Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, February 05, 2006
U.S. War Crimes Explained: 105 years ago today (and RIP: Al Lewis)
In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. fought a brutal war of conquest in the Pacific. By 1900, more than 75,000 American troops—three-quarters of the entire U.S. Army—were sent to the Philippines. In the face of this overwhelming show of force, the Filipinos turned to guerrilla warfare.
The February 5, 1901 edition of the New York World shed some light on the U.S. response to guerilla tactics: “Our soldiers here and there resort to terrible measures with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes judges, sheriffs and executioners. ‘I don’t want any more prisoners sent into Manila’ was the verbal order from the Governor-General three months ago. It is now the custom to avenge the death of an American soldier by burning to the ground all the houses, and killing right and left the natives who are only suspects.”
For more about U.S. war crimes in the Philippines (excerpted from Seven Deadly Spins), please click “more” below. So, go ahead and…
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RIP: Al Lewis
Far more than just “Grandpa"
(He and I shared a birthday...albeit 50 years apart.)
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War Crimes (cont’d)
In an eerie presaging of Vietnam’s hamlets and of more recent efforts in Iraq, Filipino villagers were herded into concentration camps called reconcentrados.
Captive Filipino soldiers and civilians alike were submitted to the “water cure.” According to the Philippine-American War Centennial Initiative, this method consisted of “forcing four or five gallons of water down the throat of the captive whose body becomes an object frightful to contemplate, and then squeezing it by kneeling on his stomach. The process was repeated until the ‘amigo’ talked or died.”
If those amigos struck back, the U.S. was ready to up the ante. When a U.S. platoon was wiped out in an ambush, Brigadier General Jacob W. Smith, a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre (when the U.S. Army killed an estimated 300 Lakota men, women, and children), issued orders to kill “all persons of 10 years and older.”
“I want no prisoners, I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me,” Smith declared. “I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.”
“The My Lai massacre had its predecessor in the Philippines in 1906,” says Howard Zinn. “The American army attacked a group of 600 Moros in southern Philippines-men, women, and children living in very primitive conditions, who had no modern weapons. The American army attacked them with modern weapons, wiped out every last one of these 600 men, women, and children.”
The commanding officer responsible for this war crime received a telegram of congratulations from Theodore Roosevelt, who later announced, “Democracy has justified itself by keeping for the white race the best portions of the earth’s surface.”
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
