As the 4th of July approaches, and as I come up on the one year mark of my return from the Philippines, my thoughts over the last few days have shifted from the current calamities in the Middle East to that far-off island republic, and what happened there over a century ago. I feel that the history of their struggle is quite relevant to current happenings.

When I left on my mission to the Philippines back in 2000, I only vaguely knew a little of what had transpired over there about a century ago. I knew that somehow America had ended up fighting some Filipinos in something called the Philippines-American War, but I had no idea about why that was, or what had transpired. When I got home, I decided to read a bit more about that "splendid little war" to find out what had happened. I wanted to know how America had ever come to be involved in a war against those wonderful people I had come to love during my two years over there. I was deeply saddened to read the sordid tale of racism, hubris, and greed that ultimately lead to the death of about 220,000 innocent civilians, and about 20,000 Filipino soldiers as well as over 4,000 US soldiers by the time it ended on July 4th, 1902.

Basically, after Spain had been firmly defeated by Aguinaldo's Filipino troops, combined with Admiral Dewey's US naval fleet, the US had decided to purchase the islands (at the price of $20,000,000) from the Spanish, instead of returning it to the newly established Filipino Republic. It seemed that the US didn't feel that they were "capable of democracy yet," and needed to be civilized, Christianized, and tutored in the art of democratic self-government first. As one soldier crassly put it, the US was there to "Civilize them with a Krag!" Jose Rizal, a Filipino nationalist hero (and in my opinion one of the great men of his century) was right in his premonitions that someday the US would seek empire in the Philippines. He had hoped that since such an action was against the character of our nation, that it would never occur. Fortunately he never lived to see his fear fulfilled. In the end, the Philippine-American War cost almost ten times as many US lives (and inflicted well over ten times as many casualties) as the Spanish-American War that had led up to it, resulted in the deaths and misery of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and delayed the independence of that people by over half a century.

It's kind of sad to see that after a century we still haven't learned our lesson. Though there are some significant differences between what is going on in Iraq, and what happened over there at the turn of the 20th century, there are enough interesting parallels to be worth considering. For instance, the Bush administration has been trying to paint the recent war in Iraq as a war of "liberation", of bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, much as the McKinley administration felt it was liberating the Filipinos from the cruel and corrupt Spanish government. However, just as America fell in 1898 for "the Filipino Temptation", it is once again falling for that same temptation in Iraq. Admittedly, the Filipino government had already been formed, and a Constitution framed at the time the first shots were fired by Americans on the Filipino nationalists, while in Iraq, no such organized and popular opposition existed. However, like in the Philippines, we are now once again looking down our noses at our "poor brown brethren", and clucking our tongues about how they aren't yet civilized enough for democracy. And like in the Philippines, the people are already starting to revolt against this arrogant occupier. Of course, in both instances, since the US government sees itself as the liberator and good guy, by default, all enemies are "insurrectos," "terrorists," "loyalists to the former regime," etc. Bush talks tough about showing no mercy to those attacking our troops. The question is, what if they are the people of Iraq who are fighting us because they see us as occupiers? Isn't murdering and imprisoning hundreds of people for opposing your rule exactly the thing we accused Saddam of doing? I hope and pray that we don't end up getting into as bloody of a counterinsurgency in Iraq as we did in the Philippines, but I'm worried that is where we are sliding fast. In the Philippines, we ended up doing more damage and savagery than the Spanish who we "saved" the Filipinos from. I hope the day never comes that the same can be said about our Iraqi adventure.

This 4th of July will commemorate the 101st anniversary of the end of the Philippines-American War, and the 57th anniversary of the formal granting of independence to the Philippines. The independence wasn't perfect or complete, and it was long past due, but it was finally recognized. Things are still far from perfect in the Philippines, and it will likely take several decades yet to undo the damage of over 300 years of Spanish, 40 years of American, and a few years of Japanese colonial rule, but the moral of the story is that after hundreds of years of struggle, those people are finally at some level free.

So for me, the 4th of July will always be an interesting holiday, one of both pride and shame, joy and melancholy. But the important truth to remember this 4th of July is that liberty will always triumph over tyranny and oppression in the end. Time is on the side of truth.

~Jonathan A. Goff