The common currents of imperialism.

"We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian I do this in the name of Jesus Christ."--Franklin Graham

"There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize, and Christianize them...."--President McKinley

Imperialism is a pesky thing. No matter how ardently one tries to adorn it in the garb of democracy and liberation, it seems always to look the same. One hundred years ago, the United States fought Spain with the pretense of liberating the Philippines and other "possessions" from subjugation. "A splendid little war," mused John Hay, the U.S. ambassador to England, in pondering the windfall it would mean for U.S. citizens. For the Filipino people, however, the occupation of their nation was anything but splendid. As a subjugated people, they fought the U.S. oppressors and their exploitive plans as heroically as they had the Spanish. While Mark Twain and others castigated American icons like President Theodore Roosevelt for their genocidal cleansing of the Filipino people, too many others remained mute, unwilling or unaware of how the United States had used the ruse of liberty and democracy to establish a pacific base in the Philippines.

Much of the same has also occurred in Iraq, where searches for weapons of mass destruction have been overshadowed by a growing Iraqi chorus for U.S. troops to leave their country. Whether President George W. Bush ever had any desire to do anything hut give contracts to his favorite oil companies is questionable, but one thing is rather clear: the Iraqi people, both Shiite and Sunni, don't want Americans in their country and have asked them to leave in daily protests and orchestrated demonstrations: through marches, through civil disobedience, and in talks with U.S. officials. "Iraq cannot be ruled except by Iraqis," said Sheikh Hussein Sadr, dean of the Islamic Council in London, on April 28, 2003, as reported by USA Today. Just two days alter a disquieting 60 Minutes special revealed the sweetheart deals that were going to Haliburton--Dick Cheney's former oil company--Bush tried to remind the nation that the mission in Iraq was noble. "America has no intention of imposing our form of government or our culture," USA Today quoted Bush in a speech to Iraqi-Americans in Michigan on April 28. Interestingly, Bush omitted any discussion about intentions to develop the reservoir of Iraqi oil or the contracts that had been doled out to U.S. companies with ties to the White House.

Not surprisingly, many also wondered about the people who weren't being invited to talk about the rebuilding of Iraq. Many were concerned about the exclusion of certain Iraqi groups that might want U.S. troops expelled and an end to U.S. rapacity in their nation. Others wondered why nobody was finding connections to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, as that was the pretext for invading the country in the first place. As an American student asked, "Can someone remind me why we invaded Iraq? If it was to rid the world of a deluded and dangerous dictator, shouldn't we have pursued Kim Jong in North Korea? Is this about freedom or Americanization?"

Actually, the phrase often used for this kind of colonialism is benevolent assimilation, an insidious process in which the aggressor nation prostrates the victim nation and then begins to absorb it by plundering its resources and inculcating its people to believe that the usurpation was all done to liberate them and extricate them from an evil force. This lesson of imperialism, as has been played out in Iraq, amazingly and horrifyingly parallels the actions in the Philippines one century earlier.

When the United States first occupied the Philippines, the same mantra of liberating the people and bringing civilization to the land was espoused. Roosevelt referred to the Filipino people as childlike and suggested that they were too barbaric, too savage, to be left to their own devices. This eruption of manifest destiny seemed to justify the carnage, the plundering, and the abject disregard for human rights. In writing about the terror in his piece, "The Philippine-American War: Friendship and Forgetting," Reynaldo Ileto reminds us that the United States had an Axis of Evil one century ago as well, where one was either an American or an official villain. In trying to conquer the Filipino rebels, the U.S. military resorted to a policy that abandoned "amigo warfare" for an approach that was eerily similar to Bush's "shock and awe." "Henceforth," announced General Franklin Bell, in dealing with incorrigible Filipinoes, "no one will be permitted to be neutral.... The towns of Tiaong, Dolores, and Candelaria will probably be destroyed unless the insurgents who take refuge in them are destroyed."

Colonel Cornelius Gardener, the first governor of Tayabas, recalled the irony of the violence. The United States was supposed to be the emancipator, but instead it simply lorded over a people for whom it had little regard. In speaking of the U.S. troops and their actions, Gardener lamented, "Of course the best houses in every town were occupied by them and every hidden place ransacked in hope of the booty of Eastern lands, so often read of in novels."

Mark Twain, the celebrated author and humorist, was never deluded by the patriotic fervor. In his essay "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness," he refers to the deception and perfidy of the American cause:

  We knew they supposed we were also fighting
  in their worthy cause--just as we had
  helped the Cubans fight for Cuban independence--and
  we allowed them to go on thinking
  so. Until Manila was ours and we could
  get along without them.

In the process, thousands of Filipino people were killed and dispossessed. It was all trumpeted as a crusade to emancipate. In reality, it was the absorption of one country by another that was more powerful--replete with domination, occupation, and propaganda.

April 27, 2003, presented the world with some of the first rumblings of what occupation is like in Iraq and how uneasy the relationship is between colonizer and colonized. After an acrimonious demonstration against U.S. presence in the area, sixteen Iraqi citizens were gunned down by U.S. soldiers, and seventy-five more were injured. According to the Detroit Free Press, Dr. Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali, director of the Fallujah General Hospital, reported that three of the thirteen dead were boys no older than ten. And he added later that his "medical crews were shot at when they went to retrieve the injured, which he said numbered 75 people."

May 1, 2003, brought more of the same. The Detroit Free Press reported that U.S. soldiers fired on anti-American demonstrators massed outside a U.S. compound--killing two and wounding eighteen--when unidentified attackers lobbed two grenades into the compound. Such escalating violence--the daily ritual of challenging U.S. presence on Iraqi soil--is emblematic of the imperialist's struggle. With citizens ardently opposed to a cultural interloper, and with the taste of real freedom resonating through their systems, they have little patience for the invading force.

And so the real conflict begins. With former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--the designated villain--removed from power, Bush is continually forced to dance around the prickly issue of imperialism. Much like the situation in the Philippines, the Iraqi situation is no longer about amigo warfare but the subjugation of an intractable people--people who refuse to let the United States absorb their culture and appropriate their resources. Indeed, if Iraqi autonomy were the goal, wouldn't it be good for the United States to abdicate power to a United Nations team, so that questions about the surreptitious interests of the United States wouldn't be raised? If democracy and self-government were the endeavor, wouldn't it be wise to step to the side and permit Iraqis--in conjunction with an international team--to construct a democracy from the rubble of another U.S. attack?

In late June the United Nations called for the establishment of a representative Iraqi interim authority to help in rebuilding the country that was ravaged by U.S. bombs. "A fundamental precursor to any process is the establishment of a representative Iraqi interim administration to lead the reconstruction process," said Ramiro Lopez da Silva, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq in speaking to the Associated Press. To this end, an inaugural meeting of the Iraqi governing council met for the first time on July 13 in order to delegate more responsibility to Iraqi officials over local municipalities.

Such questions were made more provocative by the enduring and rather shadowy place of oil companies in Iraq. Curiously, the nation with only "altruistic designs" gave contracts to oil companies six months before the war even started. Even more unsettling, Haliburton, the oil company once directed by Dick Cheney, was chosen to develop this energy, which will generate incredible profits. Again, imperialism suggests that one nation exploit a less powerful nation for its human and natural resources, perceiving its people as inferior and unable to govern itself. The dominating nation sees its role as paternalistic, as charitable to a population incapable of self-rule. It exploits its superior status to take what it wants under the presumption that it is doing the victim nation a favor.

"The Bush administration is marinated in oil," argued consumer advocate Ralph Nader while speaking on a February 26, 2003, National Public Radio program.

   Forty-one of the top administration officials
   were on boards of directors, including
   Condoleezza Rice, of course Cheney was
   head of Haliburton, George Bush came out
   of Harken Energy. There are enormous ties.

Added Arianna Huffington in a revealing March 19 essay entitled "Corporate America Divvies Up the Post-Saddam Spoils":

   The Bush Administration is currently in the
   process of doling out over $1.5 billion in government
   contracts to American companies
   lining up to cash in on the rebuilding of postwar
   Iraq. So bombs away. The more the better--at
   least for the lucky few in the
   rebuilding business.

Imperialism is founded in media distortion and national fear. Because the aggression is clearly unjustified, the imperialist must weave a fabric of accusations, persuading its citizens that attacking and subjugating the victim nation is in their self-interest. In 2003 this was accomplished with the assistance of the events of September 11, 2001. With many U.S. citizens reeling from the unforgettable carnage, the soil was fertile for action--action that would make easy scapegoats of any country the president already wanted to attack. From that point it was easy. The goal of the Bush team--which had long eyed the untapped oil fields of Iraq--was to make a case for terrorism. With Osama bin Laden seemingly on an extended vacation, why not pursue the world's second largest oil fields? Within weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House was whipping up fear and blending it with hatred--all in hopes of justifying aggression against oil-rich Iraq. Nobody liked Hussein anyway, and his use as a puppet of the United States had long since passed. The temptation was just too great, and the frenzy of fear was an irresistible tonic for violence.

And so the political machine went into action. While no credible evidence linked Hussein to 9/11, the administration fomented a string of provocative allegations, sending Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell around the country with dire predictions for U.S. safety. By fall 2002, the Pew Research Center reported that two-thirds of the U.S. citizenry believed that Hussein "helped the terrorists in the September 11 attacks." Fascinatingly, this was despite the fact that, according to Norman Solomon in his book Target Iraq, there was unanimous agreement among U.S. spy agencies that "evidence linking Baghdad with the September 11 attacks, or any attacks against Western targets since 1993, is simply non-existent." Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk was laconic in adding, "Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States attacks Iraq, we should remember that."

In the Philippines and the larger war with Spain, the propaganda war was also predicated upon lust for expansion and driven by a compliant media. Indeed, journalist William Randolph Hearst clearly wanted war and used his New York Journal to generate turbulence whenever he could. As in Iraq, war was simply good business. As Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States reveals, Roosevelt wrote to a friend in 1897, "In strict confidence, I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." On the eve of the Spanish American War, the Washington Post wrote:

   A new consciousness seems to have come
   upon us--the consciousness of strength--and
   with it a new appetite, the yearning to
   show our strength.... Ambition, interest,
   land hunger, pride, the mere joy of fighting,
   whatever it may be, we are animated by a new
   sensation. We are face to face with a strange
   destiny. The taste of the Empire is in the
   mouth of the people even as the taste of
   blood in the jungle.

Today, many only know of a Spanish-American war in which the Philippines was extricated from imperialistic Spain. We hear quixotic tales about rough riders and intrepid marches. Few schools in either the Philippines or the United States discuss the disquieting details of how U.S. troops blazed a trail of destruction, killing women and children and labeling the casualties uncivilized niggers. Zinn recounts that a volunteer soldier from the state of Washington wrote, "our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill niggers ... This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces."

What do the words of imperialism sound like? Consider the excerpts from Senator Albert Beveridge in January 1900. In recalling the carnage of Filipinos and the laments from some that the war was rapacious and cruel, Beveridge reveals the hubris of a people who are inebriated on nationalistic fervor-a people who believe, like Bush, that Americanization is synonymous with civilization:

   My own belief is that there are not 100 men
   among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon
   self-government even means, and
   there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.
   It has been charged that our conduct
   of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has
   been the reverse.... Senators must remember
   that we are not dealing with Americans
   or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

In Iraq the mantra has been along the same racist and Eurocentric lines and has included talk of the inherently violent character of Islamic people. As Bush supposedly tries to placate critics and assure citizens of his altruistic mission, others wonder about his ties to conservative Christians who have spoken in monolithic terms about Islam. The Reverend Billy Graham's son Franklin is infamous for his depiction of Islam as intrinsically evil. The man who offered prayers at Bush's inauguration was quoted in the December 12, 2001, issue of Christian Century depicting Islam as "wicked, violent, and not of the same God." He continued, "It wasn't Methodists flying into those buildings, and it wasn't Lutherans."

And of course, conservatives have been unabashed in their agenda to develop the oil fields that make Iraq a treasured conquest. In 1899, the United States sought the coal, sugar, coffee, hemp, and tobacco of the Philippines. Earlier it had opened the natural resources of Cuba and annexed Guam as a base for meddling in the affairs of Japan. Why not plunder the nation you are civilizing? Iraq has oil--lots of it. What better solution for a nation that drives gas-guzzling SUVs and thrives under the assumption that it has a celestial mission to bring capitalism and increased opportunity so as to benefit its corporate friends.

In the end, imperialism has a very distinctive look: it is arrayed in corporate money, driven by jingoism, and sprinkled with whiffs of patriotism and egocentricism. It looks the same today as it did a century ago--and smells just as bad.

Gregory Shafer is an assistant professor of English at Mott College in Flint, Michigan.