The U.S. military
just can’t help meddling in the Philippines.
At the turn of the 20th century, an American war of conquest killed “over 20,000 Filipino combatants” in addition to “as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians [who] died from violence, famine, and disease,”
according
to no less than the U.S. State Department. But “violence” doesn’t do justice to exactly what occurred.
To take one example, historian Justin Jackson recently shed light on a forgotten atrocity in the central Luzon region of the Philippines in 1900 in which U.S. troops torched 60 buildings and
executed 27 detainees
. A year later, Brig. Gen. Jacob W. Smith issued orders: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms.” When Maj. Littleton Waller asked for clarification on the age limit for those who would be killed, Smith told him: “Ten years.” Estimates of the death toll from that campaign stretch from thousands to tens of thousands. And in 1906, on the the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo, U.S. troops killed, by some estimates,
nearly 1,000 Muslim Moros
, including women and children. One American captain recalled wounded babies “groping amid the mass of the dead for the mother’s breast.”
Year after year, these imperialist U.S. troops conducted brutal counterinsurgency operations in which they, according to the State Department, “burned villages, implemented civilian reconcentration policies, and employed torture on suspected guerrillas,” as they fought and died in places like
Basilan
and
Jolo
. And a century later, during the forever wars, U.S. Special Operations forces were again sent to the Philippines. For years, they carried out counterterrorism missions, fighting and dying in places like
Basilan
and
Jolo
.
Given this long history of military meddling, you probably won’t be shocked to learn that U.S. forces are back in the Philippines — and expanding their
… [more]
