Listener Calls

This is a transcript from an earlier broadcast of this episode. There may be slight differences in wording and content.

BRIAN: If you’re just joining us, this is BackStory. And we’re talking today about the rules of war in American history. We’ve reached the point in our show where we turn to our listeners for their questions and their stories on the topic.

PETER: Hey guys, gather around. We got a call from the west coast from L.A. It’s Robert. Robert, welcome to BackStory.

ROBERT: Thanks so much. After watching the US forces conduct an operation into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden and basically or essentially invade one of our allies, I was wondering if there had been other instances where we have invaded or attacked our allies and how we have justified it.

PETER: I think the status of nations we engage with or the wars we fight, it’s unclear given the way Americans have thought about their place on this continent, for instance, what kinds of claims they have to the hinterland. And there’s always been an assumption– and this is suggested by the idea of Manifest Destiny in the 19th century– that other powers all over the hemisphere, for instance, Spain, are there only temporarily.

They must recede because old empires must give way to the New Republic. And it’s that way of thinking about the world that I think has fudged the distinction between friends and enemies, because you’re inevitably going to be the dominant power in the hemisphere. And that’s a powerful American idea going back into your century, Ed.

ED: It’s not really that we’re the dominant power. We’re on the side of universal rights and justice, right?

PETER: Oh, yes. Yes. Exactly right.

ED: Especially in our hemisphere. And you think about back in the 19th century, it’s OK for us to go into Panama. It’s OK for us to go into Nicaragua. It’s OK for us to go into Mexico, because we’re not doing it out of any selfish purposes. We’re doing it to, say, open an international shipping lane.

Or we’re doing it in order to create a new home for the expansion of slavery. Or we’re doing it to free people from the yoke of the archaic Spanish. So I think there’s actually a pretty deep tradition of this that is based on an idea that we are the agents of a more universal kind of freedom and autonomy.

So I think that actually ties into the bin Laden story, which is that this is not really about Pakistani, American relations. This is about making the world safe for democracy. What do you think, Robert?

ROBERT: Actually, I think there is a really interesting link that you guys bring up that we are fighting the just war. And it’s interesting. We don’t really look at it as we’re invading Pakistan. We’re going after bin Laden, an evil guy.

PETER: You know that old phrase, might makes right? You might say that the mighty are blinded by their conception of their right.

ED: But what American policymakers would say, this is not really our right. It’s our obligation. And it’s a burden, not an opportunity that we have the capacity to get rid of Osama bin Laden and therefore we must. And even if that has the unfortunate cost of alienating our allies, that’s a short term cost for a long term benefit.

BRIAN: Thanks, a lot Robert.

ROBERT: Thank you so much. I love the show.

BRIAN: Thank you very much.

PETER: We got another call, and it’s Randolph from San Francisco. Welcome to BackStory.

RANDOLPH: Hi, and thank you very much. So I’m kind of a student of American colonialism in the Philippines. And I know that during the Philippine American War when the Filipino soldiers who fought against the Spanish turned around and fought against the Americans. And it changed into a guerrilla war. The combatants from the Philippines side, the Filipino fighters, didn’t wear a uniform.

They could blend into the population very easily. And it sort of spooked the American military. And so I was wondering, did the rules of engagement change as a result of this encounter with a guerrilla style warfare?

PETER: What Randolph is getting at is when you can’t distinguish combatants from civilian population, then it seems like it’s very hard to follow the laws of war. American soldiers were shown to have been committing atrocities or cruelties, something like our modern water boarding, pouring water into people that were being interrogated. What was the impact of all that?

ED: I think a striking things looking back on the American occupation of the Philippines is how racialized is was. They made up any kind of name that they could think of. Racist slang that’s usually applied to black people. They called them Indians– just anything that justified behaving toward them in ways that the military felt was necessary to triumph.

BRIAN: Randolph, if you ask a question– this is Brian, 20th century guy– you ask a question at the beginning of my century, I’m left with no alternative but to move forward rather than back in history. And to move forward, we declared victory shortly after this started in July 4, I think, of 1902. And the problem became one of the Philippine government fighting these indigenous brigands, as we put it.

And the reason I talked about moving forward is I think that this foreshadows the central strategy for Americans dealing with what we consider to be unconventional war. And that was to make it the war of the proxy governments that we supported. And what I have in mind specifically is Vietnamization in Vietnam.

We simply never came up with a terribly effective set of rules of engagement to deal with those tactics. And what we did come up with was withdrawing, Vietnamizing, if that is a verb, the war in Vietnam and pulling out. We also take advantage today of our global alliances. And in the global war on terror against a global enemy, as we put it, we use techniques like rendition, sending prisoners in the war on terror to foreign countries and letting countries that are not as burdened by constitutional niceties deal with getting information.

If there are things that we are uncomfortable doing that don’t quite fit within the Geneva protocols, well, then let’s contract out.

RANDOLPH: The point about rendition and having the other guys do the dirty work, that’s what’s striking about the American military action in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. And that it was done by Americans. And in particular, there’s this one guy that stands out. His name was Army General Jacob Smith.

They called him Howling Jake. He gave a command, which, to my mind, is one of the most atrocious commands made by a US military officer. And that’s he told his troops after 48 American soldiers were massacred, in retaliation, he ordered his troops to kill everyone over the age of 10. He also said, the more you kill and the more you burn, the more you’ll please me. So he was eventually court marshaled for that command, but it ended up being like a slap on the wrist.

And I was kind of curious how why that wasn’t more of a big deal, because it was clearly a violation of the rules of engagement even for that time period.

BRIAN: Well, Randolph, we haven’t talked about public attention to all of this. And in the case of the Philippines, we do know that is was letters from American soldiers themselves back to their family and loved ones, who, sometimes in passing and sometimes because they were concerned, mentioned the cruelties is to the indigenous people there. And a lot of people back home got pretty stirred up about this.

Some even protested. That’s, from my opinion, the good news. The bad news is that the attention to that, the ability to sustain interest in those folks halfway around the world really was very limited. But the key variable is the degree to which the public puts pressure on its government in order to comply with the rules of law.

PETER: Yeah, but that pressure works two ways, Brian, as you well know. And that is the mantra, support our troops. This is a test for patriots. Are you going to support them, or not? Of course, the savageries start with the other guys. So public opinion is a many splintered thing.

I think you’re right. It’s the glare of public opinion in the long term that brings atrocities to our collective consciousness. And some rule-making may result from that. I don’t think that the Philippines constitute a big learning experience, however. It’s a complicated thing when you extend your power and your rule across the oceans.

And as Americans discovered, it was a kind of loss of innocence, though there wasn’t much innocence to be lost after the history of the Indian Wars of the 19th century. On that exceedingly gloomy note, we thank you for stirring the pot.

BRIAN: Thank you, Randolph.

RANDOLPH: Thanks a lot, guys.