Middle Nation Book Discussion| Killing Hope by William Blum (Chapter 4)

Okay. It's been too many days now that I haven't done a reading from Killing Hope by William Blum. So let's continue now. We've gotten through three chapters. We're now on page 58.

This is chapter four, The Philippines nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, America's oldest colony. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight. And I'm not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed to almighty god for light and guidance more than one night. And one late night, it came to me this way. I don't know how it was, but it came.

Number one, that we could not give them, meaning the, Philippines, back to Spain. That would be cowardly and dishonorable. Two, that we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient. That would be bad business and discreditable. Three, that we could not, leave them to themselves.

They were unfit for self government, and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there, worse than Spain's words. And four, that 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, and by God's grace, do the very best we could by them as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. That's a quote from William McKinley, president of The United States in 1899. William McKinley's, idea this is for the book now. William McKinley's idea of doing the very best by the Filipinos was to employ the United States Army to kill them in the tens of thousands, burn down their villages, subject them to torture, and lay the foundation for an economic exploitation which was proudly referred to at the time as imperialism by leading American statesmen and newspapers.

After the Spanish had been driven out of The Philippines in 1898 by a combined action of The United States and the Filipinos, Spain agreed to seed, that is sell, the islands of The Philippines to The United States for $20,000,000. But the Filipinos had already proclaimed their own independent republic and did not take kindly to being treated like a plot of uninhabited real estate. Accordingly, an American force numbering at least 50,000 proceeded to instill in the population a proper appreciation of their status. Thus did America's longest lasting and most conspicuous colony come into being. Nearly half a century later, the US army again landed in The Philippines to find a nationalist movement fighting against a common enemy, this time the Japanese.

While combating the Japanese during 1945, the American military took measures aimed at quashing the, this resistance army, the Huks, a shortening of Hukbalahak, People's Army against Japan in Tagalog. American forces disarmed many Huk units, removed the local governments which the Huks had, established, and arrested and imprisoned many of their high ranking members as well as leaders of The Philippines, Communist Party. Guerrilla forces primarily organized and led by American officers and composed of US and Filipino soldiers of the so called US army forces in the Far East undertook police type actions which resulted in a virtual reign of terror against the Huks and suspected sympathizers. Disparaging rumors were spread about the Huks to erode their support among the peasants, and the Japanese were allowed to assault Huk forces unmolested. Remember, this is when the war was ongoing and Japan was on the, side of the axis, the axis powers, meaning, Japan, Italy, and Germany, the Nazis.

And the Americans were supposed to be fighting the Japanese, but instead in The Philippines, they were fighting those who were fighting the Japanese and allowing, the Japanese to conduct attacks against the Filipino resistance. This, while the Huks were engaged in a major effort against the Japanese invaders and Filipino collaborators, and frequently came to the aid of American soldiers because they thought that we're on the same side. They don't understand that America only has its own side. In much of this anti hook campaign, The United States made use of Filipinos who were collaborating with the Japanese such as landlords, large estate owners, many police constables, other officials. In the postwar period, The US restored to power and position many of those who were tainted with collaboration much to the distaste of other Filipinos.

The Huk guerrilla forces had been organized in 1942 largely at the initiative of the Communist Party in response to the Japanese occupation of the islands. Amongst American policymakers, there were those who came to the routine conclusion that the Huks were, thus no more than a tool of the international communist conspiracy. In other words, they weren't fighting to liberate their land. They were fighting on behalf of the international communist conspiracy, which is a thing obviously that is a PR creation of The United States. And they were to be opposed, therefore, as communists, they were to be opposed as all such groups were to be opposed.

Other, others in Washington and Manila whose reflexes were less knee jerk but more cynical recognized that the hook movement, if its growing influence were not checked, would lead to sweeping reforms of Philippine society. The centerpiece of the hook political program was land reform, a crying need in this largely agricultural society. On occasion, US officials would pay lip service to the concept, but during fifty years of American occupation, nothing of the sort had ever been carried out. The other side of the hook coin was industrialization, which The United States had long thwarted in order to provide American industries with a veritable playground in The Philippines. From the hook's point of view, such changes were but prologue to raising the islanders from their state of backwardness, from illiteracy, grinding poverty, and the diseases of poverty like tuberculosis and Beriberi.

Quote, though, the communist Hukbalahap rebellion, reported in New York Times, is generally regarded as an outgrowth of the misery and discontent among the peasants of Central Luzon, the main island. A study prepared years later for the US army echoed this sentiment stating that the Huks, quote, main impetus was peasant grievances, not Leninist designs. This is what I've talked about in earlier chapters that when these resistance movements and these leftist movements emerged in the global South and called themselves communist, they largely had nothing to do with communism. They just had to do with the misery of their people and advocating for their people, and given the political sort of parameters of discourse at the time, that just meant that you were probably going to be anti American, I e, anti capitalist, and there was only another the only other side that you could align yourself with was communist. But in fact, you were just a grassroots movement or grassroots activist or grassroots political party that was in favor of your own people, that was in favor of helping the poor, helping your community, helping your society, and, regaining some degree of sovereignty and independence.

Nevertheless, the hook movement was unmistakably a threat to the neocolonial condition of The Philippines, the American sphere of influence, and those Philippines interests which benefited from the status quo. In other words, the collaborator class. By the end of 1945, four months after the close of World War two, The United States was training and equipping a force of 50,000 Filipino soldiers for the Cold War. In testimony before a congressional committee, major general William Arnold of The US Army candidly stated that this program was essential for the maintenance of internal order, not for external difficulties at all. None of the congressmen present, publicly expressed any reservation about the international propriety of such a foreign policy.

Just to be clear, this, major general of The US Army is saying that our policy in The Philippines is about controlling The Philippines, and it has nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It has nothing to do with external communist conspiracy. It just has to do with maintaining order the way we want it in The Philippines. At the same time, American soldiers were kept on in The Philippines, and in, at least one infantry division combat training was reestablished. This led to vociferous protest and demonstrations by the GIs who wanted only to go home.

This is a natural expectation on their part. The war is over. So why are we still in The Philippines? This was the question of the GIs. They wanted to go home.

Meanwhile, they were, restarting combat training after the war was over, So they would naturally have questions. Why are we're training to fight who exactly? Well, if you if you, look at what the major general said, you're obviously training to fight the Filipinos themselves. You are now an occupying army. The inauguration of combat training, the New York Times disclosed, was, quote, interpreted by soldiers and certain Filipino newspapers as the preparation for the repression of possible uprisings in The Philippines by farm tenant groups.

The story added that the soldiers had a lot to say, quote, on the subject of American armed intervention in China and The Netherlands Indies, otherwise known as Indonesia, which was occurring at the same time. To what extent, American military personnel participated directly in the suppression of dissident groups in The Philippines after the war is not known because, of course, it wouldn't be. The Hooks, though, not trusting Philippine and US authorities enough to voluntary voluntarily surrender their arms, did test the good faith of the government by taking part in the April as part of a, quote, democratic alliance of liberal and socialist peasant political groups. Philippines independence was scheduled for three months later, the July 4 to be exact. As matters turned out, the commander in chief of the Huks, Louis, Taruk, and several other alliance members and reform minded candidates who won election to congress, three to the senate and seven to the house, were not allowed to take their seats under the transparent fiction that coercion had been used to influence voters.

In other words, the the The US and their, Filipino, assets in the government, Filipino officials and whatnot, claimed that the candidates from the Hooks Alliance, the Hooks Party, were not allowed to, occupy the positions that they had been elected to because the Americans were calling into question the legitimacy of their election saying that, voters had been coerced to vote for them. No investigation or review, of the cases has, had had even been carried out by the appropriate body, the electoral tribunal. Two years later, Taruk was temporarily, allowed to take his seat when he came to Manila to discuss a ceasefire with the government. So they made the charge, they made the accusation, but, the election itself had not even been reviewed, or monitored, and there was no evaluation done as to whether or not any of these accusations were accurate. Nevertheless, it was treated as if conclusive decision had been made by the official electoral tribunal to determine whether or not their election was valid or not.

They treated it as if the electoral tribunal had done an evaluation and had rendered a judgment, and that their judgment was for these, these party members to not be allowed to take their seats. However, no such actual investigation or evaluation was ever done, but, they were treated as if they had been, disallowed. The purpose of denying these candidates their seats, there's two candidates, was equally transparent. The government was thus able to pass through the congress, the, Philippines Congress, the controversial Philippines US trade act, which was passed by two votes more than required in the house and by nothing to spare in the senate, which yielded to The United States bountiful privileges and concessions in the Philippine economy, including, quote, equal rights in the development of the nation's natural resources and the operation of its public utilities. This, quote, parity provision was eventually extended to every sector of the Philippine economy.

The debasement of the electoral process was followed by a wave of heavy brutality against the peasants carried out by the military, the police, and the, landlord goon squads. According to Louis Louis Tarrouck, the commander in chief of the Hooks, in the months following the election, peasant villages were destroyed. More than 500 peasants and their leaders were killed, and about three times that number were jailed, tortured, maimed, or missing. The Hooks and others felt that, they had little alternative but to take up arms once again. Independence was not likely to change much of significance.

American historian George e Taylor of impeccable, establishment credentials, in a book which bears the indication of CIA sponsorship, this historian was, nevertheless moved to state that independence, quote, was marked by lavish expressions of mutual goodwill, by partly fulfilled promises, and by a restoration of the old relationship in almost everything except in name. Many demands were made of the Filipinos for the commercial advantage of The United States, but none for the social and political advantage of The Philippines. In other words, saying, that it's independence in name only. In reality, the relationship remains a colonial relationship. The American military was meanwhile assuring a home for itself in The Philippines.

A 1947 agreement provided sites for 23 US military bases in that country. The agreement was to last for ninety nine years. It stipulated that American servicemen who committed crimes outside the base while on duty could be tried only by American military tribunals inside the bases. In other words, you break the law in The Philippines against Filipinos off of your base, you will not be subject to Filipino courts. By the terms of a companion military assistance pact, the Philippine government was prohibited from purchasing so much as a bullet from any armed source other than The US except with American approval.

Such a state of affairs necessarily involved training, maintenance, and spare parts. This all made the Philippine military extremely dependent upon their American counterparts. Further, no foreigners other than Americans were permitted to perform any function for or with the Philippines Armed Forces without the approval of The United States. America is a very jealous colonizer. They don't want any they don't want their, their their colony to be involved with anyone else.

By the early nineteen fifties, The United States had provided The Philippines with over $200,000,000 of military equipment and supplies, a remarkable sum for that time, and and that was in addition to the construction of various military facilities. The joint US military advisory group reorganized the Philippines Intelligence Capability And Defense Department, put its chosen man, Ramon Magasece, as its head and formed the Philippine army into battalion combat teams trained for counterinsurgency warfare. The Philippines was to be a laboratory experiment for this kind of unconventional type of combat. The methods and the terminology such as search and destroy and pacification were later to become infamous in Vietnam. By September, when lieutenant colonel, Edward g Lansdale arrived in The Philippines, the civil war had all the markings of a long drawn out affair with victory not in sight for either side.

Ostensibly, Lansdale was just another American military adviser attached to the JUSMAG, which is the joint US Military Advisory Group, JUSMAG. So Lansdale was just another American military adviser attached to the JUSMAG, but in actuality, he was the head of CIA clandestine and paramilitary operations in the country. His apparent success in The Philippines was to make him a a recognized authority on counterinsurgency. In his later reminiscences about this period in his life, Lansdale relates, his surprise at hearing from informed Filipino civilian friends about how repressive the Quirino government was, that its atrocities matched those of the hooks or that that were attributed to the hooks, that the government was, quote, rotten with corruption down to the policeman in the street, Lansdale observed on his own. That Carino himself had been elected the previous year through extensive fraud, and that the Hooks were right.

They were the, quote, wave of the future, and violence was the only way for the people to get a government of their own. The police, wrote a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, were, quote, bands of, uniformed thieves and rapists, more feared than bandits. The army was little better. Lansdale was undeterred, obviously. He had come to do a job.

Accordingly, he told himself that if the Hooks took over, there would only be another form of injustice by another privileged few backed by even crueler force. By the next chapter, he had convinced himself that he was working on the side of those committed to defend human liberty in The Philippines. As a former advertising man, Lansdale was no stranger to the use of market research, motivation techniques, media, and deception. In CIA parlance, such arts fall under the heading of, quote, psychological warfare. To this end, Lansdale fashioned a unit called the civil, civil affairs office.

Its activities were based on the premise, both new and suspect to most American military officers, that a popular guerrilla army cannot be defeated by force alone. So this was Lansdale's, judgment that a popular guerrilla force cannot be defeated by force alone. That was the premise of the civil affairs office, meaning we're going to move into the arena of psychological warfare. Lansdale's team conducted a careful study of the superstitions of the Filipino peasants living in hook areas. Their lore, taboos, and myths were examined for clues to the appropriate appeals that could wean them from their support for the insurgents.

In one operation, Lansdale's men flew over these areas in a small plain hidden by a cloud cover and broadcast in Tagalog mysterious curses on any villagers who dared to give the Huks food or shelter. The tactic reportedly succeeded into starving some hook units into surrender. Another Lansdale initiated sigh war operation played on the superstitious dread in the Philippine countryside of the Aswang, a mythical, vampire. A Cywar squad entered a town and planted rumors that an Aswang lived in the neighboring hills where the Huks were based, a location from which government forces were anxious to have them out. Two nights later, after giving the rumors time to circulate among hook sympathizers in the town and make their way up the hill, the Cywar squad laid an ambush for the rebels along a trail that they used.

When a Hook patrol passed, the ambushers silently snatched the last man, in their unit, the Hook unit, punctured his neck in vampire fashion with two holes. Then they held his body by the heels until all the blood drained out of his body, and then put the corpse, the the the bloodless, empty corpse back on the trail. When the Huks, as superstitious as any other Filipinos in that area, discovered their bloodless comrade, they fled from the region. Lansdale regularly held, quote, coffee clutches with Filipino officials and military personnel in which new ideas were freely tossed back and forth Allow Madison Avenue brain session brainstorming session. Out of this came the economic development corps to lure Hooks with a program of resettlement on their own patch of farmland with tools, seed, cash loans, etcetera.

It was an undertaking wholly inadequate to the land problem, and the number that was that that actually responded to that offer was very modest. But like other side war techniques, the principal goal was to steal from the enemy, his most persuasive arguments. Among other tactics, introduced or refined by Lansdale were, production of film and radio broadcasts to explain and justify government actions, basic propaganda, Infiltration of government agents into the ranks of the Huks to provide information and sow dissension among the Huks. Attempts to modify the behavior of government soldiers so as to curtail their abuse of people in rural areas, for the Huks had long followed an explicit code of proper conduct towards the peasants, with punishment meted out to anyone from their own ranks who violated those, those, codes of conduct. But on other occasions, government soldiers were allowed to run amok in villages disguised as hooks.

So you see, because the hooks were very, disciplined in their interactions with the villages, with the peasants, so called, whereas the colonial Philippine soldiers were generally brutal. So they tried to get them to clean up their conduct with regards to the peasants so that they wouldn't look bad compared to the hooks, but then they would disguise them as hooks and let them run amok in the villages so that, they could just, reverse the perception of the villagers. And this tactic revealed l Fletcher prote was a technique, quote, developed to high art in The Philippines in which soldiers, quote, set upon the unwary villages in the grand manner of a Cecil b DeMille production. Pruti, a, retired US, air force colonel, was for nine years the focal point officer for contacts between the Pentagon and the CIA. He has described another type of scenario by which the hooks were tarred with the terrorist brush, serving to, obscure the political nature of their movement and mar their credibility.

This is an extended quote. In The Philippines, lumber interests and major sugar interests have forced tens of thousands of simple backward villages to leave areas where they lived for centuries. When these poor people flee, to other areas, it should be quite obvious that they in turn, then infringe upon the territorial rights of other villagers, and other landowners. This creates violent rioting or at least sporadic outbreaks of banditry, that last lowly recourse of dying and terrorized people. Then when the, distant government learns of the banditry and rioting, it must offer some safe explanation.

The last thing the regional government would want to do, would be to say that the huge lumber or paper interests have driven the people out of their ancestral homeland. In The Philippines, it's customary for the local regional government to get a, basically a 10% cut on all such enterprises and for national politicians to get another 10%. So the safe explanation for this rioting in banditry and conflict between people who have fled their villages encroaching upon people in other villages, the way that the government would explain that, the safe explanation becomes communist inspired subversive insurgency. The word for this in The Philippines is hook. So you destabilize and then you blame the destabilization on the people who are fighting you.

The most insidious part of the CIA operation in The Philippines was the fundamental manipulation of the nation's political life, featuring stage managed elections and disinformation campaigns. The high point of this effort was the election to the presidency in 1953 of Ramon Mageseise, the, cooperative former defense department head. Lansdale, it was said, invented Mageseise. His CIA front organizations, such as the National Movement for Free Elections, ran the Filipino's campaign with all the license, impunity, and money, that one would expect from the Democratic or Republican National Committees operating in The US. Or perhaps more to the point, mayor Daley operating in Chicago.

That won't be that will be an obscure reference for most people, but, mayor Daley in Chicago was known for running a very corrupt political machine. Yet the New York Times, in an editorial, was moved to refer to The Philippines as, quote, democracies showcase in Asia. The CIA, on one occasion, drugged the drinks of Magsaysay's opponent, incumbent president, Elpido Quirino, before he gave a speech so that he would appear incoherent. On another occasion, when Magsese, insisted on delivering a speech which had which had been written by a Filipino instead of one written by Lansdale's team, Lansdale reacted in a rage, finally hitting the presidential candidate so hard that he knocked him out. Imagine, he wants to give a speech.

The candidate that you're running as president of The Philippines wants to read a speech that was written by a Filipino instead of written by, the CIA, and you actually just beat him. You literally physically knock him out. Unbelievable. Magesey won the election. Magesey won the election, but not before the CIA had smuggled in guns for use in a coup just in case their men lost.

You see? We're gonna try to rig this election, but if something goes sideways and he doesn't end up winning, well, that's okay. We'll bring in the guns and make sure that our guy gets in either way. American democracy. That's called promotion of democracy around the world, the showcase of democracy in Asia, as the New York Times said.

Once Mega Seise was in office, the CIA wrote his speeches, carefully guided his foreign policy, and used its press assets, paid editors and journalists, to provide him with constant support for his domestic programs and his involvement in The US directed anti communist crusade in Southeast Asia as well as to attack anti US newspaper newspaper columnists. So beholden was Magasese to The United States, disclosed presidential assistant Sherman Adams that, quote, he sent word to Eisenhower that he would do anything The United States wanted him to do even though his own foreign minister took the opposite view. In other words, I don't listen to my own cabinet. My own officials are nothing. I'll just do whatever America tells me.

One inventive practice of the CIA on behalf of Mexisei was later picked up by the agency stations in a number of other third world countries. This particular piece of chicanery consisted of selecting articles written by CIA, writer agents for the provincial press and republishing them in a monthly digest of the provincial press. The digest was then sent to congressmen and other opinion makers in Manila to enlighten them as to what the provinces were thinking. You see, they wrote it themselves, and had it placed in provincial newspapers, news outlets, and then they created a digest called the digest of the provincial press. In other words, this is a roundup of what all of the outlying areas are saying even though we are the ones saying it.

We're gonna collect all of that and pretend that this is all what this represents the views of the outlying areas, and now we will just present this to people in Manila, the central government. Senator Claro M. Recto, Magasese's chief political opponent and a stern critic of American policy in The Philippines, came in for special treatment, as you would imagine he would. The CIA planted stories that he was a communist Chinese agent and had prepared packages of condoms labeled courtesy of Claro M. Recto, the people's friend.

The condoms all had holes in them at the most inappropriate place, filthy people. The agency also planned to assassinate Recto, going so far as to prepare a substance for poisoning him. The idea was abandoned for pragmatic considerations rather than moral scruples. After Magsese died in a plane crash in 1957, various other Filipino politicians and parties were sought out by the CIA as clients or offered themselves as such. One of the latter was Dios Dodo Dios Dodo Macapagal, who was to become president in 1961.

Macapagal provided the agency with political information for several years and eventually asked for and received what he felt he deserved, heavy financial support for his campaign. Reader's Digest Reader's Digest called his election, quote, certainly a demonstration of democracy in action. Ironically, Macapagal, had been the bitterest objector to, American intervention in the Magsaysay election in 1953, quoting time and time again from the Philippine law that, quote, no foreigner shall aid any candidate directly or indirectly or take part in or influence in any manner any election. Perhaps even more ironic, in 1957, the Philippine government adopted a law clearly written by Americans which outlawed both the communist party and the Huks, giving as one of the reasons for doing so that these organizations aimed at placing the government, quote, under the control and domination of an alien power. By 1953, the Huks were scattered and demoralized, no longer a serious threat, although their death would be distributed over the next through few years.

It's difficult to ascertain to what extent their decline was due to the traditional military force employed against him, or to Lansdale's more unorthodox methods, or to the eventual debilitation of many of the Huks from malnutrition and disease brought on by the impoverishment of the peasantry. Long before the end, many Huks were also, lacking weapons and ammunition and proper military equipment, bringing into question, the oft repeated charge of Soviet and Chinese aid to them made by Filipino and American authorities. Edward Lachica, a Filipino historian, has written that, quote, the the the Kremlin did pay lip service to the communist movement in The Philippines, praising the Huks for being part of the global struggle against The US, but no mill no material support was ever offered. Since the destruction of Hook military power, noted George Taylor, the social and political program that made the accomplishment possible has to a large extent fallen by the wayside. Fortress America, however, was securely in place in Southeast Asia.

From The Philippines would be launched American air and sea actions against Korea, against China, against Vietnam, and Indonesia. The Philippine government would send combat forces to fight alongside The United States in Vietnam and in Korea. On the island's bases, the technology, and the art of counterinsurgency warfare would be imparted to the troops of America's other allies in the Pacific. And that's the end of, this is chapter four. We're now on page, 67 ending on page 67.

We'll begin now the next chapter on page 65, chapter five. This is about Korea. 1945 to 1953, was it all that it appeared to be is the name of the chapter. I apologize again for not making this a live session, but because my time is organized in such a way or disorganized in such a way that I can't guarantee that I can do the live at a time when it's convenient for everyone to listen. So rather than continue to delay making these recordings, I just thought it it's better for me to just record it and and and upload it to you all, without doing it live.

So I I I apologize for the inconvenience to anyone.