White supremacy crossed the Pacific with the U.S. Army. Officers told their troops “the Filipinos were 'niggers,' no better than the Indians, and were to be treated as such.” A white private wrote home: “The weather is intensely hot, and we are all tired, dirty and hungry, so we have to kill niggers whenever we have a chance, to get even for all our trouble.

The Buffalo Soldiers, Black veterans of the Indian wars, had entered another conflict rich in painful ironies. They were under orders from a government and officer class committed to combating self-determination for people of color. Filipinos and Black soldiers, white officers were shocked to find, often became friends not enemies. U.S. General Robert Hughes wrote: “The darkey troops . . . sent to Samar mixed with the natives at once. Whenever they came together they became great friends. When I withdrew the darkey company from Santa Rita I was told that the natives even shed tears or their going away.”

After African American troops began to clash with a foe whose cause they believed just, they expressed their anger to Black newspapers. Private William Fulbright saw the U.S. conducting "a gigantic scheme of robbery and oppression." Trooper Robert L. Campbell insisted "these people are right and we are wrong and terribly wrong" and said he would not serve as a soldier because no man "who has any humanity about him at all would desire to fight against such a cause as this." John Galloway told how the Army fostered bigotry: "The whites have begun to establish their diabolical race hatred in all its home rancor . . . even endeavoring to propagate the phobia among the Spaniards and Filipinos so as to be sure of the foundation of their supremacy when the civil rule is established."

In mid-June, 1898, General Aguinaldo issued his declaration of independence, and the U.S. found itself in a war to crush Filipinos who sought a government of, for and by the people. President McKinley, who eventually sent 70,000 troops, including 6,000 African Americans, called his mission “benevolent assimilation.” But it bore the earmarks of racial warfare and a brutal colonial oppression.

A U.S. press that initially lauded him as a freedom fighter now began to demonize Aguinaldo. As U.S. corporate investors arrived, the U.S. Army grew more aggressive and clashes with armed and unarmed Filipinos became frequent. The San Francisco Argonaut, an influential Republican paper, spoke candidly of U.S. plans: “We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately, they are infested with Filipinos.” The Argonaut advocated forms of torture that “would impress the Maylay mind”—“the rack, the thumbscrew, the trial by fire, the trial by molten lead, boiling insurgents alive.”

Aguinaldo commanded only twenty regiments, and his men were largely armed with primitive weapons, but he also enjoyed, as the U.S. War Department reported in 1900 “almost complete unity of action of the entire population.” General Arthur MacArthur found “the Filipino masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he leads.” McArthur concluded the foe “needed bayonet treatment for at least a decade.” His estimate proved prophetic.

U.S. military forays descended into a series of shameful atrocities that included the massacre of prisoners, civilian and military, and entire villages. General William Shafter told a journalist it might be necessary to kill half the native population to bring “perfect justice” to the other half. Marine General Littleton Waller, later known as “the butcher of Samar,” issued orders to “punish Filipino treachery with immediate death.” General Robert Hughes, U.S. commander in Manila, justified the Army's atrocities against civilians: “The women and children are part of the family and where you wish to inflict punishment you can punish the man probably worse in that way than in any other.” Asked by a Senator if this was “civilized warfare,” he responded, “These people are not civilized.”

On the island of Samar Marine Brigadier General Jacob Smith announced that the enemy was any male or female “ten years and up.” He pledged to turn Samar into “a howling wilderness” and told his soldiers: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me."

Reports from the field confirmed a war without rules. A U.S. Red Cross worker reported seeing “horribly mutilated Filipino bodies,” and said, “American soldiers are determined to kill every Filipino in sight.” A white Kansan soldier wrote, “The country won't be pacified until the niggers are killed off like the Indians,” and another wanted “to blow every nigger into a nigger heaven.” A soldier from Washington wrote of bloodthirsty “sights you could hardly believe,” and concluded, “A white man seems to forget that he is human.”

In the use of torture, the Iraq experience flowed from the Philippines. Stuart Creighton Miller's fine study of the Philippine occupation, “Benevolent Assimilation,” noted on the island of Luzon, the U.S. Army uprooted entire rural populations, burned people's homes, and destroyed their property, including livestock. Surviving villagers were packed into concentration camps and these were inside what General Franklin Bell called a “dead zone.” “Everything outside . . . was systematically destroyed - humans, crops, food stores, domestic animals, houses and boats,” Miller wrote. “These tactics,” he concluded, “were the cheapest means of producing a demoralized and obedient population.”

Captured Filipino prisoners had a short life, so there was little need for an Abu Gharib. Some U.S. journalists were appalled to find the Army officers ordered the murder, torture and mass uprooting of civilians. The editor of the Detroit Journal asked if “the policy of force,” which the Spanish had used, will “win us the respect and affection of a people who are saying almost unanimously that they do not like us and our ways and that they wish to be left to themselves?”

Some U.S. journalists, however, saw race as a crucial factor, and approved of atrocities. The Associated Press' Charles Ballantine stated that the foe was “unreliable, untrustworthy, ignorant, vicious, immoral and lazy . . . tricky, and, as a race more dishonest than any known race on the face of the earth.” A Philadelphia Ledger reporter stated, “The only thing they know and fear is force, violence and brutality, and we give it to them.” Calling the enemy “a noisome reptile,” he detailed the U.S. response: “Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women and children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten and up . . ..”

In the Philippines the U.S. torture of choice was not “waterboarding but “the water cure” which forced water into the stomachs of victims. One soldier admitted he had used the water cure against 160 Filipino prisoners, and 134 had died. Unlike today's Iraq, abuse or torture were not blamed on “a few bad apples” but explained as military policy. U.S. Governor of the Philippines [and later President of the United States and a Supreme Court Chief Justice] William Howard Taft testified under oath that U.S. soldiers were under orders to use the “water cure” on captives.

War hero General Frederick Funston, speaking at a Chicago banquet in his honor, boasted he personally hanged 35 Filipinos without trial. He also suggested that mobs lynch Americans who signed peace petitions. Funston, according to testimony before the U.S. Senate, also had ordered his men “to take no prisoners,” and personally administered the “water cure” to captives. President Roosevelt ordered Funston silenced and reprimanded - not because he exposed Army policy, but because he thought Funston was using a bellicose image to run for the White House. Unlike George W. Bush, TR never said, “We do not torture.” And Funston was never tried for his admitted crimes.

The Philippine occupation was the first war, historian Gail Buckley has pointed out, in which “American officers and troops were officially charged with what we would now call war crimes.” In 44 military trials, all of which ended in convictions, including that of General Jacob Smith, “sentences, almost invariably, were light.” The Baltimore American had to admit the U.S. occupation “aped” Spain's cruelty and committed crimes “we went to war to banish.” In his 1984 George Orwell wrote, “The purpose of torture is torture.”

After fighting the United States invasion for almost three years, in March 1901 Aguinaldo was captured by Colonel Funston. It was a moment similar to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 when many thought the insurgency would end. Washington predicted a swift end to Filipino resistance, especially after Aguinaldo signed an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and persuaded fellow officers to accept amnesty.

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