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 notice he said that in English, not Japanese.
Search for Obama in the article came up goose eggs.
[It stands with the horrors of Japanese occupation during World War II as one of their great national traumas]
Yeah and who ended that occupation for them with blood and guts?
Fck em. Let their women become comfort women for the Red Army. Philippines has nothing to offer us.
“Most Americans would have no idea what these new Filipino leaders are talking about.”
So would most Philippinos.
It’s not Obama’s fault, it’s “America’s” fault, from a hundred years ago.
Hopefully Mt Pinotaubo will blow again and bury the whole place.
well so much for my long awaited trip to Cebu in the spring... smh...
But, where will the Dems get all their houseboys?
Maybe MacArthur shouldn’t have returned. My dad was part of that operation.
I suspect actual Philippinos will begin to tire of this lunatic eventually.
Complete BS from these leaders in PI, what they are really mad about is we armed PI to fight communist guerillas and complicated their vision with US Bases in Luzon.
A very small portion of the population is mad at the US, these are all commies.
“Civilized ‘em with a Krag.”
Bah.
We’ve become a bad ally. Weak, poor and distracted.
Perhaps the Filipinos should go back to the days when Japanese soldiers would raid their homes then take Filipino babies and toss them into the air for another Japanese soldier to ‘catch’ on a board with nails driven through it.
The real story is that nobody trusts America anymore thanks to Obama, and if Clinton wins, Russia will be the lone superpower in the world. Our foreign policy and relations with other countries are a sick, pathetic joke.
I don't blame Duterte for doing what he's doing.
So was my Uncle Bud part of that operation...
He died at a place called ZigZag Pass trying to liberate the Phillipines from the Japanese...
Any “sins” America allegedly committed in the PI have long since been expiated in blood...
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