THE Forgotten War

I'm thinking of an American war.

The war was fought on foreign soil in a country which had inferior technology and tactics. The Americans defeated the regular army soundly and quickly. Within a few months the Americans declared the war over and won.

But violence still continued. Thousands of American soldiers died in protracted conflict with guerrillas determined to liberate their country from occupation. In response to guerrilla tactics the Americans started resorting more and more to brutal methods. Prisoners were regularly tortured and civilians targeted. The Americans trained and used native troops against their own countrymen.

News of atrocities incited the American people to denounce the war. Many influencial personalities demanded publicly that the war be ended on grounds that it constituted an act of imperialism which the United States was fundamentally opposed to on principle [the Monroe Doctrine is a manifestation of this].

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OK. So if you're a non-savvy reader you might think that I'm talking about Iraq. If you're a little smarter than that, you'd recognize that I must be talking about another war which I've simplified in just the right way to highlight resemblance to the Iraq war.

But the one you're thinking about isn't it at all. This isn't Vietnam. It's not Korea [obviously]. And since it's quite certainly not either of the world wars, the civil war or the revolutionary war, I think the average American can safely be assumed to be 100% absolutely ignorant of its very existence.

I'm talking about the Philippine-American war, fought from 1899 to 1913.

Never heard of it? I don't think most people have. It's an embarrassing war: 4,324 Americans and maybe 1,000,000 Philippinos died in this little adventure. In case you missed that, 500 more Americans died in this war than have died in the Iraq war to date. The war was essentially an act of imperialism, not nearly as complex in cause as the current war. The Americans had just soundly defeated Spain [how many people even know we fought Spain? and as a result of a purported act of terrorism?], and Spain was the colonial ruler of the Philippines. The U.S. sought to replace Spain in its role as colonial governor. So this war was, in essence, a war of independence with the Americans as the "bad guys."

Virtually anything else that can be said about the Philippine-American war proves that it was quite different than Iraq; no WMD's, no IED's, no Saddam, no Islam, no Dick Cheney, and no oil interests. Many of the soldiers died of disease and not combat.

But there were Guantanamos, there were Hadithas, there were John Murthas, and there was a messy, unpopular, ugly, expensive and unwinnable war in a country so far away that the majority of modern Americans cannot find it on a map. So there are lessons to be learned.

A few weeks ago cnn.com showed a graphic of war casualties from all "major" American wars. I can't find it now, but I think the data came from here. The P-A War wasn't on the list. This is completely consistent with the lack of profile that this war has. Wars with a fraction of the casualties of the P-A War--like the Gulf War and the Spanish-American War, the Mexican War, and the War of 1812--were shown while the P-A War was not [note that the page referenced specifically lists "battle deaths." Even by this measure the P-A War, with 1,000-1,500 conflict casualties is worse than the Gulf War and the Spanish-American War and thus certainly deserves place on the list]. A quick google search for "american war casualties" yields among the top hits this, this, and this, with no disclaimer of incompleteness and with the second link even going so far as to mention Grenada [but not Panama??], but none mention the P-A War. The last link is a very thorough documentation of every death in US military history, found on fas.org, the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an extremely well-respected non-profit group dedicated to collecting and publicly distributing information pertaining to the US military. It lists Haiti, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, and even the Iranian Rescue Mission which combine for 82 casualties. Combat and non-combat deaths are totaled one-by-one by race and cause but the Philippines-American War doesn't show up.

How could over 4,000 Americans die and nobody seems to know about it? How has our information-oriented culture completely forgotten a major American war? I don't know, but I do have a theory.

I think that nobody is comfortable with such a blatant act of imperialism by the US. We rarely hear of the American intervention in the Bolshevik revolution. Nobody even mentions US occupations of Haiti, Cuba, Panama in the 1900's, Nicaragua in the 1920's and 30's, Hawaii, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, etc. All of these occupations were adventures in imperialism carried out by the United States before most of us were born. In many cases the US supported or installed evil, cruel, tyrannical dictators who made Saddam's only unique attribute his mustache. In the vast majority of these cases even the most optimistic and patriotic American would have trouble demonstrating some great good either then or now that these occupations have accomplished. This is embarrassing.

Forgetting this war has rewritten US history just like remembering Valley Forge has written it. It surely is not the most important war in American history. But remembering it may have prevented us from embarking on the most frivolous one.

So how does the story of the Philippine-American war end? The violence lasted for years until the United States backed out and ceded control of the country to its own citizens. The US lost the country and several thousand soldiers. Nothing was won with this sacrifice. It wasn't sacrifice for freedom. America lost the war.