Severian
20th October 2003, 01:20
Associated Press article (http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Oct/10192003/nation_w/nation_w.asp)
In an eight-hour visit, Bush for the first time drew explicit comparisons between the transition he is seeking in Iraq and the rough road to democracy that the Philippines traveled from the time the United States seized it from Spain in 1898 to the present day.
"Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy," Bush said, taking on the critics of his oft-stated goal to use Iraq as a laboratory for spreading democratic institutions in the Middle East. "The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. Those doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago."
While the administration often speaks of the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Bush used the visit here to make a less explicit analogy to the American administration of the Philippines, which also led to the formation of a democracy. But the comparison has less power to reassure, given that the Philippine government did not gain full autonomy for five decades.
And wasn't so democratic after that.
PBS/Frontline history of the Phillipines (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/philippines/tl01.html)
Points out that after the Spanish-American War, the U.S. suppressed a pro-independence Filipino revolt:
The outgunned Filipinos adopted guerilla tactics; the U.S. army responded by rounding peasants into "reconcentration camps" and declaring entire areas battle zones, in which no distinctions were made between combatants and civilians. At least 4,200 American and 16,000 Filipino soldiers are thought to have been killed in the fighting. Historians have debated the scale of civilian deaths, with estimates ranging from 200,000 to almost 1 million.
Y'know, I think Bush has made a pretty good comparison here, unlike his usual lame WWII analogies.
In an eight-hour visit, Bush for the first time drew explicit comparisons between the transition he is seeking in Iraq and the rough road to democracy that the Philippines traveled from the time the United States seized it from Spain in 1898 to the present day.
"Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy," Bush said, taking on the critics of his oft-stated goal to use Iraq as a laboratory for spreading democratic institutions in the Middle East. "The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. Those doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago."
While the administration often speaks of the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Bush used the visit here to make a less explicit analogy to the American administration of the Philippines, which also led to the formation of a democracy. But the comparison has less power to reassure, given that the Philippine government did not gain full autonomy for five decades.
And wasn't so democratic after that.
PBS/Frontline history of the Phillipines (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/philippines/tl01.html)
Points out that after the Spanish-American War, the U.S. suppressed a pro-independence Filipino revolt:
The outgunned Filipinos adopted guerilla tactics; the U.S. army responded by rounding peasants into "reconcentration camps" and declaring entire areas battle zones, in which no distinctions were made between combatants and civilians. At least 4,200 American and 16,000 Filipino soldiers are thought to have been killed in the fighting. Historians have debated the scale of civilian deaths, with estimates ranging from 200,000 to almost 1 million.
Y'know, I think Bush has made a pretty good comparison here, unlike his usual lame WWII analogies.