Blowback
for American Sins in the Philippines
By Stephen
Kinzer
October 18,
2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Boston Globe"- Sometimes
Americans think we have won a war, only to realize years or decades later
that our victory was incomplete. Now we are facing an eruption of anger over a
war we waged more than a century ago. Rarely has blowback from an overseas
intervention come back to haunt us so long after the shooting stopped.
This
unexpected challenge has emerged from the Philippines. The new president,
Rodrigo Duterte, recently announced plans to pull his country out of America’s
orbit and adopt an “independent” foreign policy. “I am anti-West,” he
explained. “I do not like the Americans. It’s simply a matter of principle for
me.”
Duterte’s
grievance is rooted in history. Americans, he asserted, unjustly seized the
Philippines in 1899, waged a horrific military campaign to suppress native
resistance, and “have not even apologized to the Filipino nation.” He waved
photographs showing bodies of Filipinos killed in that war.
