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 ...
That was hung in one of the hall ways at my AIT Company at Ft. Monmouth, NJ
Yeah but we're not interested in taking the Spratly Islands or the Scarborough Shoal away from the Philippines. Can Duterte say the same about China?
The sin of dying to fight the Japanese on Philippine soil.
Boston Glop. ‘Nuff Said.
China will develop the islands and give Phillipines a cut.
We can’t defend Phillipines claims and can’t afford to develop the islands.
What good are we?
These “natives” were...MUSLIMS!!!I read that the Army stated that the women took part in the rebellion dressed as men, and the men used children as human shields. This sounds rather familiar! /s
So how did the Spaniards treat them?
Giving isis more ideas?
Good question. I’m sure that the locals did most of the fighting and most of the dying in WW2. Still MacArthur was the hero. That’s why we don’t know what happened 120 years ago. Since so many are now Americans I would think they would tire of him eventually but like Obama once elected they have plento of time to do damage.
Sure they will.
Indeed. The enemy of the Philippine Islands was imperialism. Now, they get to go to hell in their own basket.
Nothing to do with President Golfy McMuslim and his Secretary of Lurch, of course.
If not for us, the Japs would've killed the VAST majority of Phillipinos .. some outright, the rest by slave laboring them to death.
Australia's close enough to that theatre .. pull ALL our assets out ASAP and the ungrateful bastards can ESAD.
I completely agree with you on this. If Clinton were to win, we are going to get our butts kicked from all around the world.
All I can say is bye,bye. The islands mean nothing to us. This new leadership that the Philippines has elected is another example of despotism.
What’s he going to do when China lays claim to Philippines undersea territory for the oil and fish and mineral wealth?
I don’t blame him for questioning America’s commitment, because Obama has been hostile to affirming friendly ties, but China has no problem taking a country’s wealth until there is nothing but clay earth. That’s what they are doing in Africa right this second.
This is about America no longer being a creditable ally wrt to countering China.
What really happened was that the RP devolved into corruption everywhere, and dependency on the US was easier for RP than taking the route that, say, Singapore, S. Korea, or Taiwan has.
It would have been better to make the Philippines a territory of the US.
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