This is nominally true, but in the first instance, The Platt Ammendment essentially said sign this unfair treaty or we won't withdraw our Spanish-American War troops and we won't allow you independence. The treaty was not signed with the current government, and we pay $4,085 dollars and the lease runs in perpituity unless both parties agree to terminate it. In a person to person lease those terms would be voided by a court as predatory. Also, when we did aquire the Philippines we did fight a war starting in 1898. It was officially declared over by the president in 1902 (which means it must have existed right?) but fighting continued for many years after. When we wrestled it from the Spanish it was very much American intention to get into the Colony business and catch up with the Europeans. It just didn't work out that way.
From USAToday: [rquoter] In his speech, Bush took credit for America transforming the Philippines into "the first democratic nation in Asia." Said Bush, "America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule. Together we rescued the islands from invasion and occupation." And he drew an analogy between America's attempt to create democracy in the Philippines and its attempt to create a democratic Middle East through invading and occupying Iraq in the spring of 2003: "Democracy always has skeptics. Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia." After a state dinner, Bush and his party were bundled back onto Air Force One and shunted off to the president's next stop, Thailand. The Secret Service had warned Bush that it was not safe for him to remain overnight in the "first Democratic nation in Asia." As many Philippine commentators remarked afterward, Bush's rendition of Philippine-American history bore very little relation to fact. True, the United States Navy under Admiral George Dewey had ousted Spain from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898. But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, President William McKinley annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. The United States then fought a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it had encouraged to fight Spain. The war dragged on for fourteen years. Before it was over, about 120,000 American troops were deployed and more than 4,000 died; more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. And the resentment against American policy was still evident a century later during George W. Bush's visit. The Filipinos were not the only ones to rue the American occupation. Before he was assassinated in September 1901, McKinley himself had come to have doubts about it. He told a friend, "If old Dewey had just sailed away when he smashed that Spanish fleet, what a lot of trouble he would have saved us." By 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, who had earlier championed the war and occupation, recognized the United States had made a mistake in annexing the Philippines. After Woodrow Wilson became president, he and the Democrats backed Philippine independence, but were thwarted by Republicans who still nurtured dreams of American empire. Only in 1946, after reconquering the Philippines from Japan, did the United States finally grant independence — and even then it retained military bases and special privileges for American corporations. As for the Philippines' democracy, the United States can take little credit for what exists, and some blame for what doesn't. The Philippines were not the first Asian country to hold elections. And the electoral machinery the U.S. designed in 1946 provided a veneer of democratic process beneath which a handful of families, allied to American investors and addicted to payoffs and kickbacks, controlled Philippine land, economy, and society. The tenuous system broke down in 1973 when Ferdinand Marcos had himself declared president for life. Marcos was finally overthrown in 1986, but even today Philippine democracy is more dream than reality. Three months before Bush's visit, beleaguered Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had survived a military coup; and with Islamic radicals and communists roaming the countryside, the Philippines are perhaps the least stable of Asian nations. If the analogy between America's "liberation" of the Philippines and of Iraq were to hold true, the United States can look forward to four decades of occupation, culminating in an outcome that is still far from satisfactory. Such an outcome would not redound to the credit of the Bush administration, but instead to the "skeptics" who charged that the Bush administration had undertaken the invasion of Baghdad with its eyes wide shut. Politicians often rewrite history to their own purposes, but, as Bush's analogy to Iraq suggested, there was more than passing significance to his revision of the history of the Spanish-American War. It reflected not just a distorted picture of a critical episode in American foreign policy but a seeming ignorance of the important lessons that Americans drew from this brief and unhappy experiment in creating an overseas empire. If Bush had applied these lessons to the American plans for invading Iraq and transforming the Middle East, he might have proceeded far more cautiously. But as his rendition of history showed, he was either unaware of them or had chosen to ignore them. [/rquoter]
Yeah, so I should have stated that we invaded the island of Cuba (or, la Isla de Cuba) and the Phillippine Archipelago (I have no idea what Esp. for archipelago is, but I think Las Islas Filipinas will suffice) in order to be correct. Either way we invaded both places.
Colonies? Nahh, just coaling stations, or that's what they said, heh. Anyway, that period in US history (late 19th C. foreign policy/expansionism) is utterly fascinating to study if anybody ever has; the best college class I ever had was in that area.
This is the terrible catch 22. We cannot give them stability with 140,000 troops. Insurgency is going to continue and the deep factions within the politics of the country are not going to change. So the best we can do with troops in Iraq is manage the insurgency and terror as best as brute force will work. That might be a price worth paying, I don't know. The worst thing that can happen if we 'begin' (a measured thoughtout withdrawal) to withdraw is that one faction begins to emerge in power and there is massive blood shed within rival factions. However this scenario shows the futility of trying to 'force' democracy on a nation. If it takes an army to maintain a government then conflict will eventually decide the government. If we are there for oil, OK- there is a measure of reason and purpose in our occupation- whether we agree on the motive or not. If we are there for democracy- we are fools and will fail in our mission. That is a sad catch 22.
I agree it is and its a matter of weighing bad alternatives. I proposed a solution a while back based upon internationalizing the conflict on the basis that now its a peacekeeping situation and the US as one of the antagonists should be removed from the situation. I still think that would work but I doubt that this Admin. has the diplomatic make up to pull that off. At the moment though I don't see how Iraq violently shatteringing into three countries can benefit the Iraqis, the region or us.
To clarify my original point, whether the U.S. invaded or went in to save a country who had been invaded, the U.S. forces tend to stay for the long term. The need for "security" never seems to go away.
Well I would agree that would become the #1 objective of our withdrawal... to limit the violence of whichever faction gained power. A civil war is not in the best interest of the factions. The Iraqi general public would not support civil war. Just the decision to withdraw (given a gradual timetable) could be the impetus to compromise amongst the factions. My solution is to implement a withdrawal plan and go into hard negotiations with the factions based on a fixed timetable. If civil war eventually decides the fate of the nation, it was only going to be postponed by all the dog and pony political show put on by those Iraqi leaders we are propping up. At some point the Iraq people will be who they are, unless we are able to make them something into our image by sheer military power. I say take a chance that the Shiites and Sunnis can feel the pressure to compromise to avoid more blood baths in their nation. I think their leaders could figure that out if we gave them a firm withdrawal timetable.
I agree that the Iraqis are going to have to figure out how to run things by themselves and they are who they are. The problem is that as soon as Saddam fell Iraq became our responsibility. For better or worse whatever happens in Iraq will be blamed on us. I'm skeptical but am keeping an open mind regarding whether Iraq can become a catalyst for moderate western democracy in the Mideast but I am convinced that if Iraq turns into a chaotic bloodbath it will create turmoil in the region that comes back to us. We might not be able to use Iraq to change regional opinion positively to us but it can definately turn opinion negatively towards us.
Hi Hayes. Glad to see you're back on the D & D I'm glad you brought this up because in previous discussions on Iraq you've responded to arguments about how long US troops will be occupying Iraq you're brought up that US troops are still in Germany in Japan. I'm glad to see that you recognize that those troops aren't occupying those countries and in a far different role than in Iraq.
No...........An Average of 3,105 Americans died over the past week. And these are only accidental deaths. http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/toptens/accidents/accidentsFULL.html I know the bashing is coming shortly. Believe it or not, I truly am saddened by every American solider and civilian death. Just think some people need a little perspective.
so 20 is nothing? did one man make a decision to put the lives of 3,105 american in harms way last week? one man did for the 20 though..
But that's the point.. those are accidental deaths that no one saw coming. There was really nothing anyone could do to stop those. They were simply accidents that no one could forsee. However, our soldiers in Iraq are there by a decision by Congress and the President. Those are clearly more preventable than the deaths you cite above.
Stalin once said "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." Now that's perspective.
Invading a country to annex it is not the same thing as invading a colony of an expansionist power and then giving power to those in the former colony. So if he was speaking purely geographically (as Sam so humorously tries to do) then he still would have been wrong. As it is his facts are wrong and the implications are wrong as well. On a much smaller scale. Thanks, though. Not sure if you're implying some sort of contradiction. I have only brought them up when people have implied we should be out of Iraq already. Interventions are inherently more complex, even in situations like WWII were you had unconditional surrender. Saint Louis's new post shows my point. This is irrelevant to whether or not the force is there to occupy Cuba. Its not. Or whether it is the result of invading the country of Cuba. Its not. It functions completely separate from the total operation of Cuba. At worst its the spoils for kicking the Spanish out and giving the Cubans independence. That's hardly without historical precedent. Even then it doesn't make Saint Louis's assertion that we invaded and never left the country of Cuba (nor the implication of such a statement) or the Philippines - true. Never claimed we didn't fight a war there so not sure what this is about. This nation as a whole then was VERY split on whether we should be expansionist or not. As it turned out we kept neither Cuba nor the Philippines - proving my point that Saint Louis's claims were wrong in their initial claim (neither were countries when we took over) and in their conclusion (we aren't there and don't occupy them any longer). Whether or not the Philippines were the first asian country to have an election and the other extraneous garbage from USA Today are pretty irrelevant.
are you saying we invaded to free them and not to colonize/occupy them? so what happened in the Phil Am war?
I am saying that buying/taking the Philippines from Spain and then leaving is not the same as 'invading a country and never leaving' as Saint Louis charged.
