U.S. Failed To Learn From Conquest of Philippines, Historian Says
April 16, 2011 posted by Veterans Today
Unintelligent Design
By Professor Michael Chesson
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David R. Kohler (a Navy special warfare officer) and James W. Wensyel’s (a retired U.S. Army officer) essay, “America’s First Southeast Asian War” (1990), explains that the U.S. plunged into a war that would see 200,000 American soldiers sent to the Pacific, with 125,000 actually serving in the Philippines, and suffering 7,000 casualties.
About 15,000 to 20,000 Filipino rebels were killed, along with more than 200,000 civilians, all too easily dismissed as what would today be called collateral damage. There were mounting atrocities on both sides. The Americans used various forms of torture, including water boarding, to interrogate captured rebels. Though a few officers were court-martialed for sanctioning torture, their punishment was light. Our generals adopted a fortified hamlet strategy, free fire zones, and destruction of crops in the countryside to deny the rebels food.
Aguinaldo’s guerrilla tactics dragged out the war and made it one of attrition. His men received no outside help, despite pleas to Japan, because the U. S. Navy blockaded the islands. Our troops, with some exceptions, were better armed, fed, and supplied. America won the war, but paid a terrible price, the worst part of which was that neither our military nor civilian leadership seemed to have learned anything about the challenges of jungle fighting against a resolute foe supported by the local population at the end of a logistical chain ten thousand miles long. The lessons were forgotten, to be relearned in Vietnam sixty years later.
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And, relearned in Afpak, Iraq, Libya, and a thousand other places.
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