l. 8496 – “We were out-shipped, out-planed, out-manned and out-gunned by the Japanese from the beginning.”

Long before banks were too big to fail, Douglas MacArthur was too big to fail. For nine hours hearing about Pearl Harbor, MacArthur did virtually nothing (l. 7657). As a result, US forces in the Philippines were taken completely by surprise by Japanese air attacks. Men and planes were slaughtered before they had a chance to get off the ground with an ease that surprised even the attackers (l. 7700). Then and for years afterward, MacArthur shifted blame up and down the chain of command while glorifying himself, and was allowed to do so because the the perceived need for heroes.

At a loss for options, MacArthur dusted off old Washington-generated military plans he once had derided as “defeatist” (l. 7767). He declared Manila an open city and prepared to concentrate the joint US-Filipino force on defending Bataan, an earlobe-shaped peninsula on the west side of Manila harbor, and Corregidor, a mountain island at the mouth of the harbor. MacArthur managed an extremely complicated contraction of all troops to this small area while fighting rear-guard action against the Japanese, a feat that is regarded as genius, even by Karnow (l. 7785).

Corregidor is the size of Manhattan. It was heavily fortified and had a warren of impregnable caves (l 7811). Starting about Christmas 1941, MacArthur's headquarters were there, along with his wife and family, and that of the US civilian governor and his family. Quezon and Osmena also went with him. José Laurel, the secretary of justice, had spent time in Japan and was known to be sympathetic to the Japanese, so he was left behind to manage as best as he could. “Keep your faith in America, whatever happens,” MacArthur warned Laurel, or else, “when we come back, we'll shoot you” (l. 7819). Later, Laurel was chosen by the Japanese to head of the collaborationist government. Benigno Aquino, future father-in-law of Cory Aquino, was named Vice-President.

In February 1942, Quezon, Osmena, and the civilian governor left the island to establish a government in exile. Quezon gave MacArthur a half-million-dollar cash gift, which he accept in defiance of regulations (l. 7882). At the same time, he was showered in gifts and honors in absentia in the US.

Meanwhile, Australia lay under threat of Japanese attack, so threatened to remove its troops fighting in North Africa. Roosevelt agreed to take up Australia's defense, and named MacArthur to head the effort. He departed Corregidor on 11 March 1942 (l. 7925).

In late March, the Japanese received an influx of fresh troops and closed its grip on Bataan. On 9 April, the Americans crossed the Japanese lines to discuss terms for the surrender of troops of Bataan. The Japanese would accept unconditional surrender only. The American commander agreed. It was the largest capitulation of American forces in history (l. 7981). The transport of an enormous amount of prisoners to inadequate camps devolved into the Bataan Death March, during which as many as ten thousand men died from disease, malnutrition, and wanton brutality (l. 8020).

The Japanese drove the Philippines into the a state of chaos during the war by a mixture of brutality and stupidity. The Japanese attempted to grow cotton for the home market instead of sugar, with ruinous results (l. 8166). They shipped the remaining gold and silver reserves to Japan and printed worthless money, causing inflation and associated problems, including a widespread black market and general breakdown of law and order (l. 8185). All of the above was further aggravated by numberless episodes of cruelty by the occupying Japanese.

The strongest indigenous guerrilla movement was a coalition of communists and socialists named the People's Anti-Japanese Army but called the “Huks”, a shortened version of their Tagalog acronym (l. 8211). Relations between the Huks and the US armed forces during the war was lukewarm but each side helped the other. After the war, the US favored non-communist/socialist groups and arrested Huk leaders, which led to further Huk rebellions later. Ferdinand Marcos claimed that he commanded a guerrilla movement called the “Noblemen” in northern Luzon, but in 1986 his claim was revealed as fraudulent by an American scholar (l. 8236).

On 19 October 1944, the first ships of an invading American fleet reached the eastern island of Leyte, not far from where Magellan landed in 1521. Quezon had died in upstate New York the previous August, so Sergio Osmena, now commonwealth president, accompanied MacArthur in a lead ship (l. 8275). There is a famous photo of Osmena and MacArthur wading ashore. The US Navy stomped the Japanese in the battle of Leyte Gulf, destroying much of Japan's naval power, an accomplishment that in retrospect can be attributed in equal parts to good luck and superior firepower (l. 8312). There followed slow land drives and island-hopping under very difficult monsoon-season conditions. Japanese soldiers were exhorted to fight to the death. At the end of the campaign, two hundred thousand Japanese had died, compared to eight thousand Americans (l. 8359).

On 9 January 1945, the US, led by MacArthur, launched an invasion of the main island of Luzon (l. 8385) at the same place the Japanese had chosen. The landing was uncontested but there were major battles on the way to Manila. The first columns reached the outskirts of Manila on 3 February (l. 8416). Soldiers freed skeletal US military and civilian prisoners.

The Japanese overall commander in the Philippines declared Manila an open city, but in the end the city became a battle zone. Although the overall commander was later convicted for war crimes in this matter, Karnow places the blame on his underling, the commander of the naval force (l. 8432), who ignored orders, bombarded the city from the harbor, and sent sailors ashore, who committed atrocities (l. 8445). By mid-March, the city was reduced to rubble by the artillery shelling of both sides and was abandoned by the Japanese (l. 8470). Further fighting was necessary to capture Corregidor, where two thousand Japanese and scores of Americans were killed in a suicidal detonation of an underground arsenal (l. 8479). Remnants of the Japanese army were still staging ragtag guerrilla actions elsewhere in August when the word came that Japan had surrendered.

MacArthur presided over the formal surrender on 2 September 1945 on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. No Filipinos were present.

l. 7630 -- “it's the orders you disobey that make you famous.”

The title quotation was made by MacArthur during his duty in France in WWI, and referred to his decision to disregard his regulation uniform (l. 6945).

Like recalling your childhood sweetheart, thinking about the first public figure you really and truly loathed, with every fiber of your being, can make you feel young and vigorous again, and as such is a great joy. For me, that role is filled by Richard Nixon. Karnow was from the previous generation, so he had Douglas MacArthur. Karnow strives mightily to be charitable, but cannot resist the deliciously damning details, which pretty quickly swamp the redeeming features.

Nevertheless, Karnow reports that “[t]o the Filipinos, he was nothing less than superhuman” (l. 6862). The chapter starts with a long set piece at the beginning of the chapter about MacArthur's last visit to the Philippines in July 1961, which Karnow covered as a correspondent for Time magazine. He was received as a hero, with war veterans in their old uniforms lining the root of his motorcade, women holding up uncomprehending babies to see him, a long farewell speech in a public park, etc.

Douglas MacArthur was born in Little Rock in 1880 and attended West Point (l. 6914). His mother lived near the school during his time there and generally smothered him for the rest of her life. He graduated at the top of his class in 1903 and was assigned to the Philippines, where his father was military commander. Assigned to desk duty in Manila, he (untypically for Americans there) socialized with Filipinos, meeting future leaders Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena (l. 6928). He contracted malaria, returned to the US, and after recovery worked as an aide to his father, who was touring Asia on official business.

He returned to the Philippines in 1922 (l. 6933), in command of a recently-reduced infantry brigade, a reflection of the more isolationist mood in the US (l. 7027). Since well before that time, and continuing until the eventual Japanese attack, private US government studies showed that the islands were indefensible without an enormous investment. If investment was not forthcoming, the best next alternative was withdrawal. Since neither of these alternatives were politically palatable, the US for decades did nothing.

After another short tour in the US, MacArthur was appointed US commander for the Philippines in 1928 (l. 7086). He unsuccessfully lobbied to be appointed civilian governor the following year. In 1930, he again returned to the US. Hoover appointed him to US Army Chief of Staff.

While in the Philippines, MacArthur (already divorced) acquired a mistress, a half-Scottish, half-Chinese vaudeville and movie star named Isabel Rosario “Dimples” Cooper (l. 7124). He installed her in an apartment near his office in Washington, under the mistaken impression that she wouldn't go outside and no one would notice them. He became unpopular after using force to clear out the Bonus Marchers in 1932. When MacArthur threated to sue some unfriendly newspaper columnists for libel, the columnists' lawyers told him that Dimples would be called as a witness. MacArthur dropped the case and paid Dimples $15,000 to return his love letters. Dimples eventually drifted to Hollywood, had bit parts in a few movies, and committed suicide by drug overdose in 1960 (l. 7190).

In 1934, Quezon visited Washington and got MacArthur appointed as military advisor to the autonomous Philippines, with the promise to build a Swiss-style army of a core of Army regulars with a reserve of civilian conscripts (l. 7204). He returned in 1935, accompanied by his mother and a staff that included Dwight Eisenhower, then a Major. Quezon was by then president of the commonwealth and was “primarily preoccupied with preserving his power” (l. 7221), out-doing the colonial master in terms of the good life while talking the talk of social justice. He visited China and Japan as a chief of state, but “in 1936, ... Roosevelt denied him permission to attend the coronation of King George VI of Britain as an independent ruler” (l. 7235).

Meanwhile, the worldwide depression rolled back a lot of the progress that the US had made in education and standard of living. A steady series of brushfire rebellions and violent uprisings occurred (l. 7307). Eisenhower was assigned to create a Filipino army out of nothing with little budget, and when he brought the bad news, MacArthur blamed him, while reporting (in 1936) that “progress ... has exceeded original anticipation” (l. 7336). However, Quezon listened to Eisenhower and understood that the Philippines could not defend itself from Japanese invasion.

Quezon travelled to Tokyo in June 1938 (l. 7364), with a plan to get a formal pledge to respect the neutrality of the Philippines if the Philippines could get the US to move up the date of independence. The plan went nowhere, because neither the US nor Japan wished it to. Japan has its eye on the Philippines raw materials.

At that time, 30,000 Japanese lived in the Philippines, mostly in Mindanao (l. 7442), and the Japanese officials in the Philippines devoted time and energy to cultivating anti-US sentiment.

When the problem became too obvious for even Washington to ignore, MacArthur was promised accelerated delivery of materials (planes, ammunition, etc.), but much of it turned out to be substandard and too late (l. 7557). Still, MacArthur made public statements of optimism and privately said that the Japanese would not attack until April 1942. He was wrong.

l. 6851 -- “The Ins are generally conservative, the Outs are always radical – until they get in”

Karnow argues that the US effort to build an Asian Mini-Me in the Philippines failed in large part because the US failed to understand the culture. In 1901, Taft wrote that the US owed its sound government to the central place of the New England-style town as the essential building block of democracy (l. 6046), and that this should be transferred to the Philippines. More important for Filipinos is the clan, Karnow says. Political parties are politically identical vehicles for the interests of one clan's interests versus the others, i.e., for prestige and enrichment at the public trough (l. 6049). In many cases, parts of the Philippines are controlled by the same clan today as 100 years ago. For example, as of 1988, the Abelada clan has controlled island of Mindoro for well over a century. An official remarked: “Feudalism, that's what we have here. We have feudal families, feudal landlords and feudal politicians” (l. 6088).

Taft also felt that most Filipinos were unfit for the right to vote except for a handful of landowners and taxpayers. No more than three percent of Filipinos were eligible to vote in any election in the first decade of the 20^th century (l. 6108). Taft later lamented that Filipino officials failed to understand that “office is not solely for private emolument” (l. 6122). Upon his departure in 1913, he wrote that a swift American departure from the Philippines would bring “a chaos of ever-recurring revolt and insurrection” (l. 6127).

However, by 1905, a ban on agitation for independence had been lifted. The thin layer of politically-active Filipinos became increasingly nationalistic (l. 6141). Two leaders emerged, both of whom eventually became President of the Philippines: Sergio Osmena and Manual Luis Quezon y Molina. In Karnow's sight, Osmena was more heroic and admirable but sober, but it is Quezon, flamboyant and charismatic, who is honored more frequently to this day, including having a major thoroughfare in Manila and a city adjacent to Manila named after him, and having his home province renamed in his honor (l. 6150).

Quezon led a very colorful life from the start. He trained as a lawyer. As a 20-year-old, he witnessed Dewey's defeat of the Spanish fleet and the sham battle for Manila three months later (l. 6226). He fought against US forces until, sent by his insurgent commander, he travelled under US military escort to confirm the capture of rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo with his own eyes (l. 6237) while Aguinaldo was imprisoned in US military commander Arthur MacArthur's palace in central Manila. Quezon was imprisoned for six months for murdering American prisoners, but then released for lack of evidence (l. 6241). Before age 30, he became the first Filipino to defeat an American in court (l. 6287). In 1905, with American support, he was elected governor of the province that now bears his name (l. 6291).

In August 1907, Filipinos who were eligible voted for the first freely-elected parliament in Asia. A party of bickering factions, lead by Osmena and Quezon, captured 58 of 80 seats (l. 6309), in defiance of a more conservative party favored by the American administration. Then-Governor James Smith (Taft left in 1904), however, “in an analysis valid then as today, shrewdly perceived 'the only genuine political parties' in the Philippines to be the 'Outs' and the 'Ins'. As he wrote to Taft: 'The Ins are generally conservative, the Outs are always radical – until they get in' “ (l. 6332).

The new legislature's first act was to unanimously pass an American-drafted resolution pledging the body to obey US law, implicitly recognizing American supremacy (l. 6348).

In its original law regulating US, Congress authorized two non-voting members of the House of Representatives for the Philippines. One was chosen by the US governor, the other by the Philippine assembly (l. 6390). Quezon became the assembly's appointee in 1909, and remained in Washington until 1916 (l. 6395). He became a well-known character and an effective advocate. He acquired the nickname “Casey” after a visit to New York, where a Tammany Hall pol claimed Quezon to be descended from an Irish exile of that name (l. 6401). His maiden speech in the House contained a mild plea for independence: “Ask the bird, sir, who is enclosed in a golden cage if he would prefer his cage... to the freedom of the skies and the allure of the forest” (l. 6408).

The control of the US House of Representatives passed to the Democrats in the 1910 mid-term elections. The committee in charge of the Philippines was now headed by William Atkinson Jones of Virginia. As of the time of the book's writing, nearly every town in the Philippines has a street or park bearing his name (l. 6415). He was anti-imperialist and pro-independence, sponsoring a bill (which Quezon drafted) to give the Philippines independence in eight years. Hopes were raised even further by the election of Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency in 1912. But his cabinet was split on the question and Wilson was unsure how to proceed (l. 6453).

Wilson decided to appoint a new governor, in part to indicate a change in policy. The new governor was a New York congressman named Francis Burton Harrison (l. 6480). He was very popular and, 15 years after his tenure as governor, was the first American to be made an honorary Philippine citizen. He was buried in Manila following his death in New Jersey in 1957 (l. 6492). His popularity came in part from a program of replacing American bureaucrats with Filipinos. During his eight years, the number of Americans employed in the Philippines government shrank from 3,000 to 600. Of course, not all the new indigenous civil servants were angels, and the local expatriate community was not at all pleased (l. 6519).

Meanwhile, Jones championed a new Quezon-drafted bill which gave the right to vote to all literate adult males, established a senate, and increased the responsibility of the legislature. The bill was deliberate vague on a timetable for independence. It passed the House in 1914, but languished in Senate committee for 16 months (l. 6551). The Senate eventually approved and Wilson signed it into law in August 1916 (l. 6572). At that time, no other Western power had conceded autonomy to a colony, or promised it independence. However, momentum towards independence slowed considerably when the newly-appointed Filipino head of the central bank nearly drove the country's economy into the ground in an orgy of corruption, for which he was eventually jailed (l. 6615).

Meanwhile, Quezon returned to Manila to a hero's welcome in mid-typhoon and elected to lead the new Philippine Senate (l. 6588). Osmena remained leader of the lower chamber until 1923, at which time Quezon maneuvered to replace him with a protégé, Manuel Roxas y Acuna, who eventually became the first President of the independent post-WWII Philippines (l. 6647).

After that, Quezon polished his nationalist bona fides by quarrelling with the various US governors who came after Harrison. But there was no movement towards independence in the 1920s.

Finally, in January 1933, Congress passed, over the veto of lame-duck Herbert Hoover, a bill which accorded the Philippines independence in 10 years, during which time they would be a self-governing commonwealth (l. 6760). Quezon had sent Osmena and Roxas to negotiate the bill and now saw that he would be eclipsed as a nationalist hero. So, Quezon got the Philippine Senate to reject the bill, and then went to Washington himself and got Congress to pass a nearly identical bill a year later (l. 6786). Quezon's bill was approved unanimously by the Senate and he defeated ancient nationalist hero Emilio Aguinaldo in September 1935 to become commonwealth president (l. 6789). A new constitution was also approved, which differed from the US model in giving the executive wide power, including the power to declare martial law, which Marcos invoked 35 years later. Quezon stressed the difference between the two concepts of government: “The good of the state, not the good of the individual, must prevail” (l. 6797).

The commonwealth was officially inaugurated on 15 November 1935. Guests of honor included Vice President John Nance Garner, Secretary of War George Dern, and a newly-arrived General Douglas MacArthur (l. 6809).

l. 6021 -- “unconscious victims of modernity”

Five hundred American school teachers arrived in August 1901 on a ship named the Thomas. They became known collectively as “Thomasites” (l. 5194). They acted as a proto-Peace Corps, and left behind a rich collection of writing, diaries, and letters home, chronicling the ups and downs of teaching in a far-off land and providing a rich vein for historians. “Within the first three years, twenty teachers died of dysentery, cholera, or smallpox, six were murdered by bandits, and one blew his brains out” (l. 5404). Thomasites have a Wikipedia page as well as many articles on the Internet documenting their experience.

The US put the Philippines under the control of the “Bureau of Insular Affairs” in the War Department, and made certain that the word “colony” and its variants did not appear in official documents.

The US also embarked on other unorthodox actions, including redistributing former Catholic lands, effective legal reform, local autonomy, and compulsory English-language instruction. (Mr. Dooley: “We'll larn ye our language, because 'tis easier to larn ye ours thin to larn oursilves ye'ers.”) The population doubled between 1900 and 1920, and the literacy rate climbed from 20 to 50 percent (l. 5231). Eventually, the Philippines had the highest literacy rate in Southeast Asia (l. 5304). Education of women caused conservative Filipinos to term their youth “unconscious victims of modernity” because they could be seen “walking out alone” with “a handbag under the arm, just like bold little American misses” (l. 5347).

Education (l. 5504) and infrastructure building (l. 5580) followed familiar paths, starting when someone would come in with a great overarching idea. When the idea failed to produce the promised spectacular results, a new visionary arrived on the scene with a new Big Idea to replace it. While no scheme fulfilled its promise, there was a slow but steady increase in desirable outcomes (in addition to educational improvements, there were more roads, better harbors, increased railway mileage, cleaner water for more people, lovelier cities, freer press, et al.). However, there were always examples of inappropriate schooling, unwise road construction, graft, poor central planning, and so on, and to this day there are people who live without electricity, plumbing, and other conveniences of modern life.

Taft brought in experts to impose order on the patchwork of Spanish, Mexican, and US currencies then abroad in the Philippines (l. 5569). Battling US partisans of gold and silver every step of the way, Taft eventually introduces a dual currency of gold and silver pesos, each worth fifty US cents (l. 5573).

Improvements in health brought by American doctors were remarkable. Smallpox and cholera were virtually wiped out and malaria drastically reduced. “By 1914, the year after Taft left the presidency, Manila's death rate had dropped to twenty-three per thousand population – nearly half of what it had been when he first landed in the city” (l. 5569).

For reasons not always altruistic (e.g., special interests looking to limit cheap imports), Congress limited land acquisitions by Americans to 35 acres for individuals and 2,500 acres for companies (l. 5860), which sabotaged the traditional colonial pattern. Even influential US rubber companies found themselves unable to purchase enough land to begin a profitable operation. Occasional successful attempts to circumvent the law (including one which involved land Taft had bought himself and sold at a great profit) brought big headlines and Senatorial outrage (l. 5900). The law also had the unintentional effect of concentrating land ownership more completely in the hands of the indigenous elite, a group of approximately 60 families that retained power at least until the time of the writing of the book (l. 5917) and probably still retains it.

At the time, the US had high tariffs on foreign goods, which caused some legal hand wringing. Were the Philippines part of the US or not? As part of the 1898 treaty, Spanish goods in the Philippines were subject to the same duties as US goods (l. 5952) for 10 years, so it was agreed that duties would not be reduced until the decade had run its course. The Supreme Count further muddied the waters in May 1901 by delivering a decision that said that, for tariff purposes, Philippines was neither “foreign” or part of the US, meaning that Congress had to specifically legislate on this topic (l. 5954). In 1909, as a tiny part of a contentious larger debate on trade and tariffs, Philippine products were granted duty-free access to the US (l. 5987). By the 1920s, American was buying nearly every ounce of Philippine sugar and coconut oil (the latter used to make WWI-era explosives), and most of its tobacco and hemp (l. 5992). However, the benefits of free trade did not often trickle down to the average person. Later, Filipino politicians charged that free trade was a device to increase economic dependence on the US (l. 6015).

l. 5190 -- “... we propose f'r to larn ye th' uses of liberty.”

As pointless and bloody fighting wore on into the year 1900, both the civilian and the military leadership of the American colonial adventure in the Philippines changed. President McKinley sent Ohio federal judge William Howard Taft to set up and administer civilian control, and General Arthur MacArthur became supreme military commander. Taft later became both President and Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Arthur MacArthur was the father of General Douglas MacArthur.

In spite of both being politicians from Ohio, McKinley and Taft met for the first time only three months earlier (l. 4455). They were both Republicans, and professed opposition to international adventures. Taft had no special knowledge of Philippines and was taken by surprise by McKinley's offer, made in the presence of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy (l. 4463). Initially reluctant, Taft responded to appeals to his sense of adventure and intellectual challenge, as well a virtual pledge of a Supreme Court seat (l. 4475). Taft, later promoted to governor, remained in Manila for four years and later declined repeated offers by Theodore Roosevelt (who had once aspired to the governorship himself) of a Supreme Court slot (l. 4479).

McKinley's directive to Taft instructed him to “bear in mind that the government they are establishing is designed not for our satisfaction, or for the expression of our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine islands, and the measures adopted should be made to conform to their customs, their habits and even their prejudices” (l. 4514).

Mr. Dooley had a more jaundiced set of instructions: “Poor dissolute uncovered wretches, ye miserable, childish-minded apes, we propose f'r to larn ye th' uses of liberty. We can't give ye any votes ... but we'll threat ye th' way a father shud threat his childhern if we have to break ivry bone in ye'er bodies” (l. 4518).

Taft had a frosty initial meeting with MacArthur, who had just been elevated to military governor. MacArthur remained in a large palace in central Manila and assigned inferior housing and office space to the newly-arrived civilians (l. 4534). MacArthur is portrayed as a pompous racist martinet, with a certain redeeming sense of soldiers' honor. He had no patience for the “hearts and minds” measures that his predecessor (l. 4553) had instituted and viewed all native as implacably hostile (l. 4561).

Nor was Taft a model of political correctness, most famously for repeated references to the natives as “our little brown brothers” (l. 4619). He aggravated MacArthur by maintain a more optimistic attitude, defying MacArthur's obstructions, and setting up a de facto legislature. The most powerful weapon of the last was the power to collect and distribute money (l. 4599). Unlike the previous committee, this one contained no soldiers. However, like the previous committee, this one consulted exclusively with elite high-born Filipinos, many of whom confirmed the estimate that the mass of Filipinos were abysmally backward (l. 4606) and needed US protection.

Taft attracted some members of the elite into his administration, which enabled him to govern with a comparatively light touch. These native cooperators naturally varied in quality and open-mindedness. They have been roundly abused by more recent Filipino historians (l. 4640) as traitors. Taft assisted in the founding of an elite-dominate political party, the Partido Federal, which formally started business on Washington's birthday, 1901 (l. 4679), to the accompaniment of brass bands and paper-maché eagles. The party enjoyed a monopoly on political patronage jobs, which attracted supporters, but also was seen as too close to the Americans, which repelled supporters. Taft also banned opposition parties (l. 4685).

This strengthening of the dynastic wealthy family has consequences to this day. Ferdinand Marcos smashed the oligarchs' power 70 years later in order to reward his own cronies. The dispossessed dynasties later helped Corazon Aquino oust Marcos. Corazon Aquino's husband (in 1968) characterized the Filipino elite as “an entrenched plutocracy” (l. 4710).

As the conflict wore on, Aguinaldo gave up occasion attempts at conventional warfare in favor of full-time guerrilla tactics, including improvised booby traps and leaving evidence of tortured prisoners. MacArthur declared martial law in December 1900 and used cruel tactics more frequently. In 1902, a Massachusetts veteran testified in the US Senate about the use of the “water cure”, wherein the victim was forced to drink and then forced to vomit enormous amounts of water (l. 4780), or had salt water quirted up his nostrils.

A key aspect of Filipino response was the control of the population, either through intimidation or sympathy. Suspected American collaborators were treated brutally. There were also well-documented cases of rebel leaders settling personal scores by accusing people of collaboration with Americans (l. 4800).

Aguinaldo and other rebel leaders looked with wishful thinking on the US Presidential elections of 1900, hoping a Democratic victory would aid their cause. The Democratic party platform stated: “No nation can long endure half republic and half empire.” But W. J. Bryan lost handily to McKinley (l. 4829).

The next American to be thrust into the spotlight was Brigadier General Frederick Funston. In late March 1901, Funston led a daring raid by local hill tribes disguised an Filipino partisans, lead by US officers disguised as prisoners, into the stronghold of Emilio Aguinaldo, capturing him. Thomas Edison recreated this incident in his New Jersey studio to showcase his newly-invented movie camera (l. 4896). Funston enjoyed a period of celebrity. Aguinaldo was treated respectfully and invited to MacArthur's residential palace,to Taft's dismay. Aguinaldo soon issued a proclamation urging Filipinos to put down their arms and quietly retired to his family mansion. During WWII, he broadcast pro-Japanese propaganda, and was later pardoned. After receiving back his sword, he died on 6 February 1964, just before his 95^th birthday and exactly 65 years after the outbreak of war against the US (l. 4913).

Karnow contrasts the Filipino fight against the US with the later Vietnamese fight. Karnow says that, on the surface, the Filipinos a had better chance of winning, in terms of number of men, firepower, etc., but lost because of poor leadership. Aguinaldo “failed to offer genuine change to the Filipino masses” (l. 4849). He deprived the vote to the enormous majority of people and “ignored the country's appalling agrarian problems” (l. 4966).

The increasingly heavy-handed tactics of Arthur MacArthur and his successor, Major General Adna Romanza Chaffee, led to a two-sided cycle of mayhem and revenge, including a massacre of over 40 American soldiers by Filipinos in Balangiga on 28 September 1901. A “howling wilderness” response eventually drew unfavorable press coverage in the US, which led to courts-martial. In the subsequent trials, the highest levels of authority managed to avoid responsibility, and one mid-level soldier had his career ruined (l. 5152).

With leaders captured or neutralized, the wind went out of the sails of mass organized resistance, although hill tribes and southern Moro movement continued to plague the occupying forces for another decade (l. 5169). The war ended officially on 4 July 1902. The war had cost the US $600 million (in dollars of that period). The official US toll was 4,234 dead and 2,818 wounded Americans, and approximate 20,000 Filipino soldiers killed.

l. 4436 -- “simple massacre and murderous butchery”

Private William Walter Greyson, 23, from Beatrice, Nebraska, gained an unlikely place in history on Saturday, 4 February 1899, when he shot the first Filipino in what Americans later called the “Philippine insurrection” (a phrase now considered an American-contrived term of condescension for a war of liberation). Greyson was proud of his achievement and later (unsuccessfully) petitioned the War Department for a cash bonus (l. 3761).

Up until this moment, Philippine commander Emilio Aguinaldo “repeatedly pulled his troops out of contested territory rather than the provoke the Americans” (l. 3780). Over the following month, the US forces rolled first over the Manila area, then elsewhere in Luzon (the island on which Manila is located), and finally other islands, with a ferocity that promoted the title comment from a British resident.

The commanders on the ground experienced problem which are sadly more familiar to us through more recent conflicts. Commanding General Elwell Otis found he could win battles, but not hold territory, causing him to issue rosy report of progress followed by requests for more troops (l. 3837). In 1899, sixty thousand Americans were serving in the Philippines. The next year, it was 75,000 – three-quarters of the entire US Army (l. 3879).

Otis managed to be both unpopular with his high-level staff for mismanagement and his rank-and-file soldiers for perceived timidity in battle (l. 3908). The press disliked him for using his control of the single telegraph cable out of Manila as a method of censorship, inflating enemy casualty figures, and threatening authors of unfavorable journalism (l. 3915). However, Otis realized that the war had a “hearts and minds” aspect, and introduced public health, education, rule-of-law, and local government programs in an effort to win public favor (l. 4057).

At the same time, Otis felt himself plagued by a Presidential commission of civilians, who held hearings in Manila. The commission never left the capital. Its witnesses were largely Western residents of Manila. The few Filipinos who testified were members of the elite, who favored US rule and said that resistance was the work of a handful of malcontents (l. 4010). Commodore Dewey, although a member of the commission, attended none of its meetings and did not read its reports. Otis also shunned the commission and tried to have them recalled (l. 4031). The commission raised the hopes of moderates but had no lasting effect.

These well-intentioned acts, however, were no match for the steady drip of cruelty, massacres, illegal killings, torture, and reasonless destruction of property, often caused by the inability from telling friendly foreign national from unfriendly (l. 4093). Filipino forces melted away in the face of organized political might and then attacked days later when US soldiers were relaxed and off-guard.

Aggressive newspaper coverage brought the horror home to the US and turned public opinion against the war. One newspaper survey of returning veterans found that 62% of officers and 93% of enlisted men were against the war (l. 4109).

In spite of fierce combat, US forces controlled no farther than 30 miles from Manila (l. 4117), and military hospitals overflowed with soldiers ill from tropical diseases. But the Filipino side was plagued with disunity, as when Aguinaldo had one of his most successful generals killed (l. 4150), so victories could not be consolidated and capitalized upon.

As the war ground on, McKinley and allies decided that the administration of the Philippines had to be placed under civilian control. In January 1900, McKinley summoned a Cincinnati federal circuit judge, William Howard Taft, to Washington to ask him to take on the job.

l. 3735 -- “Why is President McKinley's mind like a bed?”

“Because it has to be made up for him before he can use it” (l. 3343).

Like more recent military adventures, the US enthusiastically declared victory and patted itself on the back too early, ignoring signs that more trouble lay in the future. McKinley later said: “If old Dewey had just sailed away when he smashed that Spanish fleet, what a lot of trouble he would have saved us” (l. 2819).

McKinley reflected the national ambiguous attitude toward imperial adventures. Eventually his public statements and postures drifted toward favoring a prolonged US presence in Philippines, with occasional public backsliding and much ineffective private mind-changing. US decision-makers on the ground correctly discerned that they had no clear instructions from Washington on how to act. As a result, each made decisions according to his (never her) requirements and world-view, often acting at cross-purposes with other commanders. Statements of colonial disinterest were followed by attempts to put as much territory as possible under US control.

Commodore Dewey summoned exiled insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo from Hong Kong in mid-May 1898. What exactly happened during their first meeting is disputed. The translation may have been inadequate. Dewey apparently kept no notes and did not even report to Washington that the meeting took place until five weeks after it happened. McKinley may have learned of the meeting from newspaper reports. Here and elsewhere, Dewey had the habit of revising his memories to fit the situation (i.e., testimony before the Senate) he found himself in (l. 3035). Aguinaldo's memoirs maintain that Dewey expressed uncategorical support for the insurgents and that America “needed no colonies” (l. 3024). At the end of the meeting, Dewey alleged told Aguinaldo: “Go ashore and start your army” (l. 3052).

By mid-summer, insurgents had overrun many Spanish garrisons and had taken 3,000 prisoners. Fourteen miles of trenches (l. 3068) had been dug around the old city wall of Manila, where the remaining Spanish sheltered in increasing dire conditions. Aguinaldo ignored advisors urging caution and commissioned a national anthem, a flag, and a declaration of independence, the last of which he read in a public ceremony on 12 June 1898. The document was signed by 97 Filipinos and one American, a visiting businessman from Shanghai. Dewey ignored the invitation to the ceremony, explaining that it was “mail day” (l. 3109).

Meanwhile, additional troops, usually freshly recruited in the US, were gathered and dispatched. On the way to Manila, the first convoy captured Guam easily after discovering that the Spaniards there were unaware that a state of war existed (l. 3170). The arrival of boatloads of American soldiers naturally created suspicions that the US was in the a Philippines for the longer term, and that Dewey and other leaders had shown bad faith in previous talks.

American military commanders wished to attack Manila's old city and capture the besieged Spaniards there. The problem was that they could not do so without attacking or overrunning the insurgents who now surrounded the city. The American commanders tricked the insurgents into withdrawing from a sector of the perimeter by promising (but never delivering) cannons (l. 3246).

The besieged Spanish realized their situation was hopeless. They wished to make the best of it by surrendering to the Americans. They very reasonably felt that the Americans would be more merciful, and less reasonably felt it more honorable to surrender after something resembling a struggle. The two sides agreed secretly on a charade (hidden from the nominally-allied Filipinos). Like most conspiracies, it occasionally went off the rails. For example, when a US commander gave his gunners deliberately incorrect target coordinates, the gunners (no doubt voicing salty sentiments about the competence of management) assumed that a mistake had been made. They corrected their coordinates and made several direct hits (l. 3289). Similarly, some Filipinos joined what they thought was a genuine fight, and alarmed Spaniards responded by shooting back.

The Americans who died during the battle for Manila were the first US combat causalities. A few days later, Manila learned that the US and Spain had signed an armistice the day before the battle.

There ensued peace negotiations in Paris, from which the Filipinos were systematically ignored and excluded. It became conventional wisdom from pro-imperialist that the US must take control over the islands to prevent evil European powers from taking over. Example: Acting on a baseless report that Filipinos were thinking of welcome a German prince as a monarch, some German warships steamed to Manila, getting everyone's undies in a bunch (l. 3318). By this time, McKinley had completed his journey from pacifist to expansionist, later telling Methodists missionaries that he had arrived after prayer at the conclusion that it was the US's duty to educate, uplift, and Christianize the Filipinos (l. 3399). Under the provisions of the treaty, Spain surrendered the Philippines to the US in return for 20 million dollars.

Meanwhile, insurgents attempted to both engage in public displays of honor for American and its troops (whose short-term protection they still hoped for) and prepare for possible hostilities. Local conflicts threaten to blossom into international incidents. Insurgent leadership hoped for the best and made friendly noises while also attempting to quietly control territory and arm themselves.

The fight for Senate approval of this treaty was long and hard. Many powerful and influential people were still firmly against foreign entanglements. McKinley bartered judgeships and other patronage. The treaty passed only by the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Garret Hobart (l. 3682).

Interesting details:

• The US Consul in Hong Kong at that time, Rounseville Wildman, agreed to purchase weapons and ammunition for the insurgents. Wildman accepted a 117,000 Peso down payment but never delivered. He disappeared in a shipwreck in 1901 and is “honored today in a commemorative plaque ... in a State Department lobby” (l. 2979).
• From a newspaper column of Peter Finley Dunne: “ 'I know what I'd do if I was Mack,' said Mr. Hennessey. 'I'd hist a flag over th' Ph'lippens, an' take in th' whole lot iv thim.' 'An' yet,' said Mr. Dooley, ' 'tis not more thin two months since ye larned whether they were islands or canned goods.'  (l. 3444)“