Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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pause, until the [Filipino] insurrection is suppressed and American
authority acknowledged and established,” the pretext of rescuing the
Philippines from Spanish rule having been abandoned. The cause was
taken up by President Theodore Roosevelt; like Winston Churchill (see
below, section 5.6), he recognized few limits in war against ‘‘uncivilized
tribes’’: ‘‘The most ultimately righteous of all wars,’’ he wrote in his book
The Winning of the West, “is a war with savages” which established
“the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people” as part of
the process, “of incalculable importance,” of suppressing the “red, black
and yellow aboriginal owners” of much of the world in favor of “the
dominant world races.” To Roosevelt, the Filipinos were “Chinese
halfbreeds,” “Malay bandits,” “savages, barbarians, a wild and ignorant
people, Apaches, Sioux, Chinese boxers.” A few years later, he was
awarded the Nobel Peace prize. The young Winston Churchill told a
New York audience that concentration camps and execution of prisoners
and hostages were necessary because the Filipinos did “not know when
they are whipped.” The Filipinos were not fighting for independence, but
“to control the Philippines so they could loot them,” commanding
General Otis told Congress, while the New York Times applauded his
resort to force after the natives rejected “our kindness and indulgence”;
the Times also commended Colonel Jacob Smith for using the brutal
tactics of the Indian wars, which were “long overdue,” and expressed
outrage over a Harvard faculty petition urging Philippine independence,
agreeing with a description of these “sympathizers with a public enemy”
as “socialists” or “Populists.” General Funston, who tortured and
murdered prisoners while informing the press that “our men were
wonderfully kind and considerate to the wounded and the prisoners,”
told a Times correspondent that the natives “are, as a rule, an illiterate,
semi-savage people, who are waging war, not against tyranny, but
against Anglo-Saxon order and decency.” The military command, most