Bush and Revisionist History

From an SF Gate Article:

During his short visit, partly to reward President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's support for the U.S. war on terror, Bush told his Filipino hosts that the United States "liberated the Philippines from colonial rule."

Bush was referring to the defeat of Japanese imperial forces in World War II at the hands of Filipino guerrillas and the U.S. military. But he skipped over a crucial fact: The United States was the colonial ruler in the Philippines for half a century before the Japanese came.

"America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people," Bush also said.

In fact, that great story was a tale of American betrayal and bloodshed.

In the late 1890s, Filipinos revolted against Spain, which had ruled the archipelago for more than 300 years. After the Spanish-American War erupted, the United States supported the Filipino revolutionaries, who proclaimed an independent republic.

But eager to establish itself as a power in Asia, the United States refused to recognize the new republic and bought the country from Spain for $20 million. When the Filipinos resisted, the United States unleashed a three- year war of conquest that killed an estimated 200,000 Filipinos.

The war set off a bitter debate in the States over U.S. involvement overseas, a precursor to the outcry over the Vietnam War more than half a century later.

A former U.S. superintendent who helped set up an American-style public school system in the Philippines argued that the Filipinos "are children, and childlike, do not know what is best for them. . . . By the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity, we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence.''

Despite the carnage and the intense emotions it unleashed in the early 20th Century, the conflict has virtually been erased from American history books -- and from America's collective memory. Until recently, the Philippine-American War was not even considered a war in official history; it was "the Filipino Insurrection against the United States."

I thought that this part of history couldn't be forgotten already, after all the lobbying and outrage in the U.S. about the entry in the history books...

Chilling, this "alliance".