There are at least 50 of “Hiker” statues scattered across the country. The first was for the University of Minnesota. Others were placed from 1911 through 1965.
These commemorate the soldiers in the 1898 Spanish-American War and the resulting Philippine-American War lasting to 1913. While you may think that ancient history, it is not that long ago. My grandfather was a veteran of that war. He lied about his age went from North Carolina to enlist in the volunteer state, didn’t see any combat, but he did get to Cuba.
That war still has an impact on United States policy.
Hikers was what they called themselves. This was before mechanized infantry. In the Philippine War period they would hike long distances burn crops, and herd people into fortified villages (earlier called reservations, and ‘strategic hamlets’ in Vietnam War). The “Hikers” developed water boarding techniques and brought massacres to new levels. See excerpt from 1902 Lodge Committee below.
The neighborhood park closest to Donald’s childhood Queen’s home is memorializes a local Spanish American War soldier killed in the Philippines. Perhaps he had enough curiosity in his youth to learn about that war. Surely he knows the call to “remember the Maine”.
Donald Trump’s oft repeated myth of General Jack Pershing dipping bullets in pigs blood. Which were used to execute 49 of 50 captured Moro fighters while leaving one alive to warn Muslim fighters they would be banished from heaven for having swine blood in their bodies is false.
Just because the story is false doesn’t diminish the power the story has for Mr. Trump. The story of power and domination captivated him. He just had to share it with everyone.
At the time the Philippines was an American colony. Filipinos were American nationals . As Nationals they could move to any other American city such as Manila, St. Louis, Portland or Minneapolis.
Shooting 49 Muslims to control a Philippine Island is the same as shooting a few unruly residents in Minnesota.
Saying many outrageous things thrills his minions while the rest of us just think he is spouting stupid bull shit again. Here he is explicitly there is nothing wrong with killing people if there is a advantage to him. Killing Muslims is fine. Renee Good and Alex Pretti no problem. Senator Mark Kelly — sure. Anyone helping invaders is a traitor and subject to the highest penalties.
Captain Tilly Park in Queens less than a mile from DJT’s childhood home has a Spanish American war memorial. Growing up in the neighborhood may have left an impression on him.
Spain lost Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico in four months of war in 1898.
For the US the Spanish American war became the Philippine War. We declared victory several times. Officially it was proclaimed over in 1902, but resistance in Muslim southern islands lasted until 1913.
Total deaths in from 1898 to 1903 have been estimated from 200,000 to 775,000 reported in Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire.
Bud Dajo Massacre
A sample of modern American military massacres:
| massacre |
Date |
Killed |
|
wOUNDED KNEE,
South Dakota
|
December 29 1890 |
146 |
| Bud Dajo, Philippines |
March 5, 1906 |
600 to 1,000 |
| My Lai, Vietnam |
March 16, 1968 |
347 to 504 |
The Battle of Moro Crater also called the Bud Dajo Massacre illustrates the savagery of the war. Below is the second most famous photograph of the Bud Dajo Massacre. This is a month and half later with soldiers standing callously around recently de-fleshed skulls.
The most famous one is here. I think it is too obscene to put directly in this story. You will not be better for looking at the most famous one.
Skulls displayed at Moro Crater massacre six weeks after “Battle”.
Mark Twain was moved to report bitterly on the on the action:
Let us now consider two or three details of our military history. In one of the great battles of the Civil War ten per cent of the forces engaged on the two sides were killed and wounded. At Waterloo, where four hundred thousand men were present on the two sides, fifty thousand fell, killed and wounded, in five hours, leaving three hundred and fifty thousand sound and all right for further adventures. Eight years ago, when the pathetic comedy called the Cuban War was played, we summoned two hundred and fifty thousand men.We fought a number of showy battles, and when the war was over we had lost two hundred and sixty-eight men out of our two hundred and fifty thousand, in killed and wounded in the field, and just fourteen times as many by the gallantry of the army doctors in the hospitals and camps. We did not exterminate the Spaniards—far from it. In each engagement we left an average of two per cent of the enemy killed or crippled on the field.
Contrast these things with the great statistics which have arrived from that Moro crater! There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded—counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred—including women and children—and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.
The underlined section in Twain’s quote is a literal description not an allegory. He must have seen the photo of the battle which is centered on the corpse of a young woman stripped to the waist surrounded by “Christian soldiers of the United States” with a dead infant on her lap.
The University of Michigan web article on this concludes our actions here are a direct line to our wars in the middle east. The are also apply to current policy toward Minneapolis, for Somali descendants, VA nurses and others.
….. we can learn from the history of Moro resistance by paying attention to the connections between past and present. The Moro resistance was the first encounter between the US army and a Muslim armed force. This experience has influenced the US military’s approach to Muslim “enemies” throughout the twentieth century, and into the present day.
Many of the same violent strategies that the US military deployed against the Moro people have been retooled in US wars in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. The similarities between the US occupation of the Philippines and military interventions in the Middle East are striking. These connections are even made by US leaders. US President Donald Trump, for example, praised the military service of General John J. Pershing of the US Army in the Philippines for his mass killing of Moros, including civilians. He tweeted, “Study what general Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught there was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” Displaying hatred of Muslims and racist violence, Pershing dipped bullets of pig’s blood and used them to kill the Moro opposition. Trump’s suggestion that the US military deploy the methods of General Pershing to the Middle East reflects colonial violence today. This connects back to the history of Moro resistance and US military imperialism in the southern Philippines.
Young girl surviver of the Bud Dajo massacre, 1906. This image became a postcard for American consumption. The caption reads: "Miss Dajo" Sole surviver Mt. Dajo fight. With this caption, the postcard rewrote the story of what happened at Bud Dajo by erasing American violence. University of Michigan
Lodge Committee excerpt on Philippine War
Examples from the historical record suggest the brutality of American practice in the Philippines, both as to the use of water torture and the broader pattern of behavior. Sergeant Edward J. Davis of Massachusetts testified before a Senate committee about the water torture of Joveniano Ealdama, the mayor of the town of Igbaras, in Iloilo province on Panay, on November 27, 1900:
Sergeant Davis. [The mayor] was taken out into a big hall in the convent there, his clothes were all taken off, his hands were tied behind him, and he was asked for information.
He would not give this information, so they took him to this water tank. It was a tank holding about a hundred gallons of water. They held him under the faucet and he was made to take this water into his mouth at the command of Captain Glenn.
Senator Rawlins. How was his mouth kept open?
A. It was kept open with a stick.
Q. And after he was filled up with water, what else was done with him?
A. After they filled him up with water he swelled way up and then these two soldiers would roll the water out of him. They had an interpreter over him and they asked him if he would tell what information they were after. He told some, and then after they released him they wanted further information out of him and he would not give it. So they took him down right there and they took a syringe and squirted water up his nostrils. He would not give the information then and they put salt in the water. Then he was willing to tell.
Sergeant Davis testified to the Senate committee that at the time Joveniano Ealdama was tortured, Davis had been in Igbaras about seven months, that the American troops had no trouble there, that no attacks had been made on the Americans, that no American soldiers had been wounded or killed, and that no offense had been given by the inhabitants to the soldiers. The day after the water torture of Ealdama, the American troops put Igbaras, a town of ten thousand residents, to the torch.
On an entirely different note Balut and Durian
