Too much television hype over Iraq tragedy

The trouble with having hundreds of journalists formerly "embedded" but now roving the scene desperately in search of stories is that everything gets magnified – I won’t even venture the pejorative "exaggerated".

How many Iraqi civilians were killed in the three-week war, and its aftermath? The figure is 1,250 civilians – plus 2,320 Iraqi military.

Everyday we get horrifying footage on cable TV, it’s true, of children cruelly maimed, having lost both arms and other limbs, and a dozen in their families to stray American bombs or missiles. Every death, every injury, is of course a tragedy. Nobody can minimize that. Yet, as a foreign correspondent, I’ve seen very much worse scenes of carnage, tragedy, even massacre in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Indian Pakistani war, and the GESTAPU coup in Indonesia (where half a million were deliberately slaughtered by rampaging mobs).

I’d say that Iraq got off very lightly.

Along with the rest of the world, I’m touched by the suffering of those inflicted, but war, alas, is like that. There’s never any logic in the choice of victims.

How many did the American military lose in the Iraq operation? The last figure I heard was 128, with two missing. (By now, possibly, the death toll may have gone up to 130?) The Brits lost 31 – one of natural causes. In the weeks and months to come, with all the perils of "postwar" occupation, they’ll probably lose more men (and women soldiers, to be gender-perceptive).

By golly, when Filipinos fought the Americans between 1898 and 1902, we killed 4,234 American soldiers. Another 2,818 had been wounded by our Revolutionary troops and guerrilla fighters, many of them dying of their injuries back home in the United States. The cost of the war to America had come to $600 million – in the hard currency of that time. The Iraq war was a cakewalk, in terms of blood and expense, by comparison.

In short, President (and General) Emilio Aguinaldo’s Filipino army, using at first conventional, then guerrilla tactics to offset superior American firepower and equipment, proved far more effective and courageous than Saddam’s over-touted Republican Guards. Those Iraqi elite divisions simply melted away. Ours battled the Americans more tenaciously, and without regard to casualties suffered.

For the Filipinos the cost had been horrendous. When the Americans some years ago agonized over the My Lai massacre and other atrocities committed in Vietnam by supposedly clean-cut American boys, I couldn’t help musing that such incidents were nothing compared to the massacres inflicted by US troops not only in Samar, but in Caloocan (yep, right here in what’s now Metro Manila) and elsewhere. They called our soldiers insurrectos, but we didn’t deserve to be called "rebels" since the US didn’t control the Philippines as "rulers" at that time. We had defeated the Spaniards, in our earlier Revolution, but on December 10, 1898 the Treaty of Paris was treacherously signed. Article III transferred Philippine "sovereignty" from Spain to the US. In a codicil, the US had agreed to pay Spain the sum of $20 million. The inevitable protest went up that the Americans had "bought" ten million Filipinos for two dollars per head! (By the way, in the Spanish-American war, the Yanks had lost only 379 men).

And to think that Aguinaldo had already overthrown the Spaniards, while welcoming the Americans as "allies" with open arms. That’s what US Admiral George Dewey had assured Aguinaldo: That they were only arriving to help the Filipinos.

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Let’s reexamine the Battle of Manila Bay, the anniversary of which we may note on May 1 incidentally. On that date in 1898, Dewey and his four armored cruisers (including his flagship, USS "Olympia"), one regular cruiser, one gunboat and a Coast Guard revenue cutter steamed into the Bay.

Spanish Admiral Patricio Montojo, a morose old man, had only a claptrap collection of unarmored vessels to oppose him. American artillery fire was relatively inaccurate, but the Spaniard’s marksmanship was even more atrocious. Dewey blew the Spanish "fleet" out of the water. In truth, the Spaniards had maneuvered their ships close to shore, so their surviving crews could wade ashore after the "sinking" of their vessels. When I was a little boy, my dad used to take me to Manila Bay to point out the rusted hulks and wreckage, still, in those days, jutting out of the water.

The only American fatality in that funny engagement was Chief Engineer Randall of the cutter "McCulloch", an overweight gentleman who keeled over during the action and succumbed to heat prostration. (He wouldn’t have lasted either, alas, in the Iraqi desert.)

The only significant damage suffered was a busted deck beam on the cruiser, USS "Baltimore". On the Spanish side, 381 men were dead or wounded. Thus ended the "great" Battle of Manila Bay.

The Americans began pouring men and material into their toehold in Cavite and later onto the beaches of Pasay, Baclaran and Parañaque. Our toughest officer, the choleric but brilliant General Antonio Luna, fumed at the spectacle of American troops landing in force. He begged General Aguinaldo for permission to attack and destroy the Americans before there were too many of them to handle. General Noriel, too, furiously protested Dewey’s demand that their victorious Filipino troops, who had overwhelmed most of the Spanish garrisons outside of Manila and in Central and Southern Luzon, evacuate the suburbs of Manila to enable the American regiments to move in. Aguinaldo simply smiled and reminded them: "You are being tragic. They are our allies, always remember that!"

Months later, much too late, with 60,000 Yanquis in the field, the stricken Aguinaldo realized that his imagined "allies" intended to stay. When he fought back finally, he fought with ferocity.

Our forces lost 16,000 men in combat by body count. (The actual total might have gone over 20,000). More than 200,000 Filipino civilians were dead (see? Iraq was a zarzuela). They had either been shot down, or died of starvation.

Even our work animal, the carabao, suffered. Among the statistics I dredged up was that the carabao population had been reduced to one-tenth.

I wrote an article on that half-forgotten war we waged with America in September 1982 in "MANILA" Magazine. Here’s what I had concluded: "Alas, there were no television crews to ‘cover’ the rapine and famine of that four-year struggle."

Wouldn’t it have rivetting on CNN, BBC, FOX News. Al Ghezeera, if it had existed then, out of Qatar, would simply not have been interested.

It would have played well on TV, though: I’m referring to Emilio Aguinaldo’s furious denunciation of the Americans in his Otro Manifesto del Sr. Presidente del Gobierno Revolucionario, 1899.

He had declared: "I denounce these acts before the world in order that the conscience of mankind may pronounce its infallible verdict as to who are the oppressors of nations and the oppressors of mankind. Upon their heads be all the blood which may be shed!"

If you want to know how the American press reported that conflict, here’s what The New York Times wrote in 1899: ". . . These babes of the jungle from Aguinaldo down . . . are veritable children. They show the weaknesses and the vices of the resourceless and unmoral human infant. Aguinaldo is a vain popinjay, a wicked liar, and a perfectly incapable leader. His men are dupes, a foolish, incredulous mob."

Gee whiz, my grandfather, Captain Isabelo Soliven, was one of those dupes.

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To be fair, other newspapers like The New York World, July 26, 1899, were more accurate and courageous in their reporting: ". . . Our soldiers here and there resort to horrible measures with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes judges, sheriffs and executioners . . . ‘I don’t want any more prisoners sent to Manila,’ was the verbal order from the Governor-General three months ago . . . It is now the custom to avenge the death of an American soldier by burning to the ground all the houses, and killing right and left the natives who are only ‘suspects’."

Those Iraqi Muslim mobs which are now demonstrating against the Americans – egged on by their Ayatollahs, Imams, and sundry agitators – to demand that the Americans leave Iraq, had better take care. They seem to think that with so many TV cameras all over, they can scream and threaten, fists upraised, and thus prod the Americans into getting out.

With Saddam gone (whether kaput or hiding out somewhere) they may believe the Americans are push-overs. They might soon discover that it’s second-nature to Americans, when hard-pressed, to get their dander up, get nasty, and begin to deliver blow for blow. And step with a hard boot on trouble-makers.

Are they not afraid that more suicide-bombers and more terrorism will be unleashed on them? If you ask me, they don’t really care. They already know they’re under relentless attack anyway, from Osama, from al-Qaeda, from every radical Islamic group. Saddam and Iraq merely gave them the opportunity to hit back at a tangible target.

Syria next? I wouldn’t be surprised. When the Americans get going – they get going. They’re just as barbaric, in a sense, for all their modern veneer, as they were in the Philippines in 1898.

Don’t get me wrong. Having slugged it out toe to toe, Filipinos and Americans are now friends. We were comrades-in-arms in Bataan and Corregidor, and in the three-year guerrilla war against the Japanese. We fought shoulder-to-shoulder in Korea. We were together in South Vietnam. My late father, Benito Soliven, fought in Bataan as a Major in the US Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE).

The history of our family runs the whole gamut of Filipino reactions to America. My grandfather on my father’s side, as I’ve already mentioned, was a die-hard revolucionario. He had fought the Spaniards in the Ilocos region, and, when the Yanks betrayed us, fought them too. He had been appointed head of military intelligence for the North by the Aguinaldo Government, a sort of Ilocano "James Bond". He used to pass effortlessly through American lines time and again, disguised as a peasant (he had been a rice farmer in real life), a priest, or a travelling tradesman. A high price had been put on Capitan ‘Belo’s head by the Americans.

When "peace" came, the Americans had been so impressed with Captain Isabelo’s intrepid nature that it is they who convinced him, their former enemy, to run for the post of Mayor of Sto. Domingo, our hometown. He was 33 when he took his oath as Mayor. There was a big party that night to celebrate his becoming Mayor. After the banquet, grandfather had gone to sleep in an armchair in the azotea – and never woke up. He had a perfect record. No graft and corruption. No hits, no runs, no errors. He had the shortest term, of course, on record: Less than 20 hours.

After enduring tremendous hardship in war, and overcoming so many dangers, he had died in his sleep at the moment of personal victory.

It was suspected he died of bangungot.