The Philippine
Model
By Stephen R.
Shalom
Znet
23 October, 2003
Addressing a joint session of the Philippine
Congress on Saturday, President Bush said to skeptical critics of his
Iraq policy, "Some say the culture of the Middle East will not
sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed
about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six
decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic
nation in Asia."
Much in Bush's
speech was utter nonsense -- such as his claim that the war in Iraq
had resulted in the closing down of a terrorist sanctuary, when in fact
the U.S. "has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and
turned it into one," in the words of terrorism expert Jessica Stern.
But Bush was right when he suggested that looking at the U.S. record
in the Philippines can help to illuminate what is in store for Iraq.
What does the historical
record tell us about the U.S. commitment to promoting democracy?
A hundred years
ago, the United States defeated the Spanish colonizers of the Philippines
only to take over the islands for itself. (In Bush's speech on Saturday
this was summarized as "Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines
from colonial rule." And in the words of presidential press secretary
Scott McClellan, national hero Jose Rizal's martyrdom in 1896 inspired
the Philippines: "And later, revolution broke out and Asia soon
had its first independent republic." Well, yes, but that independent
republic was promptly conquered by the United States.) When critics
of the U.S. annexation of the Philippines charged that Washington had
not obtained the consent of the inhabitants, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
replied that if consent of the inhabitants were necessary "then
our whole past record of expansion is a crime."
What did Filipinos
want back in 1898? What was their democratic wish? According to a U.S.
general testifying before the U.S. Senate, Filipinos had so little notion
of what independence meant that they probably thought it was something
to eat. "They have no more idea of what it means than a shepherd
dog," he explained. But shortly afterwards in his testimony, the
general stated that the Filipinos "want to get rid of the Americans."
"They do?" asked a confused Senator. "Yes, sir,"
replied the general. "They want us driven out, so that they can
have this independence, but they do not know what it is."
This U.S. inability
to understand the real meaning of self-determination was not just a
turn-of-the-century myopia. Consider the following scene from the 1945
motion picture "Back to Bataan." In a 1941 Philippine schoolhouse,
an American teacher asks the students what the United States gave to
the Philippines. "Soda pop!" "Hot dogs!" "Movies!"
"Radio!" "Baseball!" scream the pupils. But, the
teacher and the principal correct the erring youngsters by explaining
that the real American contribution was teaching the Filipinos freedom.
At first, however, says the teacher with a straight face, the Filipinos
did not appreciate freedom for they "resisted the American occupation."
Indeed they did.
And many thousands of Filipinos -- combatants and non-combatants --
were slaughtered by U.S. military forces to teach Filipinos the U.S.
meaning of freedom.
In 1946, after
nearly half a century, U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines came to
an end. But U.S. domination continued and Philippine democracy remained
thwarted. This was not the first instance where a colony was given independence
and colonialism was replaced with neocolonialism. To take one example
at random, Britain gave Iraq independence in 1932, but not before it
had signed a 25-year treaty granting London access to Iraqi military
bases and western oil companies had attained a lock on Iraqi oil.
The pattern in
the Philippines was similar: Washington retained two huge military bases
and many smaller ones on a 99-year, rent-free lease. The Philippine
city of Olongapo became, in the words of a 1959 account in Time magazine,
"the only foreign city run lock, stock and barrel by the U.S. Navy."
The terms of the bases agreement were revised several times over the
next few decades, but as U.S. officials acknowledged even in the 1970s
nowhere did the United States have more extensive and more unhindered
base rights than in the Philippines. These bases served for years as
the logistic hub for U.S. interventions from Vietnam to the Persian
Gulf; Washington, not Manila, decided how these bases would be used
and against whom, and the Philippine people were not informed of the
presence of nuclear weapons on their soil.
The independent
Philippines was also subordinated to the United States economically.
The Philippine government was prohibited from changing the value of
its currency without the approval of the U.S. president and U.S. investors
were given special investment rights in the Philippines. U.S. officials
insisted that Filipinos democratically accepted the special investment
rights, but in fact, the enabling legislation passed the Philippine
Congress only after dissenting legislators were improperly suspended,
and Filipinos ratified the investment rights in a referendum only because
Washington made rehabilitation aid to the war-ravaged Philippines dependent
upon Filipinos voting yes.
From 1946 to 1972,
the Philippines was a formal democracy in the sense of having contested
elections. But it was a political system in which two coalitions of
the wealthy elite, indistinguishable by ideology or program, competed
for power, with a major determinant of success being the overt or covert
backing of the U.S. government. It is true that there was an issue separating
the candidates in 1965 when Ferdinand Marcos ran on a pledge not to
send Philippine civic action troops to Vietnam, but since Marcos violated
his campaign promise as soon as he won the election, this is hardly
a meaningful exception. This may have been another instance of U.S.
political tutelage of the Filipinos -- recall that during the 1964 U.S.
presidential campaign Lyndon Johnson had pledged "No Wider War"
and then promptly escalated U.S. military involvement -- but more likely
Marcos's reversal was swayed by the U.S. funds secretly sent his way.
By 1972, despite
the best efforts of the Philippine elite and their U.S. allies, Philippine
democracy was finally beginning to express itself. Politicians were
finding that their usual vote-buying no longer worked ("They take
money but vote for the man they think is qualified," complained
one politician.) Peasants, students, and workers were increasingly challenging
the status quo. Reacting to the popular pressures, the Congress and
even the Supreme Court were moving in a more and more nationalistic
direction, threatening U.S. interests. And so when Marcos, approaching
the end of his second and final term as president, declared martial
law, there were no denunciations emanating from Washington. On the contrary,
as Marcos closed down Congress and the press and arrested his political
opponents, Washington stepped up its military and economic aid. As a
U.S. Senate staff report summarized the U.S. reaction, "military
bases and a familiar government in the Philippines are more important
than the preservation of democratic institutions which were imperfect
at best."
For the more than
decade-long dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos, he was backed by the
United States government. When he cosmetically lifted martial law in
1981, but retained all his martial law powers intact, the U.S. vice
president George H. W. Bush visited Manila and raised a toast to Marcos:
"We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic
processes."
In 1986, the Philippine
people, showing that they, unlike their leaders or those in Washington,
really understood democracy, ousted Marcos, while the Reagan administration
hung on to him until the last possible moment.
Corazon Aquino
replaced Marcos and initially she had several progressives in her government
and announced a program of social reform as the way to deal with the
country's long-running insurgency problem. But under pressure from the
United States and the Philippine armed forces, the progressives were
removed and Aquino's agenda became one of military action instead of
social reform.
Despite Aquino's
best efforts, the new post-Marcos constitution stated that "foreign
military bases, troops, or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines
except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate." Nationalist
sentiment was strong enough in the country that in 1991 the Philippine
Senate voted against extending the U.S.-Philippines Military Bases Agreement.
But almost as soon as the vote was taken, the U.S. tried with the help
of cooperative Philippine officials to get around the constitution.
In 1999, an agreement
was concluded giving the U.S. "access" to Philippine bases
and in 2002 hundreds of U.S. troops were sent to the Philippines to
help fight the Abu Sayyef guerrillas. Today, according to an Agence
France Presse report, "the Pentagon is working to maintain on the
islands what US Pacific Command head Admiral Thomas Fargo called 'critical
tactical mobility platforms,' including UH-1H helicopters, C-130 transport
aircraft, heavy trucks and patrol boats that could be used in case of
major U.S. military operations in the region."
Of course, these
U.S. troops and equipment need not violate the Philippine constitution
if only President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would submit the appropriate
treaty to the Senate. But suspecting that such a treaty would be voted
down, the Arroyo administration and its U.S. counterpart have chosen
to simply ignore the constitution. This is the hallmark not of democracy
but of neocolonialism.
In Iraq today,
there is plainly no democracy: the U.S. runs the show. As an adviser
to one of the members of the U.S. appointed Iraq Governing Council put
it, "The population of Iraq perceives correctly that it is the
occupiers who are running things. Everybody else is there in some secondary
or subservient role." But even if and when elections are held,
and an Iraqi government formally takes over, one can expect a neocolonial
relationship, one where the U.S. helps make sure that the Iraqis in
charge support U.S. interests.
Already we see
indications of U.S. goals. The New York Times reported on April 29,
2003, "The United States is planning a long-term military relationship
with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon
access to military bases and project American influence into the heart
of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say."
One senior administration official stated that "There will be some
kind of a long-term defense relationship with a new Iraq, similar to
Afghanistan. The scope of that has yet to be defined -- whether it will
be full-up operational bases, smaller forward operating bases or just
plain access." Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld denied the story,
but five months later (9/21/03) another Times story indicated that Bush
administration officials "say the future Iraqi government will
decide . . . whether to allow the United States to establish permanent
bases here, should the Pentagon seek them."
In terms of economic
policy, the Independent commented (9/22/03), "Iraq was in effect
put up for sale yesterday when the American-appointed administration
announced it was opening up all sectors of the economy to foreign investors.
. . . The initiative bore all the hallmarks of Washington's ascendant
neoconservative lobby, complete with tax cuts and trade tariff rollbacks.
It will apply to everything from industry to health and water, although
not oil." And as for oil, the U.S.-appointed chair of the U.S.-established
"advisory" committee for the Iraqi oil industry, Philip J.
Carroll, former head of Shell Oil, has said that the one near-certainty
is that the future expansion of Iraq's oil industry will be driven in
part by foreign capital.
In his speech to the Philippine Congress, George W. Bush thanked "the
citizens of Manila who lined the streets today for their warm and gracious
welcome." He may not have seen the thousands of Filipinos protesting
his visit. Bush's motorcade was delayed for an hour while the Secret
Service worried about his security and U.S. and Philippine authorities
(there's that democratic tutelage again) kept the demonstrators -- and
real democracy -- penned behind traffic barriers and blockades of military
vehicles.