The Republican Romp through Asia
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008 ... ntPage=all
For such a huge and culturally relevant piece of American history, I'm surprised that American students are only introduced to this stuff in college. Especially since this is a fairly large black spot on Teddy Roosevelt's otherwise fairly liberal record.
The Filipino occupation wasn't foreshadowing or clever neo-liberal anti-government protesting, they were lessons that should have been learned to prevent the military disasters of Vietnam, Iraq, and the like. Most of the atrocities reported in the newspapers were true, though some were exaggerated. The poor and inadequate equipment soldiers carried (soldiers were wearing winter uniforms early in the campaign), horrible medical conditions that left the military completely unprepared to deal with diseases, inexperienced officers who were all too prepared to take out their frustrations on the local population (the only experienced officers were the aging Generals from the Civil War and Indian Wars decades prior). Essentially, it was the US military's ideal clusterfuck, everything that could go wrong did so to the fullest.
I mean, ffs, look at what the Anti-Imperialist League did. It drew from every aspect of American society, north and south, Republican and Democrat, big-business and pro-union, from Mark Twain to Andrew Carnegie to our friend in labor Eugene V. Debs. It was never large enough to counter Republican efforts to win the American populace, but even those who supported the war for whatever reason soon grew to be fed up with the quagmire of the Philippines.
If you want to see Hitler in the US Senate, look no further than Albert Beveridge. Take his testimony to Congress in support of the war, replace Malay with Jew and Anglo-Saxon with Aryan. Hitler, almost word for word.
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