Spanish-American War Parallels with Iraq War

I’m curious if anyone agrees with, buys into, or can make parallels between the Spanish-American War and subsequent Philippine-American War with the current engagements in Iraq.

U.S. President Bush in a state dinner hosted by GMA compared the Philippines as a model for rebuilding Iraq. Quote, “the United States had liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.” A reference to the United State’s “freeing” of the Filipinos from the U.S. itself in 1946 or from years of Spanish rule in 1898? All the U.S. really did back then was to shift sand from one colonizer to anther, right?

Is the Iraqi new government leadership being deceived much like Aguinaldo was lied to by Admiral Dewey? In a previous post, I wrote that John Foreman, American historian of the early Philippine-American War period stated that, "Aguinaldo and his inexperienced followers were so completely carried away by the humanitarian avowels of the greatest republic the world had seen that they willingly consented to cooperate with the Americans on mere verbal promises, instead of a written agreement which could be held binding on the U.S. Government." In fact, Aguinaldo in his book, "A Second Look At America," admits he naively believed that Dewey "acted in good faith" on behalf of the Filipinos. But Bush, I mean McKinley, was already driven by a new policy of imperialistic expansion and International Manifest Destiny had already decided on the fate of the Philippines and had never intended to recognize Philippine Independence.

What about U.S. tactics? From 1898 through the mid-1900s, the strategy was to burn, pillage and kill as many Filipinos as possible while isolating the Filipino guierrillas. Some American soldiers participated in war crimes, including the torture and killing of Filipino POWs. Today, troops are isolating Iraqi insurrgents while performing what I’m disturbingly hearing as being U.S. War Crimes also. This includes the use of napalm at Falluja, firing on medical facilities and personnel, the use of chemical weapons, the gunning down of Iraqi civilians at Ramadi, torture at Abu Ghraib, reports of mass graves of Iraqi civiliians including women and children…the list goes on. But who am I to know what’s factual, I’m not there. Could this just be bias in the liberal media?

What about the Muslims versus the Christians analogy? The Moros were Muslims, an Islamic-based group.

What about the timeline? How long will the U.S. really stay in Iraq? The U.S. stayed with us for 46 years effectively wiping out hints of any Filipino identify we had.

And how about the death toll comparisons? During the Filipino-American War, some 16,000 Filipino soldiers were killed and another 250,000 to 1,000,000 civilians died of war, famine, or disease. While only 4,324 U.S. soldiers died and 2,840 were wounded. In Iraq, between 39,942 and 44,451 civilians have been reported killed by military intervention in Iraq. U.S. military casualties in Iraq total 2,591 and 19,270 have been wounded. The only correlation is the obvious imbalance between military and civilian casualties.

Learn from our past, they say, so we don't condemn ourselves to repeat the mistakes.