In the early 20th century, the United States fought a war of conquest and empire in the Philippines. (We can't call it that, because we don't conquer and we don't have an empire, so we just conveniently memory-holed that war.) It became a brutal counterinsurgency.
The Islamophobic apocryphal story about Pershing killing Muslim insurgents with bullets dipped in pigs' blood that Trump kept peddling in his 2016 campaign comes from that war.
As wars against local populations who don't want to be colonized are wont to do, it lasted a long time, with horrific casualties.
We would do well to remember our own history.
We would do well to remember our own history.
Mark Twain wrote an anti-war short story called The War Prayer during that war. He never published it, for all the reasons that one might not want to publish antiwar sentiments while the public is rallying 'round the flag. It was published posthumously.
In the early years of the Iraq War, someone animated it. I used it when I taught my students about the war in the Philippines.
Watch it, and remember what we are asking for when we demand airstrikes, bombings, retaliations.
Watch it, and remember what we are asking for when we demand airstrikes, bombings, retaliations.
If this is what we want, we can have it. But we should know what we're asking for.
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