What Bush Has in Common with TR Should Worry Us

Some time after 9/11 U.S. News and World Report (January 14, 2002) revealed that President Bush's spin-masters were recasting his image from the flegmatic William McKinley who launched the Spanish-American war in 1898 to that of brash Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one" and carried a list of six target nations. TR biographer Edmund Morris has lectured in the White House about how Bush's traits of "energy and magnetism" compared favorably to TR's.

The comparison is worrisome. TR believed "all the great masterful races have been fighting races" and he was bullish on war as a means to renew "the clear instinct for race selfishness." In 1898, TR -- not a man to hide in a National Guard unit and then reappear for a photo-op with real veterans -- abandoned his comfortable Washington desk job for combat as a Rough Rider in Cuba. After McKinley was slain by a deranged immigrant, TR as the new president declared war on foreigners, anarchists "and passive sympathizers with anarchists" whom he called "the enemy of all mankind." He asked Congress to deny entry to immigrants who failed literacy or "economic fitness" tests, or did not "appreciate American institutions." Congress ignored most of his suggestions.

Though his leading advisors represented the J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller financial empires, TR said he would regulate trusts and he promised the hard-working public a compassionate "square deal." In foreign affairs TR became our first "cowboy diplomat": he pursued go-it alone, "big stick" policies. When "contemptible little creatures [officials] in Bogota" scoffed at his determination to build a canal through Columbia's province of Panama, he sent a message to Congress urging seizure of Panama "without any further parlay with Columbia," but struck this smoking gun from his final draft.

In 1903 when Panama revolted from Columbia TR dispatched a U.S. fleet that stopped Columbia's intervention, granted Panama recognition in ninety minutes, and was rewarded by the new Panamanian government with a ten-mile wide area for a canal. The New York Times said TR, swayed by the "heady wine of territorial adventure," chose "the path of scandal, disgrace and dishonor." He denied he "had any part in preparing, inciting or encouraging the revolution," but in 1911 he admitted, "I took the canal zone and let the Congress debate. . . ."

TR shared McKinley's clearly stated appetite for colonies: "We must keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep all we want." U.S. troops were used to break strikes in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and then destroyed organizations devoted to self-determination and democracy. Under TR Puerto Rico became a U.S. colony, and Cuba's sovereignty was nullified when it was forced to grant the U.S. "a right to intervene" and a naval base at Guantanamo. In an extension of Guantanamo's sad fate, Bush has turned the base into a prison the Red Cross recently condemned for violating the Geneva convention and the human rights of its 660 Middle Eastern inmates.

Under $50 million in 1898, investments in Cuba reached over a billion dollars by the 1920s. Washington picked dictators who agreed to protect U.S. investments, and three times sent in occupation armies. Eventually Cuban officials learned to follow U.S. Embassy suggestions.

During his recent visit to Manila President Bush told the Philippine congress, "Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule." In 1898 Emilio Aguinaldo's freedom-fighters, who had been fighting colonial oppression for two years, initially welcomed the U.S. as a liberator. But they corrected their mistake when the U.S. army barred Aguinaldo's forces from marching into Manila, installed a U.S. controlled-government, and waged war against independence. The influential San Franciso Argonaut summarized U.S. policy: "We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately, they are infested with Filipinos." The 70,000 U.S. soldiers were instructed to take hostages, murder prisoners and massacre entire villages. On the island of Samar, U.S. General Jake Smith announced: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me."

U.S. soldiers followed his and similar orders. Two hundred thousand Filipinos died, the U.S. lost 4,234 soldiers, and Congress spent $170 million in a conflict that lasted until 1911. Bitterness continued until the islands gained freedom in 1946, and the last U.S. base closed in 1992.

Mark Twain and other prominent Americans formed an Anti-Imperial-ist League, some labor unions denounced U.S. policy as "downright imperialism," and black America stood united. "I don't think there is a single colored man, out of office or out of the insane asylum, who favors the so-called expansion policy," wrote Howard University professor Kelley Miller.

The Bush policy of promising regime change and democracy to an oppressed people, and then sending in an army of occupation to enforce U.S. dominance and control the region's natural resources began in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. It relied on patriotic and democratic platitudes much as our occupation of Iraq does today.

In 1898 and after colonial people struggling for freedom from the Pacific to the Caribbean became the first U.S. overseas colonials. They were saddled with a foreign master, dictatorships of his choosing, and hard work at low wages. In scenes familiar in today's Iraq U.S. soldiers faced sporadic protests, gunfire, and many other kinds of resistance.

If President Bush is determined to ignore history, people no less determined to rule their own country will continue angrily to confront their occupying forces in whatever ways they can. It was not pleasant in 1898 and it will not be pleasant now.