Filipino American War, the war that Americans want Filipinos to forget

It is more fun criticizing

Rizal Philippines
July 8, 2018

From All thats interesting - Fil American war

                                         US soldeiers view bodies of fallen Filipino soldiers

                                                  Burning of Filipino Homes In Tondo Manila


The July 4 US Independence Day US Celebration (now the Fil Am friendship day) and the recent Trump trade war launched by US vs China reminds us of how powerful US is -   the big benevolent brother, the country that saved PHL from Spanish 400 colonial rule.

However, how easily many of us have forgotten the Fil Am war that claimed nearly a quarter million lives, well with atrocities being committed on both sides.   That is hardly the kind Americans whom Filipinos fought for in the Japanese war...Or those who nearly annihilated the residents of Balangiga.

Many termed this war as genocide and the first Vietnam for US outside of their country..

Yet we line up at US embassy to work for the land of milk and honey...And still wag our tails at the sight of them.... Let us think more independently and fell proud as Filipinos -  strong intelligent and resilient

We still have the US colonial mentality -  we love all things Americans, ape Americans, love Americans etc....

Hate for Japanese  atrocitiies, Spaniards persist but not vs Americans....

                                                  Dead Filipino soldiers after battle in Caloocan 1899

Highlights and comments on Pres. Duterte's 2nd SONA

It is more fun criticizing

Rizal Philippines
July 24, 2017








How disrepectful of the President, ayaw makipag usap;   may mga representative na leftist sa gobyerno


Pres Rodrigo Roa Duterte delivered his second SONA today.  It was simpler, friendlier with protesters;   he later faced the protesters, where he was heckled and "nabastos".   Later he held a press conference where more detailed discussion of his plans were laid out.

Some highlights:

1.  His war on drugs would be unending and relentless;

2.  He hit again the US and UN for their criticisms on drug war and alleged human rights violation.  He can not be cowed by threat that me may be jailed by ICJ for human rights violation.  He has been in and out of jail before and is no longer afraid of that threat;

3.  He decried the TROs being directed vs govt laws,  like the RH law; the medicines were wasted and had expired because of the SC meddling in legislative and executive matters

4.  He supported the backs of his soldier ins Marawi and said he went there and his attitude there was he was prepared to die.   One must face an adverse situation with equanimity especially with regards to death

5.  He repeated his anger over corruption in govt, citing the case of as a friend former Sec. Sueno

6.  He is aghast over the ambush  by NPA of the PSG convoy in Davao.  Boy was he happy that he  brought armored vehicles.  His convoy was machine gunned

7.  He said that Joe Ma Sison is sick with colon cancer and said he is prepared to go to war with CPP for the next 50 years.   He chided the activists outside of BP building to go home because they are just wasting their time.  They will get nothing if ISIS let us say get into power.  He even hinted that later on those promoting anarchy can be shot if they dont stop

1.4 million Filipinos killed during the Fil Am war; True? Were this EJK? Or war crime?

It is more fun criticizing
Rizal Philippines
September 11, 2016

                                        Balanggiga - a howling wilderness from American retaliation

From Filipknow - Dark Chapters in Fil American history

Today marks the 15th year after the 9/11 attacks by the terrorists using 4 hijacked passenger airliners to attack Pentagon, Twin Towers at NYC, and Philadelphia, killing 3,000 Americans in their homeland, the first mass murder of such magnitude in the USA.

Today we recall too the recent spat between Pres DU30 and Obama resulting in the cancellation of their bilateral talks in Laos Asean Summit.   The massacre at Mt Dajo of 600 combatants, children and women was recalled. That DU30 has violated and committed EJK is unfair for the Philippine President, and history. Really USA and its leader must be reminded too of what atrocities and EJK Americans had committed in the Philppines

We are  reminded in the research of Luzviminda Francisco  (Philippines: the end of an Illusion, London 1973) that 1.4 million Filipinos combatants and non combatants alike were killed from 1899 to 1902:  It was the first Vietnam (the My Lai massacre) Compare this to the deaths during the Japanese occupation where 500,000 to 1,000,000 Filipinos died.   Remember, 1941 to 1945 was modern warfare where there were more efficient weapons for killing.   The Spaniards could have killed less during their 400 years of occupation of the Philippines and would be more benevolent
From Filipknow - Myths about the Spanish occupation of the Philippines

Genocide in the Philippines

I would consider the site having leftist or even NDF slant but its claims are well documented, and the first time I knew about this when my daughter who was studying in UP asked me to summarize for her a book on American atrocities in the country



A moment of reflection returns us to what Bernard Fall called “the first Vietnam,” the Filipino-American War of 1899-1902, in which at least 1.4 million Filipinos. The campaign to conquer the Philippines was designed in accordance with President McKinley’s policy of “Benevolent Assimilation” of the uncivilized and unchristian natives, a “civilizing mission” that Mark Twain considered worthy of the Puritan settlers and the pioneers in the proverbial “virgin land.” In Twain’s classic prose: “Thirty thousand killed a million. It seems a pity that the historian let that get out; it is really a most embarrassing circumstance.”  This was a realization of the barbarism that Henry Adams feared before Admiral George Dewey entered Manila Bay on 1 May 1898: “I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year’s warfare in the Philippines where…we must slaughter a million or two of foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric trailways.”
In “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (1982),  Stuart Creighton Miller recounts the U.S. military’s “scorched earth” tactics in Samar and Batangas, atrocities from “search and destroy” missions reminiscent of Song My and My Lai in Vietnam. This episode in the glorious history of Empire  is usually accorded a marginal footnote, or a token  paragraph in school textbooks.  Miller only mentions in passing the U.S. attempt to subjugate the unhispanized Moros, the Muslim Filipinos in Mindanao and Sulu islands. On March 9, 1906, four years after President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war over, children in the battle ofMajor General Leonard Wood, commanding five hundred and forty soldiers, killed a beleaguered group of  six hundred Muslim men, women and and children at Mount Dajo. A less publicized but horrific battle occurred on June 13, 1913, when the Muslim sultanate of Sulu mobilized about 5,000 followers (men, women and children) against the American troops led by Capt. John Pershing. The battle of Mount Bagsak, 25 kilometers east of Jolo City, ended with the death of  340 Americans and of 2,000 (some say 3000) Moro defenders. Pershing was true to form—earlier he had left a path of destruction in Lanao, Samal Island, and other towns where local residents fought his incursions. Anyone who resisted U.S. aggression was either a “brigand” or seditious bandit. The carnage continued up to the “anti-brigandage” campaigns of the first three decades which suppressed numerous peasant revolts and workers’ strikes against the colonial state and its local agencies.


Not EJK or war crimes?

Interesting historical notes on Samar - notable was the Balangiga massacre

Social and political criticisms

                                       


                                   


I was in Samar for the last two days and some books that I read while in the house of our host in Catbalogan (the Singzons) reminded me of certain important historical events in Samar:

l.  The Europeans, headed by Ferdinand Magellan, sighted land in the archipelago on  dawn of March l6, l52l;  they touched land on March l7, 152l at the island of Homonhon in Samar.

                                      


2.  The Jesuits stayed in Samar for 172 years.  When they were eventually banned in Spain by the Kings court, they had to leave Samar and turn over to the Franciscans in l768;

3.  There was  Sumuroy rebellion staged in l649.  It was the so called Palapag rebellion;   Sumuroy speared a priest in protest for the Cavite shipyard forced labor:   hard labor, separation from family, little food and difficult conditions.  The rebellion was quelled eventually but many died and suffered.

 


4.  When Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence. Gen Lukban was sent in l898 to confiscate the property of the Catholic Church, to which the Catholics objected.

5.  The most famous of course was the Balangiga massacre of 1901.  In Sept 1901, the residents of Balangiga killed 36 Americans and injured several others as they rebelled vs American soldiers who rounded up 90 Filipinos for insubordination in a facility for only.  Those who were confined could not lie down nor sleep and were wet. In retaliation, Gen Adan R Cheffe sent in General Jake Smith, who just quelled Boxer rebellion in China.  There was an artillery bombing of Balangiga and Smith order was to kill anyone over l0 years old and "convert Samar into howling wilderness)  As a war booty, the Americans took the Balangiga church tower bell.  No one for sure how many natives died during this American reprisal.

This is a dark side of the Fil-Am relations;  anybody who knows this must feel like the Arabs do.

In Balingaga, foreigners, esp. Americans are not welcome/

Was this a war crime?  Why was Gen Smith given a heros welcome?

Did the Americans pay dearly for this in 2003?  On Sept ll (9/11)  Di natutulog ang Diyos

The Balangiga Massacre, getting even (truth about the Fil Am war)