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George Bush, the Lesser. Photo by The Associated Press.

Let Us Occupy You!

George Bush, the Lesser, apparently wants to do everything Big Historical Bush does, which might explain his Saddam fetish.

But he must have a thing for Filipinos as well.

You’ll remember it was Big Historical Bush who, back in 1981, showered the dictator Ferdinand Marcos with this bit of glowing praise:

“We love your adherence to democratic principles,” Big Historical Bush told the dictator.

He wasn’t kidding.

Marcos, of course, loved democracy so much, he declared martial law in the Philippines for nearly two decades so he could have all its democracy for himself.

So how is George the Lesser following in Big Historical Bush’s footsteps on this score? Simply by showing his penchant for confusing the issue of democracy and Filipino American history.

And what timing! It all comes during the month of October, designated by the Filipino American National History Society as Filipino American History Month.

It all begins with George the Lesser’s stated plan for Iraq after the United States beats Saddam to a pulp. The United States wants to “occupy” it.

All Filipinos with a deep memory and love for history had to cringe a bit when they heard this. Any Filipino who remembers World War II knows all about the verb “to occupy” in that context.

My late mother used to tell me how she hid in her family’s tailoring shop in Tondo for fear of the brutal Japanese military during its occupation of Manila. Thanks to such tales, Filipinos will remember with some pride the end of the three-year occupation when General Douglas MacArthur took back the Philippines.

Ultimately, the Japanese got to taste some of their own medicine. They were occupied as well, later in 1945, under the very same General MacArthur, a liberator in the Philippines, but quite a different animal in Japan. As head of a military government, MacArthur was set up as the supreme ruler of that country, with the power to issue any directive he pleased.

You’ll hear a lot about MacArthur these days, because once the United States takes care of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the plan is to have a military commander take over that country — just like Big Mac.

Mentioning MacArthur is intended to make people feel all right about it.

But if you had a problem with war in Iraq in the first place, and I did, this is like being forced to swallow a second horse pill before the other one is down the throat. It seems that George the Lesser is all too quick to skip over the hard part — the death and destruction of Iraqis, the death of American military men and women, your sons and daughters — and go right into the next chapter, the occupation.

One problem. Occupation comes with pit-falls.

The White House knows this and immediately became defensive. A few weeks ago George the Lesser assured the media that the United States would “never seek to impose our culture or form of government” on another nation. At least that was what The New York Times reported. So it has to be true, right?

Filipinos cringed again. Go back further than WWII, to the turn of the century and the Spanish American War. Filipinos fought side-by-side with Americans for freedom. General Emil Aguinaldo even established a Philippine republic, the first democratic republic in Asia. But in the Treaty of Paris, the United States had another idea of how to divvy up the spoils of the Spanish American War.

The United States bought the Philippines outright for $20 million. There was to be no democracy for the Philippines. General Elwell Otis was made the military governor of the Philippines (sound familiar?). The Filipinos fought back. If you support the United States, you’d call it the Philippine Insurrection. If you support the Filipinos, you’d call it what it was — the Philippine American War, one that claimed thousands of American lives and millions of Filipinos.

That war’s ending established America’s imperial presence, euphemized by President McKinley as “Benevolent Assimilation.” When the military turned it over to the civilian government led by William Howard Taft, from Cincinnati and not Manila, the democratic United States had its first colony.

Could a similar situation occur in Iraq? Out of an innocent occupation under U.S. command, the temptations certainly are there. How? Three letters: O-I-L.

That’s more temptation than you’ll find in a Subic Bay go-go bar.

Is it all that hard to imagine our leaders — Bush and Cheney, refugees from big oil companies — setting up shop as the supreme ruler of all that Iraqi oil?

If that’s too crass for your sense of democracy, then for sure, the United States kicks Saddam’s party out, and sets up a pro-western puppet government!

Oh-oh. Filipinos know that scenario too.

That’s why, when the plan was leaked that the end game of any war calls for an Iraqi occupation, Filipinos with a sense of the past had to feel a slight chill. It may be said that the United States would “never seek to impose our culture or our form of government.” But frankly, the history of America speaks for itself. Ask the Filipinos. Heck, ask the Japanese.

Get Emil’s book, Amok. Send $21.95 to P.O. Box 81, Orinda, CA 94563.

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.