At a recent party, I ran into a friend who mentioned her son was in the Philippines. “He’s in the Special Forces,” she explained tentatively in view of her audience, adding disarmingly “who knows what they are doing there.” I couldn’t help but snap back “They’re killing Filipinos is what they’re doing.”
I instantly regretted my cheap shot but spent the ensuing days rationalizing why the Philippines in particular should not have to abide American shoulder-shrugging.
What right has civil society to insulate itself from the unpleasant details about how it maintains order?
If her soldier had been deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, I would have held my tongue, in the context of unrelated festivity at least. Whether you support the current occupations or not, the violent facts about who’s doing what are not disputed, generally. I’ve no business facing off with a lone mother who more than likely has mixed feelings about the wars, although put on parade it’s a different story.
Perhaps too, other US interventions prompt only vague comprehension of their nature, of the true evil which our country is perpetrating. But we can say the same thing about commercial enterprises which comprise the capitalist global onslaught. None of it party talk.
Few examples match the longevity of US imperial atrocities in the Philippines. There our public ignorance has no right to be ambivalent.
US military activities in the Philippines may as well be the Indian Wars for all the American public understands them, as racist and despotic, and ongoing. Our specialists have been exterminating Filipino insurgents for over a century. When we are not committing the atrocities ourselves, our military advisers are directing them for what has never risen above a client state. The rebels of Mindanao have been trying to fight off foreign occupation since the original Spanish invaders. They are the Philippines’ indigenous Taliban, and we keep trying to put them down.
The insignia of the 4rth Cavalry still commemorates what we call the “Battle of Bud Dajo” but what was in reality a massacre. where US Marines scaled an extinct crater to mount machine guns to fire into a Moro village and exterminate thousands of men, women and children.
The antiwar, anti-imperialist movement of the early 1900s knew the barbarity which our boys were visiting on the Filipinos. It was US soldiers who popularized “waterboarding” there. But since the facade of granting the islands their independence after WWII, Americans have absolved themselves of what is an ongoing occupation.
Will this be the future of Afghanistan’s puppet regime? Continued suppression of the Afghan’s efforts to fight for their liberty?
They’re there fighting al-Qaida. Been there for almost ten years. There are almost as many al-Qaida there as in Africa. Keep in mind that al-Qaida fanatics have vowed to destroy our way of life and were responsible for 9/11
Keep in mind that the Manifest Destiny Fanatics have been destroying the “ways of life” of every country they’ve sent the Marines and Navy and Army and, since World War 2 and the change from the Army Air Corps, The USAF to invade for the Corporate Masters. John, your bullshit response about “al Qa’eda is simply that, Bullshit.
It’s the Bullshit terminology that anybody who resists U.S. and British Hegemony anywhere in the world and happens to practice the Muslim faith is automatically a “Terrorist” and automatically of the al Qa’eda faction.
Propaganda only trumps reality when used on people who are willfully ignorant.
I’ll add that the same “intelligence” equating rejection of the Imposed-by-Wall-Street, Enforced-by-Publicly-Funded U.S. Military puppet government of the Philippines to “terrorism” just by a bizarre Co Inky Dink was issued at the same time George W was telling the graduating class of West Point that he had more than 60 nations slated for “regime change”, in other words, the “freedom” the Army is fighting for in those countries is the “Freedom” to ONLY elect representative governments that are friendly to the Corporate Masters of the U.S.
And it also paralleled “intelligence” that Iraq had a million pounds of Nerve Gas.
Those Green Berets who guard Iraqi and Afghan “free” elections, for a gratuitous example that of course couldn’t possibly be related to the current discussion, Are They There To Make Sure That Nobody Commits The Terrorist Act Of Voting For Somebody That The U.S. Kind And Benevolent Dictatorship ORDERED the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to NOT elect as their “freely chosen” representatives?
But of course, any group who objects to a Foreign Government invading THEIR homelands and claiming the resources of THEIR homelands for the sole benefit of the Wealthy Parasite Class who OWN that Foreign Government, that’s “insurgency, terrorism, Anti-American and Tyranny”.
Couldn’t possibly be anything like defending their own country against a hostile invader, nope. And if you can use the quasi-racist “cultural war” bullshit slur that’s just a Propaganda Bonus.
Because everybody knows the Great White Father in Washington is the sole arbiter of Freedom anywhere in the world. They know because the Troops of the Great White Father tell them so, at gunpoint. Repeatedly and often.
John Verlo, We have a great black father, or mulatto, or Kenya born illegal, or Hawaii born natural, in Washington DC, not the great white father. That was George Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and on down the line of great white boys in power.
“Great White Father” is a way the U.S. Military used to describe the government when talking down to American Indians and not just attempting but succeeding in ripping us off.
It doesn’t refer to any one president or administration. It’s used as a metaphor now for the notion of Manifest Destiny, where the American People (but distilled down to the White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans, everybody else is, as Sarah Palin said, “not the Real America”) are granted rule over the entire world by God Himself.
It’s as stupid and deadly as every other form of Racist Fanaticism. Chanza que Ud. sera muy sorpresado, que tales muchos Americanos creen eso tonteria.
I was born and raised here and I am still surprised at how many believe it.
En los paises hispanicos, esta conocido como “el Jingoisma”.
Here it’s called either Really Stupid or “The Divine Will of God” depending on which story you believe.
I served in the Philipines as recently as 2007. We DID NOT kill anyone, nor were we in a position to kill anyone. How dare you make such an ignorant comment to the mother of a soldier without even knowing what you’re talking about. Then you justify it with a wikipedia search of a tragedy and a mistake that occured more than 100 years ago, ignoring the thousands of American Marines, Soldiers and Sailors who gave their lives to liberate the Philipines during World War II.
While in the Philipines we ran tactical training, disaster and emergency readiness, and emergency medical training for Philipino authorities. This was all in a safe controlled environment, we did not accompany Philipino forces on patrols or engage in combat of any kind. The free people of the Philipines have asked us for this kind of help and we are willing and able to provide it. “Brother Jonah” and the author of this article know nothing of issues the Philipines are facing at this time. So far the violence of the terrorist organizations within the Philipines have been directed against the poorest most helpless members of Philipine society. For example, this year an Islamic Fundamentalist gang beheaded 3 unarmed loggers as a retaliation for a government crackdown against their activities. The goal of these thugs is to force an Islamic state where women, homosexuals and non muslims have few if any human rights. Your smug self righteousness and pervasive racism disgusts me.
Don’t Wiki-condescend to me, I know about the role of US advisers in the Philippines FIRST HAND you smug Nazi.
Nice of you to call Bud Dajo a “mistake,” too bad the official record doesn’t. By the way, Wikipedia has very little to say about the years 1902-1946, supposedly post-war, though fighting continued, covering our supposed grant of sovereignty and then independence, only later recognizing their independence.
During WWII our troops were retaking the Philippines, and the Pacific, for ourselves.
You label everyone terrorist who dare fight for their liberty. Their religious beliefs are not for you to judge. You’re not going to find takers of your public relations disinformation here.
According to Army news releases the Army HAS been killing “insurgents” en Las Islas Filipinas. So, Murphy, are you lying or is the Army lying or is it a little of both?
There’s also the sticky little problem of Enhanced Interrogation and Extraordinary Rendition, code words for Torture and Hostage Taking/unlawful arrests. Some of whom were people the Philippine Government denies are Filipinos and allows the U.S. government to kill or kidnap/torture indiscriminately.
See, Murphy, I for one have no reason to believe anything a spokesman for the pentagoons has to say.
The Pentagon has been running two wars overtly based on LIES since shortly after 9/11, they’ve been not-very-covertly funding people who will go to websites that offer a different perspective than the one the Army pushes and try to “correct” the information by replacing it with the Official Narrative.
You’re not fighting for Freedom for the Filipinos any more than for Iraqi or Afghan or Pakistani or Kurdish or American citizens.
Your Army has made that abundantly clear. You want to deny that the Army has murdered anybody, so badly that your Army is willing to prosecute people who provide evidence otherwise, like you’re doing to a REAL honest soldier, Specialist Bradley Manning. But don’t you worry none, Murphy, your Army and the so-called “Justice” Department PIGS have given you carte-blanche<—-French for "blank warrant" to kill anybody you want with no fear of reprisals from the "legal" system.
Like they covered for your Murdering Comrades-in-arms Blackwater after Blackwater Goons murdered 19 civilians in Baghdad, and your Official Military did to 140 civilians at Garani, and to These folks who were unarmed, including two reporters and my personal favorite, the Flock of Sheep complete with their Kurdish Shepherd from before the Iraq
Invasion and Occupaerrr “Liberation” yeah, that’s the ticket, all of them verified independently after the Pentagon and their “truth squad” Stooges denied them.But of course, the notion that you were one of the criminals involved makes your statement of “Not Guilty” the only deciding factor in us making any judgments as to Truth or Lies.
Your Army has a long track record of being in the Second Category.
But thank you for playing.
Eric, the dude sounded so much like the “chuck” person who said he had been a marine for 20 years and never killed a civilian that I had to check names…
But the argument was the same “I personally never committed a similar act therefore nobody else could have possibly committed such an act”.
Kind of like “I personally never died in combat therefore nobody ever died in combat”.
You know what’s really worrisome is the Military is actually teaching the soldiers and marines such denial tactics. Training them in Illogical Thought patterns knowing full well that the vast majority of them are going to leave the services, and bring that poisonous thought pattern into the general public. (A small percentage will die before getting out)
“Don’t Wiki-condescend to me, I know about the role of US advisers in the Philippines FIRST HAND you smug Nazi.”
Oh you broke out the N-word. Instantly any iota of respect or civility I had for you is gone and instantly you’ve proven your stunted intellectual capacity in one single sentence. People like me exist so that spoiled little brats like you can spout your ignorant and insensitive claptrap. Had you tried that crap in Nazi Germany to the mother of an SS officer you’d have found yourself under the heel of a jackboot. That’s okay though, I and people like me can live with infantile disrespect because it means I have the freedom to call you an idiot.
“During WWII our troops were retaking the Philippines, and the Pacific, for ourselves.”
Oh that is such bullshit. Such complete bullshit. You and your little potato headed gang here are so hooked on the idea of moral binaries that you cannot see the forest for the trees if it was burning down around you. The Japanese Empire was conquering, pillaging and enslaving the populations of every nation they could land forces on. If we were doing the same thing where is my Korean comfort wife, why aren’t the Taiwanese paying my taxes for me, why am I not waking up to the sound of Balinese slave labor building my porch for me? You are so massively full of shit here it’s just laughable.
“You label everyone terrorist who dare fight for their liberty.”
Bullshit, and not everyone who fights for their “liberty” is necessarily fighting for a good cause, and cutting people’s heads off because they strayed unarmed into an area you’ve decided you control is terrorism you jackass.
“Their religious beliefs are not for you to judge. You’re not going to find takers of your public relations disinformation here.”
And more bullshit. Yes, their religious beliefs are absolutely for me to judge if they call for the murder and subjugation of my friends and family. If your religion says it’s okay to stone a woman to death for the crime of adultery, or hang a man because he is a homosexual I will absolutely judge you, and I will do everything in my power to prevent you from enforcing your backwards bullshit on the rest of the world, and if you get a gun and try and kill people who disagree with you, I will stand up and protect those people without question. Weather some spoiled Starbucks Chez Guevara and his gang of granola eating communist fuckwits like it or not.
Yeah, you’re going to prevail because you have all the Military Might.
Uh… no. “Might makes right” on your lying lips while you’re trying to make the argument that you’re NOT there using heavily armed Military Power to force them to conform to YOUR slave-based Empire?
Do you ever study the history of your own doctrines and how many times they’ve failed?
They have a fatal flaw built into them. “Let them hate us, as long as they Fear us”… yeah, they’re really quaking in their boots now, aren’t they? Your military who say they’re not on a Murder Mission in las islas Filipinas say the same thing about Afghanistan, and they murdered a 92 year old man in his bed, shot him 25 times because he was deaf and couldn’t hear their orders to get up and grovel to them. YOUR military, Murphy.
YOUR international Police State which even in America murders prisoners, civilians, even Children like Alyanna Jones and Briseña Flores. Your Police State Comrades in Oakland forced A (unlike the Pigs) REAL Man to lay face down and then shot him in the back. And they’re getting away with it as surely as your Comrades in Afghanistan and Iraq are getting away with THEIR particular murders.
They say the same thing you do, Murphy. They say that they don’t murder anybody and if somebody says they do, that person must be a granola hippie Kum-ba-Jah Elitist and is simply lying.
I suppose that’s the reason YOUR Army is planning to kill Bradley Manning once he’s been in Federal custody long enough that there’s a chance they can get away with it. Not for LYING about your war crimes, but because telling the TRUTH about the war crimes damages your ability to conquer more nations and enslave the people therein.
Oops, there’s the doorbell. It’s my Starbucks order. They make the most simply delish granola.
Do you ever consider that it’s YOU who has the Elitist attitude, Murphy? Which is sad, really, that you’re so deluded that you consider yourself to be better than me. Or Eric, or Bradley Manning, or Alyanna Jones or Oscar Grant or Briseña Flores or any of the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, or, yes, Murphy, Even The Philippines who were slaughtered by YOUR Military.
Your moral caliber, you’ve shown it to be as base as that you ascribe to the PEOPLE your military declared to be “our” enemies. Even, yes, the ones in the Philippines. And Detroit. And Oakland. And Dallas. And Denver. And Arivaca, AZ.
You’ve declared yourself, through your actions and the denials thereof, to be as morally defunct as you claim the Taliban to be.
Shock and Awe, another of your doctrines, right? Meaning you’re going to intimidate the “enemy” into groveling to you through Fear.
Maybe you should look closely at the definitions YOUR Military gives for “Terrorism”. Then look back to “let them Hate us as long as they FEAR us” and “Shock and Awe”.
Since your military is lying about everything else, Murphy, why should we trust YOUR word that they, and you, are somehow not Lying about the Philippines? Or is that too “intellectual” for you to understand?
Sometimes I wish they’d just abolish religion in the Philippines. Both Christianity and Islam are religions from the Middle East that should have no place in a diverse region such as the Philippine Islands. All it has done is pit brother against brother. The Spaniard Conquistadors must be laughing in their graves at the stupidity of the Filipino people. Sometimes I wish the island just went communist. The country would of been better off.
I agree with you Johnny about the invasive religions which pitted the Filipino in between. But I can hardly picture Spaniards laughing, the “stupid” Filipinos distinguished themselves from other indigenous peoples by stopping Magellan cold.
Helped along in large part because Las Islas Filipinas are in a region of the world that had already been in contact with certain diseases. So the Spanish and Portuguese couldn’t give them the Wondrous Gift of measles and smallpox. They bumped up against the eastern coasts of the Old World, so their “little friends” couldn’t help them out.
One of my much older friends, long gone now, was describing something the Moros did to a company of soldiers who had the bad luck to get stranded on the WRONG island.
Their numbers kept going down, steadily, they’d find their comrades on the trails near their encampment with no heads.
Finally two soldiers were left and had the idea of sleeping back to back, one woke up and his buddy, well, was headless behind him. They let him live to tell the story.
My friend was an Artilleryman, stationed on one of the Islas during World War 2. He went deaf from the artillery, crazy from the island and hated Japanese people. So he married a Japanese woman, real name Toki but nicknamed Suki. I don’t know the meaning of the words.
Apparently the story has taken on the level of being an Army version of an Urban Legend, they change the name of which particular army was involved but it’s always the Moros who did it to the company. And that shows at least their level of respect for the “flips” as a fighting force, regardless of whatever racist bullshit they add on. Like calling them Flips.
The U.S. Military went to war with the Moros almost immediately after supplanting the Spanish as the Great White Colonial Power.
They had this “too cute for words” song about the PEOPLE who they were supposedly fighting to liberate, just like now.
Wonderful how things never changed, we still get to revile THEIR civilization as being thieves even as we’re attempting to take their lands for our use.
Murderers even though we’re in THEIR country Killing THEIR people.
Terrorists, see above for relativist definitions of Thief and Murderer.
Apparently what our friends who say they’re not there to kill the filipinos UNLESS THEY REFUSE TO DO AS THEIR TOLD can’t actually see the “Might Makes Right” imperialism inherent in that.
Fighting for Free Speech, as they say they’re doing FOR us while threatening to punish us if we actually USE that freedom of speech. Like the Oakland Police with the reason they put Oscar Grant face down on the sidewalk and then put him all the way down, like a mad dog, because he “talked back to them”.
Yep. Fighting for OUR freedom? Really? Sure enough ain’t fighting for it here. Fighting AGAINST it.
And we’re supposed to believe that they’re fighting for freedom for other people, the ones they
despiseerrr… “LOVE” so much they have pet names for them like Slope, Dink, Slant, Gook, Flip, Rag-head, Sand-nigger, Nip, Jap, Muzzle-monkey, Chink?I won’t give a rats anus if they DON’T pardon me for saying that’s bullshit.
You’ll notice from the lyrics of the songs that the Army learned enough of the local languages to come up with insulting names.
Typical.
WAR IS AN UGLY THING, BUT NOT THE UGLIEST OF THINGS. THE DECAYED AND DEGRADED STATE OF MORAL AND PATRIOTIC FEELING WHICH THINKS THAT NOTHING IS WORTH WAR IS MUCH WORSE.
THE PERSON WHO HAS NOTHING FOR WHICH HE IS WILLING TO FIGHT, NOTHING WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIS OWN PERSONAL SAFETY, IS A MISERABLE CREATURE AND HAS NO CHANCE OF BEING FREE UNLESS MADE AND KEPT SO BY THE EXERTIONS OF BETTER MEN THAN HIMSELF.
JOHN STUART MILL
So you quote another war-pig rather than express your own feelings? Poor bastard.
Your army is fighting several wars around the world right now to make other people richer. Cowards like Bush and Cheney and Palin who wouldn’t lift their hand to the bloody work you’re cheering. They prefer to have morons like Hill convince other Morons to do their killing for them.
You’re not fighting for freedom, the Greenie Beanies aren’t fighting for freedom, and when you say you are you’re quite simply lying.
It’s too bad you’re too intellectually and morally lazy to do more than quote babykillers. Your choice, nobody made it for you.
In las Islas Filipinas your Military is fighting to put a Corporate Collar on every place in Asia, to force the people of China, in particular, to work for YOUR slave-masters.
In choosing to be a slave, Johnny, you’re choosing slavery for millions of others.
Talk of your basic moral cowardice. And I can tell you’re just another slave.
There’s an Uncle Tom in every bunch.
When your High Priests pay you for all the souls you delivered into their system, be sure to count the money before you leave the temple. They’re thieves, you know, and they most often won’t pay the full 30 Shekels.
Or you could break free from their dogma. You still have that choice.