![]() 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. 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. 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. Marcos was finally overthrown in 1986, but even today Philippine democracy is more dream than reality. The tenuous system broke down in 1973 when Ferdinand Marcos had himself declared president for life. 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 Philippines were not the first Asian country to hold elections. 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.Īs for the Philippines’ democracy, the United States can take little credit for what exists, and some blame for what doesn’t. After Woodrow Wilson became president, he and the Democrats backed Philippine independence, but were thwarted by Republicans who still nurtured dreams of American empire. 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. Before he was assassinated in September 1901, McKinley himself had come to have doubts about it. The Filipinos were not the only ones to rue the American occupation. And the resentment against American policy was still evident a century later during George W. 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. The United States then fought a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it had encouraged to fight Spain. But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, President William McKinley annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. True, the United States Navy under Admiral George Dewey had ousted Spain from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Secret Service had warned Bush that it was not safe for him to remain overnight in the “first Democratic nation in Asia.”Īs many Philippine commentators remarked afterward, Bush’s rendition of Philippine-American history bore very little relation to fact. 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 same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. ![]() 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. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule. 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. Bush’s speech to the Philippine Congress was delayed by what one reporter described as “undulating throngs of demonstrators who lined his motorcade route past rows of shacks.” Outside the Philippine House of Representatives, several thousand more demonstrators greeted Bush, and several Philippine legislators staged a walkout during his twenty-minute speech. Because officials were concerned about a terrorist attack on the embattled islands, the presidential airplane, Air Force One, was shepherded into Philippine air space by F-15s. Bush landed in Manila as part of a six-nation Asian tour. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson”Īt noon, October 18, 2003, President George W. Purchase “The Folly of Empire: What George W.
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