American Empire, Kara Batchelder

 American Empire

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....

There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:

Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help.  It is really unbelieveable that the president wouldn't want more land for his country. Most countries would take as much as they could get. Instead he goes to god to tell him what to do.. Most people would just take the land without even thinking about it. -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 1:48 PM yeah that would be pretty crazy. You would think that he would want more. -Nicole Pedone 5/8/09 9:17 AM
       I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also.
       I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came:
       1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable.
       2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable.
       3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and
       4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly.

       The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected.
       It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease.
       The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . .
       The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . .
       No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . .
       I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .
       My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.
       It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

       The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. After the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents.
       In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus."
       William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns."
       James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles."
       The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire."
       A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces."
       It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility.
       In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:

The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.   This is unbelieveable too, thinking arother person is a dog just because of the country they come from. That is a really bad way to think of someone. Also pumping slat water into a person to make them talk is discusting! And even shooting these inncent people when they have done nothing besides do that you told them to is also really messed up. -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 1:50 PM that is ridicilous. that is a way to judge someone by not even knowing who they were. -Nicole Pedone 5/8/09 9:17 AM

       Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:

One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures.

       Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed."
       In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:

The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten."

In the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease.
       Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.
       And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power.

       American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks.  Is this really discution, having Philipnos people pilled up dead and using that as a way to kill more. i wouldn't be able to do that. Having a dead person infront of me and killing more. Gross.  -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 1:45 PM I dont think that I would like that either. I would probably get sick -Nicole Pedone 5/8/09 9:18 AMA British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war.
       For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."

 This hole conecpt of doing any of these things to any type of person is a unrealitic thing for this day and age. Thinking about someone doing this now is, it would never happen. I think that If you were a president you would take the land that was pretty much given to you. There are some really disterbing things that go on in the article. Losing all of these peope to a war that is going to mean nothing in 50 years is unbelieveable to me. It's something that isn't really worth fighting for.  -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 1:53 PM

Bomb, Kara Batchelder

 The Descision to Use Atomic Weapons
from 

 
A People's War?
Howard Zinn

         Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it."       
        The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.
       The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:

The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.
       Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
       Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative.

       The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

       But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion."
       If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
       Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives?  He is asking questions around the sistuation, and then giving what he thinks is right. I agree with what he is saying here, talking about how they could of taken small steps instead of just bombing them. 5/7/09 10:39 AM Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan?
       The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States  I agree that the japanese woud surrender after having a bomb dropped on them. Plus the Japanese had nothing do drop in retrun. -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 10:43 AM, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in."
       Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."
       The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment?  I think that there was no explain for the bombing in Nagasaki no one knew it was going to happen.. It was scheduled in advance so that ment it was done for a reason that no one knew of.  -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 10:47 AM Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:

Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply.   This would probably make there minds up about dropping the bomb on this spot. having there be a prison there. -Batchelder3232 5/7/09 10:50 AM

The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged."
       True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.

 

The Marines on Guadalcanal

The Marines on Guadalcanal

DAVE TABER, 1st Raider Battalion

 

Dave Taber was one of "Horse Collar" Smith's communicators who fought bravely among Sweeney's men. Six of the seven men were casualties that night.

 

We were on top of the ridge near the command post. Major Bailey came up and made an eloquent speech. He said something like this:"All you fellows have buddies and friends that have been wounded and killed, and it will all be in vain if we lose the airfield. Now let's get out, hold the line, and save the airfield. If we lose the airfield, we're going to lose the island." That was about the gist of it. It was quite dramatic and got everybody moving. I thought to myself it was almost like something out of a movie. -I probably would of thought the samething at this point. Having see your friends die or get wounded and still have to move on and still fight would be really hard  -Batchelder3232 3/27/09 10:14 AM

I was with a close friend of mine, Ike Arnold. (Ike's name was really Herman Arnold, but I called him Ike.) We each had five or six grenades. We went out. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow we got separated from some of the other guys. In fact we were a little too extended, I guess. When the Japs attacked, we were throwing grenades. There was a lot of shooting going on, a lot of action: rifle fire, grenades moving so fast. Anyway, we were throwing grenades down the ridge, and then all the sudden Ike talked to me. [Choking up, Taber said, "I'd rather not go through this," but then continued. I would scared out of my mind if we lost our troop and i would probably just sit there and not even move. and i would be the one saying that i didn't want to go through with this. It would be way to scary.  -Batchelder3232 3/27/09 10:45 AMHe called me Tabe. He said very calmly, "Tabe, I've been hit." I turned to him. He was off to my side a little, and I said, "Where?" He said, "In the throat." He no more than said that, and he was dead. He must have been hit in the jugular vein or an artery. Blood just gushed out. I had my arm underneath him, across his back, and I lowered him down to the ground. [crying] There's nothing you could do. He was a very good friend of mine. I looked around, and I was all by myself.

I thought to myself that I better get back and make contact with the others. I didn't know whether to crawl back or walk back because there was danger both ways. I dont think i will be able pick up a person that was dead expically if they are one of my good friends. I honestly dont know what i would do if i had to tough a dead friend with no one else around to help. it would be a really hard thing to do batchelder3232 3/27/09 10:52 AMWe'd been told what to do in these cases. I acted without even thinking. I decided to stay on my feet. It was pitch dark. I was walking a little bit, and all the sudden I heard something behind me and along comes a grenade right through the air and the fuse is burning! Before I knew what I was doing, I fell on my face away from it. As I was going down, I turned to see where the grenade was falling; it fell in between my feet. I had sharpnel between my feet and legs. I was a little stunned but got up. I was in shock, and nothing was bothering me. I'm walking along slowly and heard a Japanese voice behind me and he was talking to me. He must have thought I was a Jap going up in front of him. I had a .03 rifle and I swung around and shot, and he dropped as I kept on going. I finally got back [to the CP], and one of the first people I ran into was Horse Collar Smith, who was wounded.

  i think that i wouldn't of been able to make it through this if a grenade was tossed between my legs at that young of an age i really don't know how this guy went through this lossing a good friend and also almost dieing himself is going to leave a mark for the rest of his life. If it were me i would probably woudn't be able to forget that moment for the rest of my life.   -Batchelder3232 3/27/09 10:58 AM

Reagan questions

What are the problems America faces?

People in this country are materialtic

The infalation of the economy is really bad because of the way our tax system is set up. The more money you make per year the more tax the government is taking out of you.

The government is to big, it takes to much of our money. Its into our lives to much. They have to much control over the money.

 If you can't take care of yourself you can't take care of someone else.

 

What are Reagan's solutions?
He wants to cut taxes, so that you will have more money in your pocket.

(if the government takes in less taxes in there not going to be able to provide with the progams that they did)

He wants to make the government reduce in size, and not make it so controling over everything and everyone.

 

What makes Reagan effective here?

Everyone likes it when hes funny, he has a sence of humor.

one of the best ways to be effectice is to be funny.

 

What does this reveal about Reagan?

Hes a funny person. 

He doesn't take things personal and he just laughs it off. 

He only believes that this is all the dem. fault and the rep. are always right. 

 

What poilcy decisions might Reagan make according to this?

He wants to spend money on peace, he wants to not fighting peace through fire power, strength.

you get peace when the powers are to powerful to mess with. No one wants to mess with the country because the military is really strong which brings peace. 

leads to poilcys about budget, defeting the soviet union and ending the cold war. 

 

How did this event effect Reagan's role with the American Public? 

This kind of made him a hero, he took a bullet for America. This was all within his frist year of this presidencey.

 

Who is the audience for this speech?

The audience is church group

 

What is the argument Reagan makes here?

Commnuists are very bad. He would rather have his daughters die now at a young age than grow up and die not believing in god, having them turn commnuist.

 

What do you think Reagan's agenda is in this speech?

label both sides equal of it all

he wanted them to stick with him because of the communist and didnt want them to