The following was sent to me by my uncle Stan Virden.
Regrettably, the attached NYT account is pretty accurate. When the U.S. Navy won the battle of Manila Bay (1 May 1898), imagining that this had ended Spanish control of the Philippines, our leaders did not realize that the local hero, General Emilio Aguinaldo, had already achieved that end. He proclaimed Philippine independence from the window of his home in Cavite, across the bay from Manila, on 12 June. This Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Malolos Congress on 21 September 1898. Meanwhile, the U.S. had established a military government in August, which initiated a bit of a row that lasted for some years.
Members of my family have worked and lived in the Philippines off and on since 1905. As a boy I followed the Asiatic Fleet back and forth between the Philippines and China (1937-40), as a naval officer I was stationed there (1962-64) and subsequently visited a few times on board ships. The country and its circumstances have always held my interest. Currently, through PLAN USA, I still contribute to support of a rural Filipina school girl. The country is rich in history, scenery, and natural resources, occupied by cheerful and interesting folk speaking some 30 languages and governed by haphazard political administration that has made sensible development a very slow and awkward process. The domination of Chinese, then Spanish, then American, then Japanese occupiers has had a great deal to do with this cultural failing. With WWII freshly underway, my father and his naval friends of recent Asian experience felt certain that Filipinos would rally to the Rising Sun. They were astonished that the reverse was largely true, and that throughout the war these people were our fervent, brave, and able allies.
European colonization of non-European territory was well underway by the 16th Century. In the 18th Century the U.S. rose as a by-product of this activity. Initially we ourselves had no incentive to cross oceans for colonization. We had a broad continent, thinly inhabited by those who arrived here some 14 millennia past, and we assumed a natural right to take it over, whatever the objections of others. In reading the following it struck me that the rise of U.S. overseas land-grab initiatives in the early 20th Century must have been a postscript to the completion of this “Manifest Destiny.” Our momentum simply kept us going, spurred on by the high spirits of our brief war with Spain. That war, as we now know, was fought under a false vengeance over the explosion in Cuba of the U.S. battleship MAINE, thought to have been sabotaged by Spanish forces. Later forensics showed the explosion to have been caused by careless attention to safety in handling coal dust. But history turns on small pivots.
Whatever you think of Rep. Ron Paul (whom I am not necessarily endorsing), he may, in echoing George Washington, have it right about our continuing tendency to get involved overseas in other peoples’ squabbles. Perhaps we had little choice about WWI, WWII, and Korea. But I ponder the possibilities had we not gone to war with Spain and also become involved in China at that time. Perhaps there would have been less incentive for Japan, our ally in WWI, to come after us later on. We were indeed reluctant to get into WWI, but strategically adrift in accepting an indecisive armistice in place of a full-fledged victory, followed by stringent German reparations. Had we used the Marshall Plan philosophy in Germany post-WWI, would we have averted the conditions that gave rise to National Socialism and Hitler’s mad attempt to become the new Napoleon Plus? Might a healthy and friendly post-WWI Germany have lessened the incentive to form the WWII Axis? If so, how might the history of 1939-45, and 45-91 been different? And suppose, post WWII, we had not supported European attempts to regain and control their former colonies, often nations created by gluing together disparate tribes? Was it really our business to do this, and was our fearful “Domino Theory” really justified?
I have no wish to sound either like an isolationist or an inchoate 60s anti-war protester, and I have no personal regrets over my own career as a naval officer. I’m proud of the contributions my family has made over several centuries to the development and defense of our country. But is it not time for us to take lessons from the past 500 years, to relax a bit under a refurbished umbrella of a strong economy and an unbeatable national security structure (neither of which is currently in very good shape), and to mind our own business? After all, the legendarily neutral Swiss, who strictly train and arm all their citizens and who carry on trade with anyone, manage very well to do just that.
The inescapable conclusion apparent to me is that a strict focus on adherence to our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution (the why and the how of our republic), a firm adherence to non-interference by our government in the affairs of other countries (unless we are attacked), the energetic practice of open trade, and the consistent maintenance of a rock-hard national defense structure would give us leave to create lasting prosperity with few citizens so poor as to require public assistance. Perhaps this is dreaming, but are not dreams the wellspring of better things to come?
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