As with the American invasion of Mexico City, the American Invasion of the Philippines involved lots of raping of women and desecration of Catholic Churches by American soldiers. According to President McKinley, the latter was necessary to “Christianize” the Filipinos. Today, that war is mostly forgotten since its memory would be inconvenient to those who claim that American wars have something to do with defending freedom.
And yet a few monuments remain, such as these bells, stolen from a church in the Philippines and now displayed, ridiculously, as a war trophy at a Wyoming military base.
The US military fancies itself as the savior of the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, although we can now only speculate what resources the Filipinos might have at their disposal if the Americans had not butchered more than 100,000 of them and destroyed their economy.
12:44 pm on November 22, 2013
