Brothers in arms?
Having spent the last week at close quarters with U.S. Special Operations Forces and the Philippines' military, watching them work together, I've come to a tentative conclusion: the Filipino armed forces may look more like the American armed forces than any other on Earth.
Sure, the United States arguably has closer defense allies. Great Britain comes to mind. Ditto, the Australians. But the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has almost consciously modeled itself on the U.S. military.
Stepping on to a military base in the Philippines is like stepping onto a U.S. army base (I've visited plenty), albeit a few years back in time. The similarities are there, right down to the well-kept golf courses and the Military Policemen with their glistening white helmets stenciled with "M.P." in bloc letters. Much of the lingo is the same, and the Filipino Army even uses the same military staff system as the Americans, (G-1=personnel, G-2=intelligence, G-3=operations, etc.)
I don't think I've yet met a senior Filipino officer who hasn't visited and trained in the United States: Filipino Marine colonels who have trained at Quantico, Virginia; public affairs officers who've been to the Pentagaon's Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland; and on and on..
All of this may explain why the US and the Filipinos are having some success in fighting terrorist groups here that have had links to international terror networks such as al Qaida. More on that in future posts and stories..
The United States has a long history in the Philippines, which most Americans are only dimly aware of. We defeated Spain the Spanish-American war in 1898 and, almost by accident, suddenly owned their possessions in the Philippines, America's first colony.
The .45 pistol was invented here early in the century as a tool to combat Muslim fighters known as Moros--the predecessors to Muslim rebels still fighting today for an autonomous homeland in their ancestral lands in the southern Philippines.
And of course, Americans and Filipinos fought and died together against the Japanese in World War II. That picture up there is The American Military Cemetery in Manila, where thousands of U.S. soldiers and sailors who lost their lives in that war are buried.
Much of the current U.S. military effort here is aimed at upgrading the Filipino's military capabilites. It's clear they need some upgrading. When the Filipino government decided to attack rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who had seized a dozen villages on Mindanao Island last week, joining the fight were some U.S.-built, Vietnam-era aircraft.
Mr. strobel chosen memory on the Philippines seems to have skipped some significant items. Leading to the typical US embedded reporter frame
"We defeated Spain the Spanish-American war in 1898 and, almost by accident, suddenly owned their possessions in the Philippines.
I don't believe that anybody murders several hundred thousand people and takes control of their territory "almost by accident."
Chosen embedded reporters are famous for inverting the truth. The mass killing of more than a million Iraqi civillians and the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure is implanting freedom in Iraq.
Posted by: rh | September 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Indeed it wasn't accidental. The U.S. embarrassingly had not been able to pummel the Chinese into granting them a city the way that the Brits had managed to get Hong Kong and the Portuguese had gotten Macao. The Spanish hadn't gotten anything because they didn't need anything -- they had the Philippines. Now, China was a huge market, and America was tired of having to rely on the charity of the Brits (who were allowing the U.S. Asiatic Squadron to put in at Hong Kong) for basing their warships that made sure the U.S. got favorable trading terms with China. But lo and behold, there were the Philippines, just right for basing warships in the Western Pacific...
When Dewey's Asiatic Squadron made it from Hong Kong to Manilla, they found out that there wasn't much to be done. The Filipinos had declared independence from Spain, raised an army and had the remnants of the Spanish army besieged in Manila. The only reason Manila had not yet fallen was because the Spanish warships in port were using their guns in support of the troops and were supplying the troops in the city. So after the U.S. fleet sank the decrepit Spanish warships, the Spanish onland ran up the white flag -- and then the U.S. did their first double-cross. The U.S. told the Spanish they were not allowed to surrender to the Phillipine Army -- they had to surrender to the U.S. Marines. Otherwise the U.S. would not accept their surrender and would continue killing them. So the Spanish surrendered to the Marines, the Marines marched into Manila, and there was that big Filipino Army outside of Manila and... well, you know the rest of the story. The U.S. declared that the Filipinos weren't advanced enough to be independent, and ended up slaughtering some 100,000 Filipinos, then starving to death several hundred thousand more in the concentration camps that were created in order to deprive the guerillas of a civilian population to hide amongst (yes, the U.S. ran concentration camps in the Phillipines and interned the entire population of entire areas that they wanted clear, it's unclear whether they were copying the Brits who were doing the same thing in the Boer War that was running at the same time, or developed the idea independently). Indeed, if you want to look at how to win a guerrilla war, the U.S. conquest of the Philippines is a good place to start. Hint: Joseph Stalin would have been proud, the U.S. killed a million Filipinos in the two halves of the war out of a total population of around eight million, or 12.5% of the population. If you aren't willing to do as much genocide as necessary, you just can't win those kinds of wars...
As for the .45 ACP, it was developed as a result of the Moro Wars against the Muslim population of the southern Philippines (the second stage, after the Christian population of the north had been subdued), but was not actually introduced until after the majority of the fighting was over. Not that it's ever really been "over" as such or ever will be short of genocide... the southern Philippines are culturally closer to Malaysia and Indonesia than to the northern Philippines which are primarily Catholic, so it's always been a poor fit between the two halves of the nation.
Posted by: Badtux | August 22, 2008 at 03:59 AM
Thanks to Marshall for posting Mark Twain's writings on the U.S. involvement in the Phillipines. I appreciate Strobel's writing, but I really have to object to his glossing over the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos with the phrase, "We defeated Spain the Spanish-American war in 1898 and, almost by accident, suddenly owned their possessions in the Philippines."
I don't believe that anybody murders several hundred thousand people and takes control of their territory "almost by accident."
The imposition of American rule, the constant flow of military "aid," and the consistent U.S. support for Filipino regimes like that of the dictator Marcos, were all certainly enough to ensure that their military would look a lot like America's.
To whose benefit? That's a question we'd choose not to consider, I suppose.
Posted by: Steve H | August 19, 2008 at 06:08 PM
A bit odd, in your brief history of American involvement in the Philippines, that you skipped over the atrocities we committed putting down the rebellion of the people we'd just "liberated" from the Spanish. (Mark Twain is good on the subject.) Plus ca change...
Posted by: Inconstant Reader | August 19, 2008 at 05:59 PM
the 45acp was invented by John Browning in the usa ,not the phillipine as you state .What did happen was that the 38 special in use proved inadequete in combat and the army reissued the old 45 long colt revolvers,primarily Colt single action army revolvers
Posted by: david | August 19, 2008 at 12:24 PM
"As for the current post, I wonder whether the acquisition of the Phillippines as America's first colony was indeed by accident."
No accident at all. Here is a better writer than I on the subject :
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.
I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.
But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.
We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
Mark Twain, October 15, 1900 (in the New York Herald).
Posted by: Marshall | August 19, 2008 at 07:43 AM
Dear Chuck: Thank you so much for your kind words. They are so appreciated.
Great post, Warren. It's great to read what military training looks like at its best.
Posted by: Nancy Youssef | August 18, 2008 at 02:56 PM
thanks. Must be the jet lag... fixed that one, too.
Posted by: Warren Strobel | August 18, 2008 at 07:40 AM
...a tool to combat Muslim fighters known as Moros--the descendants of Muslim rebels still fighting today"
I think you meant ancestors there rather than descendants.
Posted by: Chance | August 18, 2008 at 07:29 AM
I do that number thing all the time. I send a 1, an 8, and a 9 to the fingers and expect them to figure it out. A bit of information is lost in the transmission.
I won't belabor the point, but I need to express my great thanks for the heroic services you three (Nancy, Warren, Jonathan) have performed for your country, reporting what others feared to, or failed to understand, or couldn't sell to their editors. You set a standard that is reached by very few others.
So as you can imagine I eagerly pressed the button and subscribed to the RSS feed of Nukes & Spooks. Thanks to all three of you for your dedication to helping us understand what's going on. Anyone who believes in democracy has got to think that spreading accurate information is among the highest callings.
As for the current post, I wonder whether the acquisition of the Phillippines as America's first colony was indeed by accident. It seems to me there might have been a bit more premeditation than meets the eye. Racism was certainly involved, as was a war-like spirit, personified in Teddy Roosevelt and his "splendid little war". America was feeling its oats, and looking for some semi-strong opponent to beat up. Spain took the bait. At least, that's one interpretation.
My grandfather taught English in the Phillippines in the relatively peaceful period following the half-million or so deaths that paved the way to American pre-eminence. He returned with some beautiful carvings and wonderful stories. Only later did I realize the context of his visit; and I never knew what he understood of that context.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree | August 18, 2008 at 03:17 AM