The American Military Adventure In Iraq And Philippine - Essay Example

 The American Military Adventure In Iraq And Philippine There are many striking similarities between the Philippine Insurrection and Operation Iraqi Freedom despite the fact that more than 100 years separate the two. In both cases, the government of the United States chose to send soldiers to a foreign country with a mixture of motives, some good, some less good. Upon arriving in the country and defeating a conventional force, the United States attempted to remove the vestiges of the old government and defeat a tenacious guerrilla movement that had moved into the countryside and was supported by a network of local politicians. While much blood was shed in the Philippine Insurrection, positive results were achieved and the Philippines became an independent democratic country that is seen to today to be more or less a success. This may bode well for Iraq, a country that has been through terrible times and now seems to be improving. This essay will look at how these two actions by the United States were very similar. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 created a new era of American foreign policy. Some critics might call this policy expansionist, and although that is certainly an important element of it, it was also motivated by a desire to spread principles of democracy and good governance. Many idealists of the period believed the principles at the heart of the U.S. Constitution were universal and should be shared with everyone. By the end of the 19th century, the Monroe Doctrine was to come into full effect in a war with the Spanish. Not only would the Americans take control of Spanish possessions in the Caribbean such as Cuba, Puerto Rica, and other islands, but as the war expanded so would the remit of the Monroe Doctrine. The United States would gain control of the Phillipines, far from its own shore, and attempt to remake the Spanish colonialism political system in its own image. The result would be a bloody conflict fought with Filipino insurgents that would take America many years to quell. Following the American victory over Spain and the taking of the Philippines, there was a great deal of tension between the U.S. and the locals. This came to a head in 1899 when American soldiers shot some Filipinons. Things quickly got out of hand with both sides raising armies and fighting conventional wars. The Americans rapidly defeated the convention Filipino forces, killing two of their best generals and pacifying many of the urban areas. But as the Filipinos fell back, they regrouped as guerrillas and had huge local support. The Americans were forced to raise their troop numbers. On average there was around 40,000 troops in the Philippines, but at the peak there were about 70,000. Much as certain elements in Iraq, more than a hundred years later, would try to pursue short term goals to affect American domestic politics, so did the Filipino insurgents. Because of the geography of the Philippines, with its many islands, there were many safe places to base attacks out of and many villages to hide in that were virtually impossible for Americans to access. Of course, all of this was before the United States had unmanned aerial drones or any Air Force at all. They could only really rely on intelligence and their own eyes, limiting their ability to strike at insurgents even further. During this period, the President appointed distinguished Americans to investigate conditions in the Phillipines and report back on ways to improve the administration of the country. The first Commission’s report was a rejoinder to those who argued America had no place in Southeast Asia: Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable. And the indispensable need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American sovereignty over the archipelago is recognized by all intelligent Filipinos and even by those insurgents who desire an American protectorate. The latter, it is true, would take the revenues and leave us the responsibilities. Nevertheless, they recognize the indubitable fact that the Filipinos cannot stand alone. Thus the welfare of the Filipinos coincides with the dictates of national honour in forbidding our abandonment of the archipelago.1 Similar words would later echo during the debate about whether the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq. “A precipitous withdrawal” of troops from the Middle East, many argued, would lead to total anarchy and genocide in Iraq. Plus ca change. Back in the United States, debate raged about whether the war was a good one or a bad one. Some people thought America was being too brutal, spending too much money, and behaving in a colonialist manner.2 There were reports of atrocities that inflamed public opinion back home and led to cries for investigations much like situations in Abu Ghraib and Haditha in Iraq would later do. While the war had its noisy critics, others thought that the United States was doing its duty to humanity by helping to spread democracy. The debate occurred in Congress, it occurred in newspapers, and also on the streets. Many of the great American intellectuals and artists opposed the action in the Philippines and said so publicly. One of the most famous opponents was certainly Mark Twain, who wrote: We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now — why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater.3 It is truly amazing to see the resonance in the language used by Twain and by so many contemporary critics of the Iraq War, right down to the word “quagmire.” Doubtless Twain would have written eloquently in opposition to the Iraq War. The interesting thing about these high profile opinion makers is that they have extraordinary rhetorical gifts which do not always match their knowledge of political reality or foreign policy. The Iraq War for its part is still ongoing so it is difficult to compare its endgame to that of what happened eventually to the Philippines. Nevertheless, it instructive to review the history of the conflict. Like the Philippines insurrection, the Iraq War can be seen as an unexpected detour from a previous, serious war—the War on Terror that began with the terrorist attacked on the September 11, 2001, when Islamic jihadists hijacked airplanes and flew them in the Twin Towers in Manhattan, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in rural Pennsylvania. At the time it was not obvious a target in the developing war would be Iraq, just as at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War it was not clear that the Philippines would play a major role and soon be a country where so many American soldiers would be fighting. Nevertheless, both countries would soon be the central front in wars that they were originally very marginal to. Similar arguments were made to enter Iraq as were made to enter the Philippines. In the first case, Saddam Hussein was a menace and was hurting his own people; in the case a century earlier, it was that the Spanish who were tyrannical and the Filipinos must be freed from their yoke. Both arguments played upon the noblest American sentiments and called for a sense of American exceptionalism: the idea that the rules and norms of international law should not always apply to the United States because its instincts are more noble than other countries. Indeed, there is something to this, but it is also important to realize that taking over both the Philippines and Iraq would be very useful for additional American foreign policy purposes. Once again, in Iraq (like in the Philippines) what appeared to be a simple mission of liberation soon turned bloody. Defeating Iraq’s conventional forces was simple; defeating a wide array of disgruntled guerrillas was much less so.4 The Americans had trouble understanding and gaining sympathy from the local population who saw them as invaders and colonials. In the beginning they used a heavy hand and did not spend enough time trying to improve the lives of the local population by building up services and improving the quality of life. It was not until General Petraeus came along and put in place a policy of “build and hold” which began to treat the Iraq mission as not just a war, but an operation that required significant local construction, development, and negotiation, that Iraq began to turn around—much as the Philippines had a century before. It appears Iraq is now on the same path as the Philippines, towards a functioning democratic state that will allow its people countless more opportunities than the previous regime could ever offer. The American actions in both the Philippines and Iraq had many similarities. Both not originally intended at the outset of the wars that led to their occupation, both were hard-fought campaigns against rebellious local insurgents, and both led to profound debate and discussion about America’s role in the world. One more important point: both have never been more relevant to American foreign policy. Works consulted Graff, Henry F., ed. American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection: Testimony Taken from Hearings on Affairs in the Philippine Islands before the Senate Committee on the Philippines—1902. (New York: Little, Brown; 1969). Linn, Brian McAllister. The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902. Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco, The American Military Adventure In Iraq. New York: Penguin, 2006. Schirmer, Daniel B. Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War. New York: Schenkman, 1972. Mark Twain. "Mark Twain, The Greatest American Humorist, Returning Home.” New York World. October 6, 1900. http://web.archive.org/web/20061010154645/http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/conetta/US+History+Docs/mark_twain+anti-imperialism.htm Read More