Waterboarding and ethnic cleansing by the US

The big breaking news in the United States today was the release of  the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on the torture of prisoners tagged as “Enemies of the State.” This open admission of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and being hanged in chains in walls only proves that America today hasn’t changed much since the early 1900’s. Few people know that Filipinos were one of the first to be victims of waterboarding!

A couple of months ago, my good friend, Ramon Blanch who worked with the original operators of the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu sent me a book entitled “The Imperial Cruise: The secret history of Empire and War” written by James Bradley, author of the two national best sellers, “The Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys.” This book should be a must reading by all Filipinos, especially in our schools because we know too little of America’s intentions in the Philippines at the turn of the century when we tried to rid ourselves of our Spanish colonizers.

By the time I was in High School in 1962, our history lessons about the Philippine Commonwealth were written by Gregorio Zaide or Teodoro Agoncillo really didn’t come up with all details of that era. We were also told that America accepted us as their “Brown Brothers.” That phrase apparently came from Howard Taft… but in truth, as what I read from this book, the Americans called Filipinos as “Pacific Negroes.” In short, Philippine History as it was written even by Filipinos succumbed to American propaganda!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not being anti-American. But this is the first time ever that I’ve read that at the turn of the century, the white Americans regarded Filipinos no different from the Native American Indians whom they called their “Wards”. We too were called Wards by the first Americans that arrived here. In fact, most of the American soldiers, including Gen. Black Jack Pershing all fought in the Indian Wars. They were called wars by the white American…but in truth the Native Americans were being “Ethnically cleansed” in their own lands, they just didn’t use this word in those days.

This book is about the largest diplomatic mission ever sent abroad on board the SS Manchuria with Secretary of War and future American Governor General of the Philippines and future US President William Howard Taft (yes Taft Avenue was named after him) and Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of then President Theodore Roosevelt, together with them a huge delegation of Congressmen and Senators. The cruise ship left San Francisco on July 5, 1905 and arrived in Yokohama on July 25 and went to the Philippines on Aug. 5, 1905. The purpose of this trip was to get a look and see at the new American “assets” in the Pacific.

I’m writing this piece for two reasons that I found in reading this book. The first was about the CIA Report especially on torture and waterboarding, which we already said has been hogging the headlines of US newspapers and TV news this week. Well, on page 107 of this book, there is a black and white photograph of US soldier’s waterboarding a Filipino in 1901. It makes you wonder… who was this poor Filipino from Sual? Did the Americans pay some kind of reparation to his family? I doubt it. This very same photo that also appeared in a New Yorker article on February 2008.

It is for this reason why this book is very important for Filipinos to read because it really tells the real truth about how Americans regard us Filipinos, especially when we talk about US bases or the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). Truth is… the Philippines always used that “Little Brown Brother” phrase on our naïve leaders… but with this book, (which I hope Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III and our Supreme Court Justices would read) you can tell the true intentions of America for the Philippines. Mind you, America’s pushing for the Reproductive Health law is also “ethnic cleansing” us Filipinos, beginning inside a woman’s womb!

The other reason why I’m writing this piece now is because of something I read in this book, which I first tested on many of my friends, especially in this Christmas season where we meet so many friends in many Christmas parties. So when I ask my friends… what do they know about the Aryan race and from where did they learn from it. All my friends without exception tell me that this was used by Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany.

My friends were all shocked when I told them that the great majority of the Americans… led then by its leaders, Pres. William McKinley, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt and Pres. Howard Taft believed and the American Press strongly believed that the white American race descended from the first Aryans from Iran and moved westward until they reached North America. The Aryan thinkers then believed that if the white Aryan race had a sacred Christian duty to cleanse peoples from inferior races. That’s us! More on this story in our column next Thursday. Abangan!

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