaign, by Louis Morton, available free online. After that there is a whole library to go further. “They Fought With What They Had” Edmonds 1951, the USAF official history is also free online. Samuel Eliot Morisons excellent USN Official History, Volume 3, is easily available, etc. Also all the well known and easily available histories by, for instance, Toland (”The Rusing Sun”), but most any will do, etc. Dont bother arguing until you know this.
The reason this argument started is because the situation in East Asia today is uncomfortably similar to the case seventy-five years ago, as is predictable from plain geography.
Back then the Phils. was confronted with a far more powerful opponent that saw the archipelagos position as strategic, and it being held by its greatest rival made it a natural first target. The choice then and now was fight or submit. The only way to fight with success was if the US was in a position to back it with sufficient power. Then as now it is a question whether the US was willing or able to do so.
In 1940-41 the US was both unwilling (because of the focus on European Lend-Lease) and unable. Worse, Roosevelt through his trade embargos forced the Japanese hand and brought war long before the Philippines could possibly be sufficiently reinforced under prevailing priorities. This is not controversial, it is plain fact.
This was well understood in Washington, where it was official policy that the Philippines was a sacrificial position and the objective of War Plan Orange-3 was simply to delay the destruction of defending forces. It was accepted that the population could not be protected and it would be futile to attempt this. This cold-blooded outlook was rational in terms of US interests, but it was, to put it mildly, inimical to Philippine interests.
More recently US has been very reluctant to provide the Philippines with more than trivial military aid, and if push came to shove, given nuclear threats, its unlikely it would go all out to protect the Philippines from aggression.
Given all this, what should rational Philippine foreign policy be? Not Philippine policy that suits the US, but Philippine policy that suits the Philippines.
You are capable of thinking at a level above slogans, to look through someone elses eyes; give it a try.
As for Thailand, it was a token fight lasting less than a day.
Actually the resistance in Siam was far more than token and lasted a lot longer than a day. It was made up of Thais disgusted with their feckless leader’s decision to do exactly what you propose. The regular fighting lasted until someone dragged Phibun out from under the bed he was hiding under and forced him to make a decision.
You are also confusing US military and foreign policy with the actions of the Filipino populace. Filipinos chose to fight Japan because it was the right thing to do and because they identified themselves with the US and allies rather than with the axis Japanese like you do. Just like the French resistance chose not to simply accept the vichy leadership and the Thai resistance chose not to accept Phibun’s capitulation to the Japanese.
buwaya, I have tons of respect for the Filipino people. They sacrificed much in the war. They stood by us. I lived on your island for two years and I am always interested in hearing both sides of the story. Like the hobbits you did it for all.
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