Posted on 08/14/2018 9:13:55 AM PDT by Theoria
The American soldiers were eating breakfast in Balangiga’s town square when Filipino villagers, including men disguised in dresses, attacked them with bolo knives. Forty-eight Americans died.
The year was 1901 and for the United States Army, the massacre in the central Philippines was the worst since Custer and his troops were slaughtered at the Battle of Little Bighorn, 25 years earlier.
In retaliation, the United States commander ordered his forces to kill every male older than 10 and turn the central Philippines island of Samar into a “howling wilderness.” American troops killed civilians, burned houses and destroyed food supplies.
They also carted off three church bells as war trophies.
Now, 117 years later, the bells are on the verge of returning home.
Despite objections from some American veterans, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis is expected to sign an order authorizing the bells’ return, according to the United States embassy in Manila.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Duterte to ask Trump to return historic spoils of war taken in 1901
Philippine, US businessmen call for return of Historic Balangiga bells
Ask not for whom the bell tolls..................
We should have melted down the bells in WWI or WWII to cast shell casings.
Agreed!
As we like to say in TX - Come and take it
Gen.Mattis seems to be hit or miss as SecDef. In this case he is total miss unless I am missing something.
RE: And that is how you put an end to an insurgency.
What was the point of occupying the Philippines after we defeated Spain? They were ready to form a government under Emilio Aguinaldo.
We should have just allow them their independence instead of having to fight a costly war that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands.
RE: Gen.Mattis seems to be hit or miss as SecDef. In this case he is total miss unless I am missing something.
I don’t see the point of us keeping these bells. It was taken from that country when we occupied it in the late 19th century and it would be a show of goodwill to return it to them.
Two reasons. One was the idea of "Empire" had taken hold. We got over it.
The second was that the Empire of Japan was eying the Philippines and would have taken over.
When they did, during WWII, there was a mass slaughter of Filipinos.
Which was why Wendell Fertig had no trouble organizing "United States Forces in the Philippines" which gave the Japanese fits.
As far as the Japanese problem goes, wouldn’t placing the Philippines under a American protectorate have solved that problem just as effectively?
A protectorate usuallly comes to nothing or morphs into a full blown colony. The second path might have been less sanguine than the path chosen.
RE: As far as the Japanese problem goes, wouldn’t placing the Philippines under a American protectorate have solved that problem just as effectively?
What is a protectorate anyway? It simply means that we are duty bound to protect the Philippines from any external attack.
If as Harmless Teddy Bear (see Post #10) said, Japan was eyeing the Philippines for her imperial expansion as she had with China, Korea and the other Southeast Asian countries, this still does not help us avoid war.
Because we wanted a coaling station for warships in that area?
RE: Because we wanted a coaling station for warships in that area?
Then why do we need to occupy them? Sign a treaty with their incipient government to allow a coaling station for our warships.
Emilio Aguinaldo, who was the acknowledged leader of the budding country was quite friendly to the United States.
I tend to agree. 4,000 Americans got killed in that “insurrection” and for what? Why the hell would we even want the Philippines? We should have also cut Puerto Rico loose. That was the other main “prize” captured in the Spanish-American war. About the only thing the US gained that we might want to keep was Guam.
Because, as we found out at Subic Bay not too long ago, “agreements” can be changed at inconvenient times.
We just took the Philipines from Spain, we needed a coaling station for the USN in the eastern Pacific - and, under the circumstances, we didn’t need the Philipinos’ permission any more than we needed the Hawaiians when we set up in Pearl Harbor.
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