Posted on 10/14/2011 6:26:39 PM PDT by neverdem
Wasn’t that the Spanish-American War and the Philippines went from being a Spain colony to an American semi-colony. I bet they still think the US was far better as a suitor than Spain too.
I worked with a physician several years ago who was from the Philippines. He told me "we like America and Americans. When Spain owned our country, they kept the native people down. When the Americans came in, they built schools and educated people; they built hospitals. America did a lot for my country."
He was very sincere in his statement.
Bookmark
off topic but I lived in an apartment in Hoboken in the 90s that John Sayles once lived in. I would get some of his mail, including an invite to a private premiere of a remastered version of El Cid hosted by Martin Scorsese at the Joseph Papp theatre. I took the invite and went with my brother. Sat in the theatre with Charlton Heston, Sohpia Loren, Marissa Tomei, Martin, John Tutorro and others. Drank free wine. It was great. True story.
First off, it’s not ‘amigo”, Every Filipino I know are absolutely pissed that even they are looked upon as the “mexicans from Asia”.
No one speaks Spanish in the Philippines.
It just happens that they were occupied by the Spaniards for 300 plus years yet rebelled against the occupiers by speaking the native tongue of Tagalog as an FU to the Spanish. Unfortunately, thru those hundreds of years...spanish words just crept into the tagalog language like “coche” or “mesa”.
My best bud in my circle is a rarity: Filipino, right-wing and works for Conservative Club for Growth. He detests mexicans who starts speaking to him in Spanish...and he blasts them with Tagalog expletives in return.
This is timely. This Iranian “plot” reminds me of “Remember The Maine!”.
Sounds like a good movie. My fave historical figure is Douglass MacArthur. I believe he is still revered there.
More to the point, in Army History magazine there is a very good article (Issue 79, Spring 2011), about the very hard men who were General Pershing’s subordinates, in the article The Violent End of the Insurgency on Samar 1901-1902.
http://www.history.army.mil/armyhistory/AH79%28W%29r.pdf
(The pdf is for the full magazine so takes a while to load, but is well worth it.)
It should be noted that they took full advantage of General Orders 100, aka The Lieber Code, drafted during the US Civil War.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.asp
“In the event of the violation of the laws of war by an enemy, the Code permitted reprisals against the enemy’s recently captured POWs; it permitted the summary battlefield punishment of spies, saboteurs, francs-tireurs, and guerrilla forces, if caught in the act of carrying out their missions. (These allowable practices were later abolished by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949.)”
There’s a great book on our nation building effort in the Philippines titled In Our Own Image. It has quite a bit of info on the Insurrection.
Interesting looking film. After the fighting the Moros, the US looked to ditch the .38 revolver and adopted...wait, what was that they adopted?
The film concerns the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902), which occurred following the Spanish-American War. From 1902 to 1917, American soldiers also battled Muslim extremists in a separate conflict, the Moro War, on the island of Mindanao. This conflict, arguably America's longest, has been largely forgotten today.
Once the Philipines became US territory in the Spanish-American War, we fought a very brutal insurrection described in the post. Our victory in that war opened the door to US-style colonialism, which laid the foundation for that country’s development, which Philipinos remember culturally. We then shared the horror of WWII as allies - forgotton allies to a large degree. Our bond with the Philipino people is something Americans should be proud of.
Whenever I hear someone repeat the WWII canard that those islands in Alaska and Guam were the only US territory taken by the Japanese, I remind them about the Philipines
Isn’t Mindanao pretty much Islamic these days?
I was in an auto parts store last month where a couple of Hmong were attempting explain in English what they needed. A Mexican store regular walked in and the clerk asked him to interpret.
The Hmong was pissed to be confused as Latin and said in a loud voice, “WE ARE NOT SPANISH”.
My friend runs a jewelry store online and has 1-800 line. Sometimes, his staff don;t show up si he handles the calls himself on occasion. You won’t believe the number of calls he takes where the caller in normal English asks..for Spanish-speaking agents. He already took out the “press 1 for English” option and these clowns still ask for it.
Well, I hope they show the muslims all hopped up and drugged out charging our forces and being shot numerous times by our Navy .38 caliber revolvers...and how that led to the need to develop the M1911 .45!
The .38’s didnt STOP them at all! Or at least, not until you hit the target multiple times
We actually fought the muslims then, and DID NOT lose the war before it was over by allowing the Filipinos to write a constitution installing Islam as the State Religion. This was done in Iraq and Afghanistan under the Bush administration’s watch!
I am married to a Philipina. She told me the Spanish gave the Philippines religion. The Americans gave them education.
It is fair to point out that the alternative to American conquest and rule was not independence, it was rule by some other colonial power.
This was the high tide of colonialism, and no attractive territory occupied by brown people would have been allowed to go free.
Most likely it would have been the Germans moving in, as they were the most aggressive at the time, being late out of the gate in the colony race and desperate to catch up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.