I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says: "Yes, the little ones does."
Mark Twain,
Tom Sawyer Abroad
Let the faithless sons of freedom crush the patriot with his heel
Lo, greed is marching on
Mark Twain, "Battle Hymn of the Republic Brought Down to Date"
Thrill to the pulse-pounding prose as Mark Twain takes on our Secretary of Defense, our ill-conceived and iller-executed efforts at colonizing Iraq and the wonderful bravery of our men and women in uniform who happen to have electrodes in one hand hand and Islamic testes in the other.
You'll laugh, you'll cry. Okay, mostly you'll cry. We've been here before. We're stuck in a repeat.
I cannot take any credit for the bulk of this diary entry. Even the lead-in quotes come straight in context with this small section from the brilliant, caustic, sad and furious
On the Damned Human Race, a collection of Twain's (mostly) later pieces targeting those indefensible qualities which all humanity (with a special focus on the American breed in this case) shares. The entire book, practically, could be reprinted here and would have immense and poignant bearing on the lead up to the Iraq War, the prosecution of it and, sadly, the aftermath. From comments on Empire to 'bringing civilization to the heathens' to this particular piece on atrocities committed in the name of patriotism. Even edited, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel it's well worth the read.
I'm not the thinker or the writer to make great comment on Mark Twain's writing; it stands, as ever, on its own. But I may add a few notes for the sake of historical context. I simply recommend that you run out and buy this book immediately, to see what the Conscience of America had to say in the face of the same horrid things we are now struggling to deal with.
First, the Philippine War. One of the lowest points in American history, which is saying something. Our first true colonial war as a world power, coming on the heels of our war to liberate Cuba from imperial Spain. Among other territories, the US 'purchased' the Philippines from Spain. Unfortunately, those pesky Filippinos who had been fighting so fiercely to throw off the Spanish weren't able to recognize the civilizing influence we would force on them, so they turned to fighting us. They didn't want to stay a colony. Thus it was a war between the US desire for overseas empire and the desire of the Filipino people for freedom. Sound familiar? Let's move on.
I won't outline the details of the war. You can look them up online or in history books, if such a thing still exist in your digitized world-view. Let's just summarize by saying it ended with the Philippines getting it's independence in 1946 (the war to 'liberate' it from the Spaniards ending in 1898), the US acquired an overseas colony which served as a base for American business and military interests in the Asian/Pacific region, and following the conclusion of major hostilities the US did its best to 'Americanize' the islands. Casualties? A bit over 4,000 American dead and over 2,000 wounded. 20,000 Filipino combatants killed and between 200,000 and 500,000 Filipino civilians slaughtered. Sound familiar?
Among other 'cool details', this is the war in which we had to arm men in uniform with the .45 for the first time. To shoot down the crazy Filipino guerillas who wouldn't stay down upon getting stung with a wussier gauge. Not quite a daisy cutter, but hey... it wasn't for lack of effort. In the run up to the war, several ambassadors tried to parlay with Aguinaldo, President of the Philippine resistance, but alas none of them bothered to speak Tagalog. Since he didn't speak English or even Spanish very well, oh well! Guess we jump to Plan B... attack. To the folks back at home in the US, the Spanish War was portrayed as being a response to the reconcentration camps instituted by the Spanish general Weyler in Cuba. In a twist of Fate, the same camps were deemed necessary by the American military to successfully overcoming the Filipino resistance. Is any of this sounding familiar?
One last bit of exposition: Aguinaldo was finally crushed by the actions of one General Funston, whose tactics were vilified at home by right-feeling Americans grown sick and skeptical of the war's moral aims. In response to that uprising of discontent, many Congressmen, military men and self-styled Christian leaders published defenses of Funston, as well as excoriations of those who would point out his improper behavior, labeling the latter as 'traitors'. Enough with the sarcasm already, this obviously sounds familiar.
There were, thankfully, those in positions of power who were rightly aghast. Massachusetts (damn that Taxachusetts!) Senator George Hoar remarked,
"You, my imperialistic friends, have had your ideals and sentimentalities. One is that the flag shall never be hauled down where it has once floated. Another is that you will not talk or reason with people with arms in their hand. Another is that sovereignty over an unwilling people may be bought with gold. And another is that sovereignty may be got by force of arms...
"What as been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and sentimentalities? You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives, the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentrations camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest, bringing their sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane..."
And then there were those on the other side of the 'debate', including Republican President Teddy Roosevelt ('cause Teddy just sounds do much more folksy and manly than Theodore... I wonder what his ranch was like?). Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge (hey, didn't I just read somewhere that Indiana is strongly pro Bush in the polls?) told the Senate that God "...has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America.... The Philippines are ours forever. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world."
Moreover, one General Bell advocated ruthless destruction of the civilian population in the Philippines, to which General Wheaton had this to say: "The nearer we approach the methods found necessary by the other nations through centuries of experience in dealing with Asiatics, the less the national treasury will be expended and the fewer graves will be made."
Yeah! That's some fine moral grounding there, t'aint it?
Okay, that's more than enough setup. Here's Twain on the subject of Funston. Bear with the inital section comparing Rumsfeld, I mean Funston, to George Washington... it's worth it. The last five or six paragraphs are particularly resonant and, to me, chilling.
My own comments and exegeses appear in brackets, however all italics are Twain's own.
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A Defence of General Funston
I.
FEBRUARY 22. Today is the great Birthday and it was observed so widely in the earth that differences in lognitudinal time made curious work with some of the cabled testimonies of respect paid to the sublime name which the date calls up in our minds; for, although they were all being offered at about the same hour, several of them were yesterday to us and several were tomorrow.
There was a reference in the papers to General Funston.
Neither Washington nor Funston was made in a day. It took a long time to accumulate the materials. In each case, the basis or moral skeleton of the man was inborn disposition -- a thing which is as permanent as rock, and never undergoes any actual and genuine change between cradle and grave....
Washington did not create the basic skeleton (disposition) that was in him; it was born there, and the merit of its perfection was not his...
Is there a value, then, in having a Washington, since we may not concede to him personal merit for what he was and did? Necessarily, there is a value -- a value so immense that it defies all estimate. Acceptable outside influence were the materials out of which Washington's native disposition built Washington's character and fitted him for his achievements. Suppose there hadn't been any. Suppose he had been born and reared in a pirate's cave; the acceptable materials would have been lacking, the Washingtonian character would not have been built....
Did Washington's great value, then, lie in what he accomplished? No; that was only a minor value. His major value, his vast value, his immeasurable value to us and to the world and to future ages and peoples, lies in his permanent and sky-reaching conspicuousness as an influence....
Washington was more and greater than the father of a nation, he was the father of its patriotism -- patriotism at its loftiest and best and so powerful was the influence which he left behind him, that that golden patriotism remained undimmed and unsullied for a hundred years, lacking one; and so fundamentally right-hearted are our people by grace of that long and ennobling teaching, that today, already, they are facing back for home, they are laying aside their foreign-born and foreign-bred imported patriotism and resuming that which Washington gave to their fathers, which is American and the only American -- which lasted ninety-nine years and is good for a million more. Doubt -- doubt that we did right by the Filipinos -- is rising steadily higher and higher in the nation's breast; conviction will follow doubt. The nation will speak; its will is law; there is no other sovereign on this oil; and in that day we shall right such unfairnesses as we have done. We shall let go our obsequious hold on the rear-skirts of the sceptred land-thieves of Europe, and be what we were before, a real world power, and the chiefest of them all, by right of the only clean hands in Christendom, the only hands guiltless of the sordid plunder of any helpless people's stolen liberties, hands recleansed in the patriotism of Washington, and once more fit to touch the hem of the revered Shade's garment and stand in its presence unashamed. It was Washintgon's influence that made Lincoln and all other real patriots the Republic has known; it was Washington's influence that made the soldiers who saved the Union; and that influence will save us always, and bring us back to the fold when we stray.
And so, when a Washington is given us, or a Lincoln, or a Grant, what should do? Knowing, as we do, that a conspicuous influence for good is worth more than a billion obscure ones, without doubt the logic of it is that we should highly value it and make a vestal flame of it, and keep it briskly burning in every way we can -- in the nursery, in the school, in the college, in the pulpit, in the newspaper -- even in Congress, if such a thing were possible.
The proper inborn disposition was required to start a Washington; the acceptable influences and circumstances and a large field were required to develop and complete him. The same with Funston.
II.
"The war was over" -- end of 1900. A month later the mountain refuge of the defeated and haunted, and now powerless but not yet hopeless, Filipino chief was discovered. His army was gone, his republic extinguished, his ablest statesman deported, his generals all in their graves or prisoners of war. The memory of his worthy dream had entered upon a historic life, to be an inspiration to less unfortunate patriots in other centuries; the dream itself was dead beyond resurrection, though he could not believe it.
Now came his capture. An admiring author shall tell us about it. His account can be trusted, for it is correctly synopsized from General Funston's own voluntary confession made by him at the time. The italics are mine.
[This section is a long recounting how Aguinaldo was found, which I will synopsize. A message from his was captured and the code broken. Funston sent a message back posing as an ally and setting up a meet. Along the way to the meeting, Funston's group ran out of food along the trek, 'too weak to move', and faced starvation. They sent men ahead the final distance to beg food and succor from Aguinaldo, who still under the misapprehension that this approaching force was comprised of allies, gave help and succor gladly. Once fed and rested, Funston immediately turned on his savior and cut his men down. Aguinaldo himself was captured and admitted that 'by no other means would he have been taken alive.']
Some of the customs of war are not pleasant to the civilian; but ages upon ages of training have reconciled us to them as being justifiable, and we accept them and make no demur, even when they give us an extra twinge. Every detail of Funston's scheme -- but one -- has been employed in war in the past and stands acquitted of blame by history. By the custom of war, it is permissible, in the interest of an enterprise like the one under consideration, for a brigadier general (if he be of the sort that can so choose) to persuade or bribe a courier to betray his trust; to remove the badges of his honorable rank and disguise himself; to lie, to practice treachery, to forge; to associate with himself persons properly fitted by training and instinct for the work; to accept of courteous welcome, and assassinate the welcomers while their hands are still warm from the friendly handshake.
By the custom of war, all these things are innocent, none of them is blameworthy, all of them are justifiable; none of them is new, all of them have been done before, although not by a brigadier general. But there is one detail which is new, absolutely new. It has never been resorted to before in any age of the world, in any country, among any people, savage or civilized. It was the one meant by Aguinaldo when he said that "by no other means" would he have been taken alive. When a man is exhausted by hunger to the point where he is "too weak to move," he has a right to make supplication to his enemy to save his failing life; but if he takes so much as one taste of that food -- which is holy, by the precept of all ages all nations -- he is barred from lifting his hand against that enemy for that time.
It was left to a Brigadier General of Volunteers in the American army to put shame upon a custom which even the degraded Spanish friars had respected. We promoted him for it.
[More in this vein. Twain grants Funston bravery, but points out that in his adventure, he ran but one danger -- that of starving. He and his men (picked from local tribes who had great hate for Aguinaldo) were well disguised, they outnumbered Aguinaldo's forces dramatically, and they had lulled suspicion by use of the coded messages. He was expected by Aguinaldo, in fact he was waited for with hands outstretched... as Twain said, "It was hospitality repaid in a brand-new, up-to-date, modern civilization fashion, and would be admired by many."]
The utter completeness of the surprise, the total absence of suspicion which had been secured by the forgeries and falsehoods, is best brought out in Funston's humorous account of the episode in one of his rollicking speeches...
"The Macabebes [those tribal members aiding Funston] fired on those men and two fell dead; the others retreated, firing as they ran, and I might say here that they retreated with such great alacrity and enthusiasm that they dropped eighteen rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
"Sigismondo rushed back into the house, pulled his revolver, and told the insurgent officers to surrender. They all threw up their hands except Villia, Aguinaldo's chief of staff; he had on one of hose new fangled Mauser revolvers and he wanted to try it. But before he had the Mauser out of its scabbard he was shot twice; Sigismondo was a pretty fair marksman himself.
"Alambra was shot in the face. He jumped out of the window the house, by the way, stood on the bank of the river. He went out of the window and went clear down into the river, the water being twenty-five feet below the bank. He escaped, swam across the river and got away, and surrendered five months afterwards.
"Villia, shot in the shoulder, followed him out of the window and into the river, but the Macabebes saw him and ran down to the river bank, and they waded in and fished him out, and kicked him all the way up the bank, and asked him how he liked it. (Laughter) [from the audience]."
While it is true that the daredevils were not in danger upon this occasion, they were in awful peril at one time; in peril of a death so awful that swift extinction by bullet, by the axe, by the sword, by the rope, by drowning, by fire, is a kindly mercy contrasted with it; a death so awful that it holds its place unchallenged as the supremest of human agonies -- death by starvation. Aguinaldo saved them from that.
These being the facts, we come now to the question, Is Funston to blame? I think not. And for that reason I think too much is being made of this matter. He did not make his own disposition, It was born with him. It chose his ideals for him, he did not choose them. It chose the kind of society It liked, the kind of comrades It preferred, ... It admired everything that Washington did not admire, and hospitably received and coddled everything that Washington would have trned out of doors -- but It, and It only, was to blame, not Funston; . . . It had a native predilection for unsavory conduct, but it would be in the last degree unfair to hold Funston to blame for the outcome of his infirmity; as clealy unfair as it would be to blame him because his conscience leaked out through one of his pores when he was little -- a thing which he could not help, and he couldn't have raised it, anyway; It was able to say to an enemy, "Have pity on me, I am starving; I am too weak to move, give me food; I am your friend, I am your fellow patriot, your fellow Filipino, and am fighting for our dear country's liberties, like you -- have pity, give me food, save my life, there is no other help!" and It was able to refresh and restore Its marionette with food, and then shoot down the giver of it while his hand was stretched out in welcome . . . It has the noble gift of humor, and can make a banquet almost die with laughter when it has a funny incident to tell aboutl this one will reading again -- and over and over again, in fact:
[Here, Twain repeats line for line the excerpt from Funston's speech quoted above, ending with:]
"Villia, shot in the shoulder, followed him out of the window and into the river, but the Macabebes saw him and ran down to the river bank, and they waded in and fished him out, and kicked him all the way up the bank, and asked him how he liked it. (Laughter) [from the audience]."
(This was a wounded man.) But it is only It that is speaking, not Funston. With youthful glee It can see sink down in death the simple creatures who had answered Its fainting prayer for food, and without remorse It can note the reproachful look in their dimming eyes; but in fairness we must remember that this is only It, not Funston; . . . And It -- not Funston -- comes home now, to teach us children what patriotism is! Surely It ought to know.
It is plain to me, and I think it ought to be plain to all, that Funston is not in any way to blame for the things he has done, does, thinks, and says.
Now, then, we have Funston; he has happened and is on our hands. The question is, What are we going to do about it? How are we going to meet the emergency? We have seen what happened in Washington's case: he became a colossal example, and example to the whole world, and for all time -- because his name and deeds went everywhere, and inspired, as they still inspire, and will always inspire, admiration, and compel emulation. Then the thing for the world to do in the present case is to turn the gilt front of Funston's evil notoriety to the rear, and expose the back aspect of it, the right and black aspect of it, to the youth of the land; otherwise he will become an example and a boy-admiration, and will most sorrowfully and grotesquely bring his breed of patriotism into competition with Washington's. This competition has already begun, in fact. Some may not believe it, but it is nevertheless true, that there are now public-school teachers and superintendents who are holding up Funston as a model hero and patriot in the schools.
If this Funstonian boom continues, Funstonism will presently affect the army. In fact, this has already happened. There are weak-headed and weak-principled officers in all armies, and these are always ready to imitate successful notoriety-breeding methods, let them be good or bad . . . . Funston's example has bred many imitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful "water cure," for instance, to make them confess -- what? Turth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true of false, and his evidence is worthless. Yet upon such evidence American officers have actually -- but you know about those atrocities which the War Office has been hiding a year or two; and about General Smith's now world-celebrated order of massacre -- thus summarized by the press from Major Waller's testimony:
Kill and burn -- this is no time to take prisoners -- the more you kill and burn, the better -- Kill all above the age of ten -- make Samar a howling wilderness!
You see what Funston's example has produced, just in this little while -- even before he produced the example. It has advanced it in China. Also, no doubt, it was Funston's example that made us (and England) copy Weyler's reconcentrado horror after the pair of us, with our Sunday-school smirk on, and our goody-goody noses upturned toward heaven, had been calling him a "Fiend." And the fearful earthquake out there in Krakatoa, that destroyed the island and killed two million people -- No, that could not have been Funston's example; I remember now, he was not born then.
However, for all these things I blame only his It, not him. In conclusion, I have defended him as well as I could, and indeed I have found it quite easy, and have removed prejudice from him and rehabilitated him in the public esteem and regard, I think. I was not able to do anything for his It, It being out of my jurisdiction, and out of Funston's and everybody's. As I have shown, Funston is not to blame for his fearful deed; and, if I tried, I might also show that he is not to blame for our still holding in bondage the man he captured by unlawful means, and who is not any more rightfully our prisoner and spoil than he would be if he were stolen money. He is entitled to his freedom. If he were a king of a great power, or an ex-president of our republic, instead of an ex-president of a destroyed and abolished little republic, Civilization (with a large C) would criticize and complain until he got it.
Mark Twain
P.S. April 16. The President is speaking up, this morning just as this goes to the printer, and there is no uncertain sound about the note. It is the speech and spirit of a President of a people, not of a party, and we all like it, Traitors and all. I think I may speak for the other Traitors, for I am sure they feel as I do about it. I will explain that we get our title from the Funstonian patriots -- free of charge. They are always doing us little compliments like that; they are just born flatterers, those boy.
M.T.
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I'd like you to consider reading this piece again, and replacing Funston's name with Rumsfeld; the act of turning on one who has broken bread with you with the act of torturing innocent people of the land you occupied under the moral auspices of liberating; those statements of congressmen and editorials written in defense of Funston with men like Inhoufe and comments like Limbaugh's; the public support of Funston by Roosevelt with the public support of Rumsfeld by Bush. The similarities are eerie, not to mention sickening.
The final paragraphs might as well be taken out of today's newspaper word for word.
It's his postscript that gets me most though... tantalizingly short, I think it provides a rallying cry for all of us who are sick to death of what's going on:
I'M PROUD TO BE A TRAITOR!
Because it's true. I'm proud to be a Traitor. A Traitor to the It that animates those soldiers who have perpetrated torture on defenseless prisoners, those officers who ordered it done, those private contractors who aided and abetted the policies, those in the Pentagon who came up with the policies and those in the White House who allowed it to happen and now defend it.
I'm a Traitor to the it that infuses the religious and right wing zealots who are destroying our science and society wholesale. I'm a Traitor to the It animating the editors of our newsroom as well as the representatives in Congress and the Senate, rendering them too cowardly to rise up and save our nation in its time of need. I am a Traitor to our White House, the It of which is so colossal and evil, it scourges the earth and brings us ruination for decades to come. But ultimately, I am a Traitor to the It that permeates a vast proportion of my fellow American public, that allows Bush to still be in the forty-plus percentile range after all the lies have become public. The It that sits fat and lazy and complacent and apathetic in front of Michael Jackson trial news, allowing Congress to threaten NPR at every turn for being partisan while allowing the likes of Limbaugh and Savage and that hag Coulter free reign to come to the sickening defense of Rumsfeldianism.
I have no more illusions on the subject: If supporting the Bush Administration in general and supporting troops torturing prisoners are Patriotism, then I am a Traitor pure and simple. Hell, I could do far worse than sit in company with a Traitor like Mark Twain