IMPERIALISM AND RACE: IRAQ (2006) and THE PHILIPPINES (1906)
                                  By William Loren Katz

      Critics of the U.S. occupation of Iraq usually trace its  
origins to Viet Nam and the baleful efforts of Presidents Lyndon  
Johnson and Richard Nixon to sustain support for a war that killed  
hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Asia, took 60,000  
American lives and deeply divided the country.

To cloud its massive bombings and blunders, the Viet Nam era White  
House talked of fighting communist tyranny and advancing freedom in  
Southeast Asia. U.S. weaponry and tactics -- napalm, carpet-bombing,  
and Agent Orange - drove a country back to the Stone Age and  
prevented its ability to challenge U.S. hegemony in Asia. But it  
ended ignominiously as people on the U.S. embassy roof in Saigon  
scrambled onto helicopters.

      Viet Nam resonates ominously in 2006, surely its "gooks" have  
become today's "rag heads." But the trajectory that brought U.S.  
forces to Iraq began much earlier. A century ago the United States  
launched its first overseas occupation when it sent troops to the  
Philippines as liberators - and instead planted the seeds of Iraq,  
Viet Nam and much more.
      The 7,100 islands of the Philippine archipelago were rich in  
natural resources and strategically located only 600 miles from the  
markets of Asia. Businessmen still climbing out of the deep  
depression of 1893 feared war would sharply increase economic  
instability. But leading bankers, industrialists, and their  
politicians, warned that unless the United States seized Asia's  
markets it faced stagnation, unemployment and a possible revolution.  
In 1893 U.S. businessmen overthrew the government of Hawaii and  
brought it into the U.S. trade orbit. In 1898 imperialism's leading  
spokesmen, Senator Albert Beveridge, asked "God's chosen people" to  
face a desperate plight and to adopt his simple solution:

      American factories are making more than the American people can  
use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has  
written our policy for us . . . . The Philippines give us a base at  
the door of all the East . . . . The power that rules the  
Pacific . . . is the power that rules the world.

Beveridge insisted that "the mission of our race" was to control "the  
trade of the world," and in his grand plan the Philippines "logically  
are our first target."

      America's pioneer overseas adventure only needed a spark, an  
incident, a "weapon of mass destruction." As armed liberation forces  
challenged Spanish rule in Cuba and the Philippines, newspaper moguls  
Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst boosted their  
circulations by featuring lurid tales of Spain's cruelty toward Cuban  
men and women. Then in January 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine sailed  
into Havana Harbor on a good will visit, and on February 15th, the  
Maine exploded and sank with 258 officers and men. Hearst and  
Pulitzer charged that Spain had used a "diabolical weapon," a  
torpedo, to sink the Maine, and loudly beat the drums of war. "Blood  
on the roadsides, blood in the fields, blood on the doorsteps, blood,  
blood, blood," wrote Pulitzer's New York World. "The whole country  
thrills with war fever," said Hearst's New York Journal.

           Spain denied any hostile role, but accepted President  
McKinley's chief demands regarding the Maine. But before U.S.  
investigators could discover that it was not a missile but an  
internal boiler explosion that sank the Maine, war hysteria gripped  
the country. On April 19th President William McKinley urged and  
Congress declared war on Spain, and added a promise to liberate Cuba.  
Privately, President McKinley admitted to broader goals: "We must  
keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep all we want."

      Leading the administration hawks was young, dynamic Teddy  
Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the Navy, a man who believed that  
war stimulated "spiritual renewal" and the "clear instinct for racial  
selfishness." "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this  
country needs one," TR wrote to a friend, and carried his own list of  
targets -- Mexico, Chile, Spain, Germany, England and Canada. Not a  
man to hide in the National Guard once war was declared, TR rushed to  
Cuba and led his Rough Riders in a famous charge at San Juan Hill. He  
returned with a reputation for fearless belligerence, and one regret,  
"there was not enough war to go around."

    Like "9/11" in 1898 the slogans "Cuba Libra!" and "Remember the  
Maine!" mobilized citizens against a distant tyranny. Victory over  
Spain came in ten weeks with only 379 US combat deaths, and in what  
Secretary of State John Hay called a "splendid little war." The fate  
of 13 million colonial people and 165,000 square miles of Puerto  
Rico, Cuba, Guam, Samoa and the Philippines fell to the United States.

   U.S. leaders of the 1890s were guided by an intense, bellicose  
patriotism under girded by a blatant racism. Independence and voting  
rights were only appropriate for fellow whites. In 1896 in the Plessy  
case an eight to one Supreme Court decision sanctioned segregation  
nationwide. Urged on by Governors, Senators, and local sheriffs,  
southern lynch mobs took the lives of three or four Black men, women  
and children a week. TR called people of African descent "a perfectly  
stupid race" and warned Black audiences that the rapists among them  
did their people more harm than any lynch mob. And he was among the  
least bigoted leaders of the time. The day Congress declared war on  
Spain Missouri Congressman David A. De Armond called African  
Americans "almost too ignorant to eat, scarcely wise enough to  
breath, mere existing human machines."

          Racial rhetoric and violence at home set the stage for war  
and colonialism. "Self-government," Senator Beveridge said, "applies  
only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern the  
Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without  
their consent, we govern our children without their consent."  
Beveridge called colonial people "children . . . not capable of self- 
government." Beveridge and McKinley would offer them "Christianity"  
and "civilization" much as slaveholders did for enslaved Africans.  
"The conflicts of the future are to be conflicts of trade --  
struggles for markets -- commercial wars for existence," Beveridge  
admitted. But victory would lead to riches and bring the American  
flag and white supremacy to new lands.

      Though white superiority was the hot core of imperialism,  
initially some African Americans were swept along by war fever. To  
escape poverty or gain recognition and opportunities through  
patriotic sacrifice, they volunteered to serve their country. But as  
links between injustice and oppression at home and imperialism abroad  
became sharper, more African Americans began to view imperialism  
through their own experience. In Tampa, Florida when sheriffs  
attacked Black soldiers waiting to leave for Cuba, the Black Richmond  
Planet wrote, "If colored men cannot live for their country, let  
white men die for it." George W. Prioleau, a Black Chaplain of the  
9th Cavalry regiment, angrily wrote from Tampa: "Talk about fighting  
and freeing poor Cuba, and Spain's brutality . . .  Is America Any  
Better Than Spain?"

    African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Henry M. Turner scoffed "too  
ridiculous" at U.S. claims its overseas ventures were motivated by  
humanitarianism, and predicted, "all the deviltry of this country  
would be carried into Cuba the moment the United States got there."  
U.S. troops arrived in Cuba, Puerto Rico and other Spanish colonies  
with orders to break strikes, suppress unions and undermine national  
liberation movements.

   The most painful and longest part of the Spanish American war  
unfolded in the Philippines. Before he left for Cuba, TR ordered  
Commodore George Dewey and his fleet to Manila Bay in the Philippines  
and on May first they defeated Spain's fleet. General Emilio  
Aguinaldo's guerrilla army of 40,000 that spent two years battling  
Spain and expected to rule the islands welcomed Dewey. U.S. Secretary  
of State William R. Day said the "ultimate object of our action  
is . . . independence for the Philippines." Dewey told Aguinaldo that  
the U.S. "had come to . . . free the Filipinos from the yoke of  
Spain," and his report home called Filipino soldiers intelligent and  
"capable of self-government."

       But in February 1899 the U.S. Army concocted a "Gulf of  
Tonkin" incident, and attacked Aguinaldo's forces. This forced the  
U.S. Senate two days later to approve the peace treaty surrendering  
all of Spain's possessions. President McKinley ordered Dewey and  
General Wesley Merritt to prevent Aguinaldo's troops from making a  
triumphal march into Manila, and appointed a puppet government. What  
began as a virtually painless incursion that quickly freed Cuba,  
slipped into protracted battles in the Philippines. A slam-dunk war  
became a no-end-in-sight occupation.

           White supremacy crossed the Pacific with the U.S. Army.  
Officers told their troops "the Filipinos were 'niggers,' no better  
than the Indians, and were to be treated as such." A white private  
wrote home: "The weather is intensely hot, and we are all tired,  
dirty and hungry, so we have to kill niggers whenever we have a  
chance, to get even for all our trouble."

      The brave Buffalo Soldiers had entered another conflict rich in  
painful ironies. They were under orders from a government and officer  
class that had sent them to battle against Native Americans, the  
first victims of racial genocide. In the Philippines there mission  
was not to liberate but to prevent self-determination for people of  
color. Their white officers were shocked to find that their Black  
soldiers and Filipinos often became friends not enemies. U.S. General  
Robert Hughes wrote: "The darkey troops . . . sent to Samar mixed  
with the natives at once. Whenever they came together they became  
great friends. When I withdrew the darkey company from Santa Rita I  
was told that the natives even shed tears or their going away."

As soon as African American soldiers found themselves arrayed against  
a foe fighting for freedom and justice, and some expressed their  
anger to Black newspapers. Private William Fulbright saw the U.S.  
conducting "a gigantic scheme of robbery and oppression." Trooper  
Robert L. Campbell insisted "these people are right and we are wrong  
and terribly wrong" and said he would not serve as a soldier because  
no man "who has any humanity about him at all would desire to fight  
against such a cause as this." John Galloway told how the Army  
fostered bigotry: "The whites have begun to establish their  
diabolical race hatred in all its home rancor . . . even endeavoring  
to propagate the phobia among the Spaniards and Filipinos so as to be  
sure of the foundation of their supremacy when the civil rule is  
established,"

      In June 1898, after General Aguinaldo issued his declaration of  
independence, the U.S. found itself in a war to crush Filipinos who  
sought a government of, by and for the people. President McKinley,  
eventually sent 70,000 troops, including 6,000 African Americans, on  
a mission he called "benevolent assimilation." But it bore the  
earmarks of racial warfare and a brutal colonial oppression.

A U.S. press that initially lauded him as a freedom fighter now began  
to demonize Aguinaldo. As U.S. corporate investors arrived, the U.S.  
Army grew more aggressive and clashes with armed and unarmed  
Filipinos became frequent. The San Francisco Argonaut, an influential  
Republican paper, spoke candidly of U.S. plans: "We do not want the  
Filipinos. We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich,  
but unfortunately, they are infested with Filipinos." The Argonaut  
advocated forms of torture that "would impress the Maylay mind" --  
"the rack, the thumbscrew, the trial by fire, the trial by molten  
lead, boiling insurgents alive."

      Aguinaldo commanded only twenty regiments, and his men were  
largely armed with primitive weapons, but he also enjoyed, as the  
U.S. War Department reported in 1900 "almost complete unity of action  
of the entire population." General Arthur MacArthur found "the  
Filipino masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he  
leads." McArthur concluded the foe "needed bayonet treatment for at  
least a decade." His estimate proved prophetic.

   U.S. military forays descended into a series of shameful  
atrocities that included the massacre of prisoners, civilian and  
military, and entire villages. General William Shafter told a  
journalist it might be necessary to kill half the native population  
to bring "perfect justice" to the other half. Marine General  
Littleton Waller, later known as "the butcher of Samar," issued  
orders to "punish Filipino treachery with immediate death."

General Robert Hughes, U.S. commander in Manila, justified the Army's  
atrocities against civilians: "The women and children are part of the  
family and where you wish to inflict punishment you can punish the  
man probably worse in that way than in any other." Asked by a Senator  
if this was "civilized warfare," he responded, "These people are not  
civilized."

      On the island of Samar Marine Brigadier General "Howling Jake"  
Smith called the enemy any male or female "ten years and up" and  
pledged to turn Samar into "a howling wilderness." He issued these  
orders: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more  
you kill and burn the better it will please me." Smith had carried  
out a similar role when he helped in the massacre of 350 Lakota  
villagers at Wounded Knee in 1890.

    Reports from the field told of a war without rules. A Red Cross  
worker reported seeing "horribly mutilated Filipino bodies," and  
said, "American soldiers are determined to kill every Filipino in  
sight." A white Kansan soldier wrote, "The country won't be pacified  
until the niggers are killed off like the Indians," and another  
wanted "to blow every nigger into a nigger heaven." A soldier from  
Washington wrote of bloodthirsty "sights you could hardly believe,"  
and concluded, "A white man seems to forget that he is human."

   In the use of torture, the Iraq experience flowed from the  
Philippines. Stuart Creighton Miller's fine study of the Philippine  
occupation, "Benevolent Assimilation," noted on the island of Luzon,  
the U.S. Army uprooted entire rural populations, burned people's  
homes, and destroyed their property, including livestock. Surviving  
villagers were packed into concentration camps and these were inside  
what General Franklin Bell called a "dead zone." "Everything  
outside . . . was systematically destroyed - humans, crops, food  
stores, domestic animals, houses and boats," Miller wrote. "These  
tactics," he concluded, "were the cheapest means of producing a  
demoralized and obedient population."

      Captured Filipino prisoners did not live long enough to be sent  
to an Abu Gharib. The Army's battle statistics showed five of the  
enemy killed to each one wounded, a reversal of the usual ratio in  
warfare. Some U.S. journalists were disturbed by the murder, torture  
and mass uprooting of civilians. The editor of the Detroit Journal  
asked if "the policy of force," which the Spanish had used, will "win  
us the respect and affection of a people who are saying almost  
unanimously that they do not like us and our ways and that they wish  
to be left to themselves?"

      But reporters who saw race as a crucial factor often justified  
atrocities. The Associated Press' Charles Ballantine characterized  
the foe as "unreliable, untrustworthy, ignorant, vicious, immoral and  
lazy . . . tricky, and, as a race more dishonest than any known race  
on the face of the earth." A Philadelphia Ledger reporter stated,  
"The only thing they know and fear is force, violence and brutality,  
and we give it to them." Since the foe was "a noisome reptile" the  
Army responded appropriately: "Our men have been relentless; have  
killed to exterminate men, women and children, prisoners and  
captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten  
and up . . . ."

      In the Philippines the U.S. torture of choice was not "water  
boarding" but "the water cure" which forced water into the stomachs  
of victims. One soldier admitted he had used the water cure against  
160 Filipino prisoners, and 134 had died. Unlike today's Iraq,  
torture were not blamed on "a few bad apples" but justified as  
military policy. U.S. Governor of the Philippines [and later  
President of the United States and a Supreme Court Chief Justice]  
William Howard Taft testified under oath that U.S. soldiers were  
under orders to use the "water cure" on captives. [In 1984, in his  
powerful dissection of totalitarianism, George Orwell wrote, "The  
object of torture is torture."]

      War hero General Frederick Funston, speaking at a Chicago  
banquet in his honor, boasted he personally hanged 35 Filipinos  
without trial. He also suggested that mobs lynch Americans who signed  
peace petitions. Funston, according to testimony before the U.S.  
Senate, also ordered his men "to take no prisoners," and personally  
administered the "water cure" to captives. President Roosevelt  
silenced and reprimanded Funston - not because he exposed Army  
policy, but because he thought Funston was using a bellicose image to  
run for the White House. Unlike George W. Bush, TR never said, "We do  
not torture." And Funston was never tried for his crimes.

   The Philippine occupation was the first war in which United States  
officers and soldiers were officially charged with what are now  
called war crimes." In 44 military trials, all ended in convictions,  
including that of General Jake Smith. But sentences were so light  
that world public opinion was shocked. The Baltimore American had to  
admit the U.S. occupation "aped" Spain's cruelty and committed crimes  
"we went to war to banish."

    After fighting "benevolent assimilation" for almost three years,  
in March 1901 Aguinaldo was caught by Colonel Funston. It was a  
moment similar to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 when  
many thought the insurgency would end. Washington predicted a swift  
end to Filipino resistance, especially after Aguinaldo signed an oath  
of allegiance to the U.S. and persuaded fellow officers to accept  
amnesty.

      But quagmires do not end swiftly. Six months after the capture  
the occupation forces suffered their gravest defeat when Filipino  
guerillas, armed with little more than bolos, massacred 45 officers  
and enlisted men in Samar. Some pro-Imperialist papers felt they had  
been "hoodwinked," others compared it to the Custer massacre at the  
Little Big Horn, and General Adna Chaffee conceded it was "utterly  
foolish to pretend that the war was over or even that the end is in  
sight." The San Francisco Call  said Americans should know from their  
history that "a conquered people" do not remain conquered for long.  
The Call carried these fearful headlines:

      Warlike Spirit Revives Throughout the Philippines
          And American Troops Facing Hard Fighting
         Tribes Regarded as Pacified Taking Up Arms

The African American press and many Black leaders, as George P. Marks  
III shows in The Black Press Views American Imperialism, 1898-1900,  
denounced U.S. motives, and some papers embraced Aguinaldo. "We glory  
in his spunk," wrote the Parsons Weekly Blade. "I don't think there  
is a single colored man, out of office or out of the insane asylum,  
who favors the so-called expansion policy," said Howard University  
Professor Kelly Miller. Salt Lake City's Broad Ax insisted, "no negro  
possessing any race pride can enter heartily into the prosecution of  
the war against the Filipinos, and all enlightened negroes must  
necessarily arrive at the conclusion that the war is being waged  
solely for greed and gold and not in the interest of suffering  
humanity." The editor wondered if Filipino resistance did not rest on  
a sound knowledge of history: "Maybe the Filipinos have caught wind  
of the way Indians and Negroes have been Christianized and civilized."

      Some African Americans directly challenged imperialism. Anti- 
lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells insisted that her people reject U.S  
overseas ventures until Black citizens were protected. Lewis  
Douglass, Civil War hero and son of Frederick Douglass, called  
imperialism as "extension of race hate and cruelty, barbarous  
lynchings and gross injustice to dark people." Stanley Ruffin of  
Boston said: "We shall neither fight for such a country or with such  
an army." Bishop Henry Turner opposed the Army's recruitment of  
African Americans, and expressed his contempt for Black soldiers  
"fighting to subjugate a people of their own color," " I can scarcely  
keep from saying that I hope the Filipinos will wipe such soldiers  
from the face of the earth."

      During the Philippine campaign, as in Viet Nam war and in  
today's Iraq thousands of Americans of both races formed anti- 
imperialist and peace societies, held protest meetings and circulated  
petitions to denounce atrocities and call for the withdrawal of U.S.  
forces. The most visible anti-imperialist voice was Mark Twain who  
caustically suggested a new Philippine flag: "We can have our usual  
flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by  
the skull and crossbones."

           However, the Middle East today and the Philippines a  
century ago were also sharply different. First, Saddam Hussein was no  
Emilio Aguinaldo, a beloved liberator of his people who admired the  
Declaration of Independence and sought a republican form of  
government. Second, George W. Bush is no Teddy Roosevelt, a gifted  
orator, an avid reader, a man who revered the Constitution, an  
intellectual and author of many respected books, and the first  
American to win the Noble Peace Prize. For all his pugnacious  
nationalism and warmongering, TR did not try to impose his vision on  
the world. In two races for the White House he neither undermined the  
Constitution nor subverted the election process. In office he  
appointed not inexperienced cronies but competent public servants.  
His "New Nationalism" dared to support women's suffrage, child labor  
laws, and old age pensions. And he lived the life he advocated.

   Though race played a role in both occupations, a hundred years had  
changed its rhetoric, rules and face. In a rigidly segregated Army in  
1906 Buffalo Soldiers never knew when they would have to defend  
themselves against white civilians, the bigotry of their officers or  
their commander in chief in the White House. Statesman studiously  
avoid provocative racism. Because an integrated Army needs minority  
recruits, and to preserve order in the ranks, it  requires symbols  
such as General Colin Powell.

      However, after 9-11 racism resurfaced when President Bush  
announced a "crusade" in the Middle East, and Arab-American women,  
men and children were subjected to street attacks. Though he visited  
a mosque and did not mention "crusade" again, Bush's message reached  
Iraq. "They're all just rag heads to me, the same way they used to  
call the enemy gooks in Viet Nam," Corporal Jeb Moser of Ruston,  
Louisiana told a journalist. The Abu Gharib abuses, the destruction  
of 70% of the holy city of Fallujah, the desecration of the Koran to  
humiliate prisoners, the use of "collective punishment" - -- seem  
like echoes of Lidice, Malmady and World War II Japanese  
concentration camps.

   The Philippine war proved unique in one way. Twenty U.S. soldiers,  
including twelve African Americans, abandoned combat against a cause  
they considered just, and defected to Aguinaldo. After his arrival in  
1899 Corporal David Fagen of the Black 24th Infantry Regiment  
witnessed atrocities against Filipinos, and was subjected to  
discrimination. In six months he joined the insurgents who made him a  
Captain. For two years and known as "General Fagen" by his men, he  
deftly mauled U.S. forces eight times. The United States press  
fulminated over Fagen and the Army offered a $600 reward for him dead  
or alive, but he fought into 1901 when he and his Filipino wife  
disappeared into the interior and reportedly lived out peaceful lives.

      In 1898 Teddy Roosevelt returned to New York and in November  
won election as governor. Two days later in Wilmington, North  
Carolina, a racist political campaign ended with a white rabble  
driving African American office-holders and residents from the city.  
Known as the "Wilmington Riot" and the only coup d'etat in U.S.  
history, it drew no federal intervention. But it did introduce a  
quarter century of coordinated daylight mob assaults on African  
American communities south and north.

            In 1900 Roosevelt became Vice President, and after a  
deranged anarchist assassinated McKinley in 1901, he became the  
youngest man to enter the White House. TR labeled anarchists "and  
passive sympathizers with anarchists" as "the enemy of all mankind"  
and asked Congress to bar them from the country. He also wanted to  
deny entrance to foreigners who failed literacy or "economic fitness"  
tests, or did not "appreciate American institutions." Congress  
largely ignored his suggestions and he moved on.

Although TR promised the average citizen a "square deal," his leading  
advisors were six men from the J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller  
financial empires. He also waved a "big stick" in foreign policy.  
When "contemptible little creatures in Bogotá" rejected his offer to  
build a canal through Columbia's Panama region, he prepared a message  
to Congress urging seizure of Panama "without any further parlay with  
Columbia." TR struck this smoking gun from his final draft, but in  
1903 when Panamanians revolted in a plot shaped at the Morgan offices  
on Wall Street, he dispatched a fleet that deterred Columbia from  
intervening. The President granted Panama recognition in ninety  
minutes, and was rewarded with a generous ten-mile wide zone for his  
canal. The President, the New York Times said, swayed by the "heady  
wine of territorial adventure," chose "the path of scandal, disgrace  
and dishonor." TR denied he "had any part in preparing, inciting or  
encouraging the revolution," but in 1911 he admitted, "I took the  
Canal Zone and let the Congress debate."

           From the White House, TR defended the Philippine  
occupation more vigorously than McKinley. He referred to the  
insurgents as "Chinese half-breeds," and called the conflict "the  
most glorious war in our nation's history." Meanwhile in the  
archipelago the U.S. had entered its first quagmire in Asia. Troops  
lived in fear of deadly assaults, and morale began to sink. In 1901 a  
U.S. correspondent reported that sporadic guerilla attacks often took  
the lives of one or two U.S. soldiers, and these deaths created a  
"spirit of bitterness [in] the rank and file of the army." The writer  
concluded: "that the Filipino hates us . . . and permanent guerilla  
warfare will continue for years."

           The Democrats made imperialism their issue in 1900 against  
McKinley, and again against TR in 1904, and lost badly both times. In  
1904 the popular war hero swamped the Democrats by more than two and  
a half million votes, and carried an additional six states.

           In 1911 military actions came to an end in the  
Philippines. In more than a dozen years of warfare the United States  
fought 2,800 engagements and lost 4,234 soldiers. [Another 5,462  
Americans lost their lives to disease and condemned beef war  
profiteers sold to the Army.] More than two hundred thousand  
Filipinos died. A U.S. Congress that promised self-determination  
spent $170 million fighting it. Aguinaldo remained a national hero  
and lived to see the Philippines gain independence after World War II.

          In 2003 George W. Bush called the Philippine occupation a  
model for Iraq and on October 18, 2003 he traveled to Manila seeking  
allies for his war on terrorism. Speaking to a joint session of the  
Philippine parliament, he said: "Together our soldiers liberated the  
Philippines from colonial rule."

     Though European-style imperial ambitions arrived late in the  
United States, they took root in the racial violence planted by  
Columbus. On his first day in the Americas, Columbus's Diary reveals,  
"I took some of the natives by force" and during his first two weeks  
in the New World his Diary mentions gold 75 times. When he shipped  
ten Arawak men and women to Spain's King Ferdinand, he wrote, "From  
here, in the name of the Blessed Trinity, we can send all the slaves  
that can be sold." In this act he began the trans-Atlantic slave  
trade, and cast the cape of religiosity over genocide in the Americas.

      When the United States reached abroad its past offered choices.  
In 1776 Americans were the first people in the world to pledge their  
lives and sacred honor and to shed their blood to overthrow colonial  
tyranny. These better angles of our history were only used as  
rhetoric. For centuries the country justified slavery and genocide,  
created Indian reservations and permitted lynching, and then sent its  
armies overseas. Hearst's New York Journal saluted imperialism as  
destiny: "The weak must go to the wall and stay there . . . . We'll  
rule in Asia as we rule at home. We shall establish in Asia a branch  
agent of the true American movement towards liberty."

      A lethal mix of U.S. commercial greed, haughty Anglo-Saxon  
entitlement and Christian piety devastated Filipino villages. The  
U.S. military wrote the script for modern imperialist aggression.

      The world's most violent century began when the liberation of  
the Philippines morphed into conquest. The occupation became the  
template for 20th century foreign interventions in Asia, Africa and  
elsewhere. The tragic sequels are well known: the bloodbath of World  
War I, fascist invasions culminating in World War II, undeclared  
wars, military intrusions, and an Iraq invasion that introduced the  
21st century.
__________________________________________________________________
William Loren Katz, author of 40 history volumes, based this essay on  
research for his two most recent books, THE CRUEL YEARS: AMERICAN  
VOICES AT THE DAWN OF THE 20TH CENTURY [Beacon Press, 2003] and the  
revised THE BLACK WEST [Harlem Moon/Random House, 2005]