Letters to the Editor, Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Feb. 2 piece on the Philippines ("Decades later, U.S. military pollution in Philippines linked to deaths") is an example of honest journalism that goes beyond the glittering generalities and soaring rhetoric of U.S. interventionism. While the reporter focuses on the untreated sewage, fuel, chemicals and other dangerous pollutants left behind by the U.S. military, his work lifts the veil on one of the darkest and most shameful chapters in American history and ultimately serves as a metaphor for U.S.-Philippine relations over the past century.
Controversy over the Philippines dates to 1899 when the new policy of imperialism was debated among leading Washington policymakers. After "liberating" the Filipinos from Spanish rule, President William McKinley decided to invade the archipelago because the indigenous population was "unfit for self-government.".
It was during this period that U.S. forces - guided by the principle that such islands were "ripe fruit" ready to be picked - rounded up the population into concentration camps, slaughtered hundreds of thousands, first introduced the infamous "water cure" and subjugated the public for the next 50 years. The historical record is scandalous. The list of aggressive American intervention tactics over the past hundred years is long and cruel: CIA paramilitary operations, psychological warfare, the crushing of land reform, the suppression of independent movements and the construction of a police state that would have made George Orwell weep.
But you won't find that in most American history books. That's because they've been sanitized for our consumption. And that's why the reporter's honest and courageous journalism is so important today. The Philippines, as he illustrates, has throughout the course of modern history been a virtual dumping ground for the U.S.
Nathan Van SchaikSchweinfurt, Germany