Jungle of Snakes (2 page)
Authors: James R. Arnold
The battle is fought on many fronts but none surpasses the importance of the information front. In the Philippines in 1900
the insurgents crafted their strategy to influence the American presidential election. Poor communications and hardworking
U.S. Army censors helped thwart this strategy. When Communist insurgents in Vietnam employed the same strategy in the 1960s,
advances in communications technology enabled them to broadcast their messages. Today’s globalized information environment
gives insurgents an even more powerful tool. Whether from hideouts on the Pakistan border or from bases deep in the Colombian
jungle, insurgent leaders often wield this tool with great skill.
David Kilcullen, an Australian expert whose advice has influenced General David Petraeus among others, observes that contemporary
counterinsurgencies are “fundamentally an information fight. The enemy gets that, and we don’t yet.”
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Jungle of Snakes
seeks to contribute to that information fight. The author fully understands that any historical example involves a set of
influences of which some are unique to a certain place and time. But the reader will see common themes emerge. One inescapable
conclusion is that a counterinsurgency is a long fight.
Jungle of Snakes
provides readers with a historical foundation so that informed citizens can assess how the fight is going.
Finally, it should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection
of the inhabitants of the Philippines . . . by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent
assimilation.
—President William McKinley, December 21, 1898
1
An American Challenge
THE AMERICANS HAD COME TO FIGHT and now, on the morning of August 13, 1898, they were finally getting their chance. For the
veterans among them, the Spanish line of trenches and blockhouses defending Manila appeared formidable. Civil War experience
had taught that determined infantry dug in up to their eyebrows behind log and dirt breastworks could hold their position
even if outnumbered four or five to one. On this field the sides were roughly equal, with each having about 13,000 men. Furthermore,
the attackers would have to make a frontal assault on a narrow strip of land hemmed in on one side by Manila Bay and on the
inland side by a flooded swamp.
The soldiers expected little assistance from their informal allies, a ragtag force of Filipino revolutionaries who followed
the banner of twenty-nine-year-old Emilio Aguinaldo. Indeed, the senior American leadership had planned carefully to prevent
the Filipinos from participating in the assault. When the Americans claimed they needed the position to establish an artillery
battery, the revolutionaries had reluctantly ceded the trenches facing this section of Spanish works back on July 29. Since
that time, the Americans had endured a life in the trenches made miserable by either a baking tropical sun or, as was the
case on this morning, a pelting rain. Their shoes and uniforms had quickly rotted on their bodies, while Spanish snipers shot
at anyone who unwisely revealed himself. Now, finally, with their contemptible allies out of the way and their senior officers
prepared to order an assault, they could escape their trenches and come to grips with their foe.
At 9:35 a.m. Admiral George Dewey’s cruisers and gunboats opened fire against a beachside Spanish strongpoint, Fort San Antonio
Abad. The 3.2-inch field guns served by Utah volunteers joined the bombardment. For fifty minutes American shells blasted
the Spanish defenses. The guns fell silent and the Americans clambered from their trenches, advanced a short distance, and
lay down. This was no wild charge of densely packed troops into the teeth of the enemy’s breastworks in the manner of Virginia
in 1864. Instead it was a carefully orchestrated, methodical assault backed by overwhelming firepower. When the soldiers lay
down the navy resumed a short bombardment. Then the soldiers moved forward along the beach to within 100 yards of the Spanish
position and went to ground again. For a third time the big naval guns spoke. When an eight-inch naval shell penetrated the
rear wall of Fort San Antonio Abad, the Spanish garrison fled.
While one U.S. brigade pursued the Spaniards through the suburbs toward Manila, an adjacent brigade commanded by Civil War
veteran Arthur MacArthur charged toward Blockhouse 14, which was barring the road to the capital. Here there was a sharp exchange
of fire, costing the Americans five killed and thirty-eight wounded. MacArthur’s men captured the blockhouse and pressed ahead
all the way to the old walls protecting Manila. Gazing up through another tropical deluge, they saw the surprising sight of
white flags flying from the city’s walls. After offering token re sistance, the Spanish had surrendered. Having captured the
Spanish capital of the Philippine islands, the Americans turned to their second objective: keeping Aguinaldo’s aroused revolutionaries
from entering Manila.
THE DISEMBARKATION OF United States soldiers at the port of Cavite in Manila Bay in the summer of 1898 marked the first time
in history that American ground forces set foot on Asian soil to fight a war. Their mission was daunting: they had volunteered
to oust the Spanish but found themselves having to impose American control over the Philippines, an archipelago numbering
more than 7,000 islands spread along a 1,000-mile chain. If the patriotic Westerners who filled the ranks of the volunteer
regiments looked at a map they could appreciate that this was a span equivalent to the distance from Seattle to Los Angeles.
But the natural obstacles were far more formidable. From mountainous interiors to swampy shorelines, individual islands presented
a hostile environment featuring jungles and dense expanses of towering cogon grass pierced by rough trails that connected
isolated hamlets. The threat of ambush was everywhere. Worse, heat, humidity, and terrifying tropical diseases reigned.
The Philippine islands were home to more than 7 million people. To the American soldier their behavior was a mystery. Few
Americans spoke Spanish and none spoke any of the seventy-some dialects used by most Filipinos. The insurgents easily blended
into the local population or hid in the interior, where they found near-perfect concealment. They were like fish swimming
in a friendly sea and the American soldiers knew it.
Philippine History
In 1521 Ferdinand Magellan entered an unknown region in the South Seas while searching for a route to the Spice Islands. He
came upon a chain of islands that he named the Philippines after King Philip II, of “Invincible Armada” fame. It proved his
last discovery. Natives on the island of Cebu killed the great explorer, leaving it up to his second in command to complete
history’s first circumnavigation of the globe. The Spanish returned to Cebu in 1565 to begin a period of colonial rule that
lasted until 1898.
During the great European scramble for colonies, the Philippines remained a backwater. Nonetheless, Spanish influence was
great. Spain forcibly united the Filipinos into one nation for the first time in their history. The Spanish introduced Catholicism,
thereby creating what to this day remains the only Christian nation in East Asia. Converting the benighted islanders to Christianity
provided the cover for colonial exploitation. The great religious orders—Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans—owned and developed
large estates where the peasants attended mass on Sunday and the rest of the time labored to produce rice, sugarcane, and
hemp for the church’s benefit. The Spanish zeal to perfect the natives did not extend to promoting economic development or
self-government, and therein lay the seeds of insurrection.
Outside of the religious orders, few Spaniards came to the islands to live. To administer the archipelago’s economy, Spanish
authorities relied on select natives to occupy the lower rungs of the bureaucracy. Over time this local elite took advantage
of opportunities in trade and commerce to achieve a dominant position in Filipino society. But the Spanish continued to discriminate
against them when it came to appointments to important positions in the church, government, and military. By the dawn of the
twentieth century, prominent, educated Filipinos, called the
ilustrados
(enlightened), had grown tired of their second-class status. As their resentment built, some
ilustrados
formed the Katipunan (Patriots’ League), a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Spanish and achieving Philippine self-rule.
The Katipunan initiated a major rebellion in 1896 in the Tagalog-speaking provinces of Luzon, the most populous island in
the Philippines. The rebels quickly gained control of the area south of Manila. Then factional rivalries split the Katipunan
command, leading to the execution of the movement’s leader and his replacement with Emilio Aguinaldo. The quarreling allowed
the Spanish to recover and counterattack. After a year of conflict, and having learned that rebellion was difficult, dangerous
work, Aguinaldo and several other prominent leaders made a shrewd calculation and allowed themselves to be bought out by the
Spanish. Aguinaldo went into brief exile in comfortable billets in Hong Kong.
Hostilities Erupt
The sinking of the battleship
Maine
in Havana harbor precipitated the United States’ declaration of war on Spain in April 1898. Admiral George Dewey commanded
the U.S. Asiatic Squadron, the spearhead of his country’s Pacific thrust against Spain. Best remembered for his utterly ordinary
command “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” Dewey and his fleet annihilated the overmatched Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on
May 1, 1898. Because he lacked sufficient ground forces to invade the Philippines, Dewey had to confine his subsequent efforts
to a naval blockade of Manila. In order to avoid a total loss of momentum while he waited for the arrival of American troops,
two months away, Dewey made the fateful decision to summon Aguinaldo from exile.
What exactly was said during Aguinaldo’s meeting with Dewey remains controversial. Aguinaldo claimed that an American consul
had already pledged that the United States would recognize Filipino in dependence and that Dewey reiterated this promise.
Dewey claimed he said no such thing. Dewey’s intention was merely to use Filipino guerrillas to pin the Spanish in Manila
until an American ground force arrived to capture the capital. Toward this goal Dewey gave Aguinaldo 100 rifles and the American
consul in Hong Kong purchased another 2,000 for the Filipino leader.
In a country where modern firearms were scarce, these gifts helped Aguinaldo reassert his position as leader of the Filipino
independence movement. As the weeks passed, friction between the Filipino insurgents and the Americans developed. Aguinaldo
had learned that the McKinley administration was coming to the view that the United States should first evict the Spanish
and then retain the Philippines as a prize of war. Aguinaldo sought to preempt this effort by proclaiming himself president
of a provisional government of an inde pendent Philippine Republic. He assumed control of the insurgency and directed his
forces to occupy as much territory as possible in order to give credence to the assertion that he represented the will of
the Filipino people.
From the beginning, leaders from the
ilustrado
class dominated the insurgency. They were Tagalogs, racially indistinguishable from other Filipinos but separated by the language
they spoke. Their homeland was the central and southern parts of the main island of Luzon. The Tagalogs did not try to mobilize
support from the mass of the people. Their goal was to transfer power from the Spanish to themselves. From a peasant’s perspective,
this was essentially a continuation of rule by a local elite. In select areas, notably in central Luzon and the provinces
south of Manila, the people enthusiastically supported the revolution. Outside of this Tagalog heartland, the peasant response
to Aguinaldo’s revolutionary government was tepid. However, as a contemporary American historian observed, “It is fair to
presume that a people will help men of their own blood, men who speak the same language, men whose thoughts are their thoughts,
rather than foreigners whose declared purposes they do not trust.”
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Despite his lack of military education and experience, Aguinaldo assumed command of the revolutionary army. By the end of
June 1898, Filipino insurgents controlled most of Luzon except for Manila itself. As this point Aguinaldo believed that the
United States would recognize his government. He was wrong.
On August 14, 1898, the Spanish formally surrendered to the Americans. The previous day’s combat for control of Manila had
been something of a sham. Guidelines over the conduct of the battle had been prearranged between the Americans and the Spanish.
The subsequent show of Spanish re sistance was a matter of honor, although the American casualties, 17 killed and 105 wounded,
were real enough. The so-called First Battle of Manila was unusual in several respects. The nominal foes, Spain and the United
States, shared a strong common interest in barring Aguinaldo’s rebels from the city. The nominal allies ended the battle almost
in armed conflict with each other. Hasty negotiations allowed the rebels to remain in the suburbs while the Americans controlled
the city. Perhaps the least surprising outcome from the battle was the immediate collapse of army-navy harmony. Dewey told
American war correspondents that he had had everything arranged for a bloodless transfer of power and that the army had taken
unnecessary losses for glory’s sake alone. The general who commanded the assault columns responded by publishing an account
of the army’s storming Manila without any naval assistance.
Safely ensconced behind the walls of old Manila, the Americans issued a proclamation to inform the Filipino people that the
United States had not come to wage war on them. At year’s end President William McKinley reinforced this point by declaring
that U.S. policy was to be based on benign assimilation, a paternal policy in which the knowing elder improved the child by
providing education and discipline. Of course, to accomplish benign assimilation it was necessary to occupy the islands. Without
realizing the difficulty of the task, McKinley charged the U.S. Army with enforcing “lawful rule” throughout the islands.
At the same time, he ordered it to protect Filipino lives, property, and civil rights. McKinley thereby set the army a twofold
task: one military and one involving civil affairs. The president was convinced that in time the Filipinos would see that
American motives for occupying the islands were pure and that this realization would end any re sistance. Like Aguinaldo,
McKinley was wrong in his conviction.
