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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
255
Had they known what horror and sacrifices the invaders would bring,
they might well have submitted; for example, the people of Samar,
where Marine commander Waller, soon to move on to Hispaniola,
carried out the orders of General “Hell Roaring Jake” Smith who wanted
the area “made a howling wilderness”:
I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill
and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who
are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United
States.
The press found the revelations at the trials of Smith and Waller
“shocking,” but quickly overcame their doubts. The New York Times
explained that
A choice of cruelties is the best that has been offered in the
Philippines. It is not so certain that we at home can afford to
shudder at the “water cure” [a standard form of torture used by
the US forces] unless we disdain the whole job. The army has
obeyed orders. It was sent to subdue Filipinos. Having the devil to
fight, it has sometimes used fire.
All of this was in the best tradition of the recent Indian wars and the
reaction to them. 200
Reference to the “English fashion” of “slaughtering the natives” is,
incidentally, appropriate; our Puritan forebears were particularly adept at
teaching the natives that war, English-style, is a form of extermination,
women and children being prime targets, using methods that had been
honed in earlier trials such as the slaughter of the Irish, also “savage