We've sent GIs to the Philippines before

January 22, 2002, Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY Caution: Moral Snares Ahead
We've sent GIs to the Philippines before--with disastrous
results.

By ANDREW J. BACEVICH

The GIs arriving in the southern Philippines to offer aid in the
fight against the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf are by no means
the
first U.S. troops to take up station in places such as Mindanao,
Basilan
and Jolo. As they do so, Americans would do well to recall when the
U.S. last set out to crush Muslim separatists in that exotic clime.

In 1903, having put down an insurrection by Filipino nationalists
hoping that the overthrow of Spanish rule might lead to independence,
President Theodore Roosevelt moved quickly to complete the
pacification of
the United States' new Pacific colony. He ordered his favorite
proconsul,
Gen. Leonard Wood, to bring to heel separatists inhabiting what U.S.
authorities called Moro province, home to 250,000 Filipino Muslims
who had long opposed domination by whoever happened to be ruling in
Manila.
Poorly equipped and organized, the Moros did not constitute much of an
opponent in any conventional sense. American soldiers figured to make
short
work of such a backward foe and bring order and civilization to
Moroland.
Events did not unfold as planned. Instead, an ugly, inconclusive
guerrilla
campaign ensued. By the time it petered out years later, thousands
of Muslims and more than a few Americans had died. The U.S. Army stood
accused of massacring noncombatants in cold blood. And Moro
resistance to outsiders remained stubbornly intact--as it has to the
present
day.

In Moroland, the U.S. got more than it reckoned for. Primitive
conditions,
a vast inhospitable jungle and, above all, the Moro warrior's perverse
willingness to die offset the overwhelming U.S. edge in technology
and firepower. Assaults on enemy cottas--primitive
fortresses--inevitably
produced tactical success, along with heavy Moro losses. But they
did not yield decisive victory.

As the war dragged on, U.S. inhibitions fell by the wayside.
Frustrated by
the Moros' refusal to embrace Western ways, Wood abandoned any pretense
of uplifting the natives. Gradually, U.S. forces drifted toward what
came to
resemble a strategy of extermination. The low point occurred in March
1906
on Jolo at the extinct volcano of Bud Dajo. Several hundred Moros had
gathered
atop the volcano, spooking U.S. commanders into thinking that an
uprising
was
afoot. To preempt any such plot, several battalions of American
regulars
surrounded the summit, vigorously shelled it and then assaulted.
Virtually
the entire
Moro encampment was wiped out, about 600 in all. Many of those killed
were
women and children.

The "battle" of Bud Dajo differed little from any number of
previous
encounters
except in one respect: This time the press got wind of it. The result
was an
embarrassing scandal. An unapologetic Wood blamed the Moros: They
armed
women; they used children as human shields.

"Work of this kind," he reported privately to Roosevelt, "has its
disagreeable side,
which is the unavoidable killing of women and children. But it must be
done,
and
disagreeable as it is, there is no avoiding it."

The disagreeable work that is the American soldier's lot at the
beginning of the
21st century is by no means identical to what it was a hundred years
ago.
But as
the ever-widening circle of U.S. military commitments suggests, it
remains
the
business of empire: establishing order, maintaining stability and
enforcing
norms
of behavior, the logic of which may be more self-evident to ourselves
than
to others.

Americans today take it for granted that the technology and
firepower
that have
worked elsewhere with seemingly antiseptic effectiveness will prove
universally
applicable. They also imagine that they can wield their military might
with
a clear
conscience. When the odd stray bomb kills noncombatants, that too is
"unavoidable."

With the war on terror entering the second of what may be many
phases,
the
conditions that U.S. troops will encounter in the once-familiar
confines of
the old
Moro province are likely to test those optimistic assumptions.

History seldom teaches lessons of the sort that apply directly
from
one era to the
next. Yet history may on occasion sound a cautionary note.

Flushed with success at having vanquished the Taliban, the Bush
administration
may be susceptible to the same failings that befell Roosevelt and
Wood--hubris
chief among them. We should be wary of expectations that what worked in
Afghanistan will translate into easy victory elsewhere.

More important, we should be wary of the moral snares that lie
ahead.

******Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations at
Boston
University.