I suspect that it was-of course, things were different in 1899. But I see a lot of parallelsL
-both wars were started under highly questionable premises
-both resulted in long wars of attrition (the PI “insurrenction” went on for years
-both wars resulted from propaganda made up by proponents
Did Teddy Roosevelt suffer from post-war angst? George Bush is seeing his reputation go down the toilet. Is there any evidence he might be rehabilitated (as TR was , by the 1950’s?)
This comparison is inapt: Teddy was not president during the war.
(Snark: it would only be analogous to Iraq if, after the explosion of the Maine, we’d attacked Portugal)
The Spanish-American War itself didn’t generate much controversy, but the subsequent Phillipine-American War did. One side wanted to sit in colonial benevolence upon “Our Little Brown Brothers,” while others incuding Mark Twain called bullshit on that.
Actually, the aftermath did not produce any serious controversy that made it into the public consciousness. Opposition seems to have been limited to a few persons of letters expressing distaste for our continued involvement. Had the anti-imperialist Bryan won the 1900 election, it is possible that the situation would have changed, but McKinley’s victory (bolstered by Roosevelt’s status as a hero in Cuba), drowned out that voice.
A couple of reasons exist for this:
As noted, times were different. There was no general discussion of the ethics of colonialism (and we were always careful to describe the situations in words that avoided admitting that our actions were colonial).
The early battles were open, pitched battles that the U.S. could portray as “rebellion.” The U.S. also routinely won such battles, making it easier for the folks back home to accept news of victories rather than the attrition of daily deaths to guerrilla action. After a couple of years, the Filipinos did resort to guerrilla action, but by that time the popular opinion in the U.S. had already moved on and there was never a groundswell of revulsion against U.S. actions.
The nascent Philipine government actually declared war on the U.S. (The U.S. declined to reciprocate, refusing to recognize the Philipine goernment, making it easier to portray them as “rebels” and pretend that they were not representative of the Philipine people.)
While the U.S. lost nearly 4500 men in the four years of formal fighting, only about one third of those were combat deaths and people did not regard deaths due to disease (especially in the early 20th century) as notable. (Around another 1,000 to 1,500 U.S. soldiers died in the next eleven years (with many of those due to disease) during the suppression of the guerillas in the South, but such deaths, scattered over more than a decade, attributed to madmen and religious fanatics, were not enough to capture the attention of the U.S. that was distracted by the Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt’s pugnacious presidential style, labor unrest, the introduction of the automobile (with hints of flight) and other “distractions.”)
Most importantly, however, the news services were small, constrained by what they could send by Morse over cables, and pretty thoroughly biased in favor of the U.S. position. There were not dozens of international news outlets carrying TV cameras vying for attention and no al-Jazeera to keep Scripps and Hearst and their buddies honest.
American views of the subsequent guerilla war (shaped by a few years and American biased history) can be seen in the Gary Cooper movie The Real Glory.
I don’t agree with this. The Treaty of Paris, the vehicle by which the United States assumed colonial rule over the Philippines, was furiously controversial, and passed the Senate with only one vote to spare. Bryan made opposition to imperialism a major issue in the 1900 campaign.
It’s true that, after the election of 1900, the Philippine War faded from controversy more quickly than the war in Iraq did after 2004. But that was only because it was more successful, and the fighting died down more quickly.
As for legacies, the OP is of course mistaken that either war (Spanish or Philippine) forms much of the presidential legacy of Roosevelt. The decisions were McKinley’s, and I’d have to say that they have detracted from his legacy. Many people remember McKinley (if they remember him at all) only for the “little brown brothers” comment, which he probably never spoke.
He definately didn’t. That was Taft’s comment to McKinley.
I yield to tomndebb’s assessment. My post was influenced by the concept of a “controversial war” having been colored by the Vietnam War. My point was that the Spanish-American War wasn’t a unanimously jingoistic adventure.
(my concept of a “unanimously jingoistic adventure” having been colored by the Gulf War)
Wait a minute, that’s just wrong. The Spanish-American War is the same war when the US defeated the Spanish in both Cuba AND the Philippines, and when the U.S. obtained Puerto Rico to boot.
Well now you’ve got me, since if I argue that the Spanish-American War was a different war then the Philippine-American War, then why the hell did I drag it into the debate in the first place?
We also grabbed the Hawaiian Islands at the same time, but you don’t lump that in as the same war, even though like our war with the Phillipinos it was done in the name of consolidating our gains after the Spanish surrendered.
Usually, when one country surrenders and goes home, it means the end of the war, even if you have to fight new people who’re still hanging around. We still kept fighting several Indian tribes who’d been allied with the British after Yorktown (the opposite of the Phillipinos relation to the Spanish), but that doesn’t mean that Fallen Timbers was a Revolutionary War battle.