“Bush sees hope in Philippines’ past — He compares it to vision of Iraq’s future” but “The Philippines ‘Liberator’ Was Really a Colonizer.”
The Prez said the USA “liberated the Philippines from colonial rule…. America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people.”
The problem is that before liberating the Philippines the US killed over 100,000 Filipinos and colonized the islands for decades. Hopefully there’s a different plan in place for Iraq.
The arguments of today’s unilateralist interventionists — aka neocons — are similar to some of the Philippines annexationists’. It’s been pointed out that the neo-cons are (radical) not conservative. Turns out they’re not too neo either.
Senator Orville H. Platt (R – Connecticut) in the U. S. Senate, January 9, 1899:
“… I believe that we have been chosen to carry forward this great work of uplifting humanity on earth. From the time of the landing on Plymouth Rock in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, in the spirit of the Constitution, believing that all men are equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, believing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we have spread that civilization across the continent until it stood at the Pacific Ocean looking ever westward….”
Similarly, the analyses of the paleo-conservative, isolationist and libertarian adversaries of the neocons resemble many of those of the pre–Cold War anti-imperialists.
There’s an excellent and huge web resource on this subject: the weirdly-named BoondocksNet.com.