Honor In The Dust - Gregg Jones

'As McKinley attempted to silence debate over the nation's presence in the Philippines, American civilians poured into the islands to teach, preach, and make money.'

Honor in the Dust starts with the Spanish-American War, but is largely concerned with what went on in the Philippines after, as the U.S. decided they needed to have some colonies of their own, and the lengths they went to try and hold it. Those lengths end up including a lot of the same tactics the Spanish has used on the Filipino population, the same tactics the U.S. has decried and used as a pretext for fighting Spain in the first place. Burning villages and crops, killing water buffalo, relocating people into camps, torturing local officials to divulge the names and locations of nearby guerrillas, all with the tacit approval of the upper command. Until it became politically inconvenient, naturally.

Actually, that's overstating it. Even when there was fallout for the Roosevelt administration, and court martial proceedings were put into motion, they were largely for show. The officers brought up on charges were almost all acquitted, or at most fined some minor sum. Jacob Smith, who had ordered a Marine Major to kill all persons capable of bearing arms, down to the age of ten, received a reprimand for it, then TR retired him later. That's it. But how could they convict Smith of anything more, since the officers on the tribunal were guilty of much the same thing, and didn't appreciate all this hostility from politicians and civilians besides.

So it's a "cover your ass" situation. Or "us against them", if you prefer. And the politicians dicker and grandstand, accomplishing nothing, because if they get to vocal against it, they might also be seen to be criticizing the economic gains, and you can't risk pissing off the businessmen. Eventually the American public gets tired of hearing about it, and the water cure (where water is sent down a person's throat via syringe until their stomach swells to the near bursting point, only to have the water removed by soldiers beating on the person's stomach with their fists, then repeated) becomes a joke.

The thing that struck me was how familiar it all seemed. Not just to the European imperialism the U.S. had claimed to stand against (the idea that the U.S. controlled only whatever pieces of ground they held at the moment was reminiscent of the French situation in Douglas Porch's Conquest of the Sahara), but to recent history. In case you thought America's inability to respect and get along with the locals in countries we've invaded was a development of the recent conflicts in the Middle East or further back, Vietnam. The U.S. presents itself as the liberator of the Philippines and Cuba, but decides the Filipinos can't possibly understand self-government, so the U.S. will take care of that for them. After all, if the U.S. wasn't there, one of those big meanie European countries would no doubt come along and subjugate the Filipinos. The idea of simply being an ally to a fledgling nation, of making it clear they will be left alone or you have to mess with us, was apparently not an option. The helpful civic projects - more courts, roads, schools hospitals - are undermined by the military's hateful treatment of the people those projects are meant to aid. The military excuses their harsh tactics by arguing that a) the other guys started it with sneak attacks and executing American prisoners, which ignores the fact it wouldn't be happening, and b) that they're savages, do they don't deserve proper treatment anyway. And so it's an ugly cycle of each side constantly responding to other's ugliness with more ugliness. That's a productive as you might think. It's sad that some of the most strident opponents of the conquest were southern racists who didn't want Filipinos polluting white racial purity. Criminey.

Jones has a picture of Roosevelt prominently on the cover, which is why I initially assumed this was a biography before I read the full title. It wouldn't have been an unreasonable assumption - my dad has at least a have dozen TR biographies - but he's not the only player, merely the largest. The book is rather depressing in that regard - it's depressing in a lot of regards, from the racism, to the present day similarities, to the lack of accountability for those in power - because I remember thinking TR was really cool back in high school history classes. He didn't take shit from anybody, awesome! But yeah, he was an imperialist, at least somewhat a racist (he certainly bought into the idea the Filipinos couldn't govern themselves). He accused his opponents of not being men, at least not in the sense Roosevelt believed, meaning big, strong, physically dominant, imposing their will upon others (but for benevolent purposes, really!). That's when he was describing them as socialists or communists. 100+ years and nothing's changed. I'm reminded history is terribly depressing.

I understand Jones was looking at this from the American perspective, but considering the book is about the conquest of the Philippines, more time spent on the Filipino perspective would have been appreciated. We're introduced to some of the important figures - Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy primary among them - but the focus in on the Americans. There's a point where Jones mentions rising U.S. casualties as the resistance has moved to guerrilla tactics rather than direct battles between armies, and I couldn't help thinking, "Yes, 995 American casualties in 7 months. How many Filipinos?" Considering that in most of the surprise attacks, the guerrillas would still lose more men than the soldiers, I'd expect the Filipino death toll to be substantially higher. Especially when you factor in American reprisals, burning villages or shooting anyone they see (plus the guerrillas killing collaborators). I suppose there might be a lack of written records, but I felt like Jones short-changed the people of the islands as much as the Americans of the early 20th century did.