In 1898, the international Peace Movement of the late 19th Century is confronted with a great challenge: the Spanish-American War, which the pacifists charge is a war of imperialism camouflaged as a war of liberation. The pacifists and new paradigm thinkers of America unite in an astonishing anti-war movement, a precursor to the anti-Vietnam War Movement of the 1960s. 19th Century nationalism and colonialism is now for the first time openly challenged by the new worldview—and it gathers much attention.
"...We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their Government in times of grave National peril applies to the present situation. If an Administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgment and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is imperiled…"
--Platform of the Anti-Imperialist League, Boston 1899
Following the death of over 200 sailors in the controversial sinking of The Maine on May 1st, 1898, the United States begins the bombardment of Manila Bay, starting the Spanish-American War. A few months later, some notable New Englanders began organizing a letter-writing campaign criticizing the slaughter. There are no demonstrations in this antiwar movement, just letters and opinion pieces. But there are lots of letters, and lots of opinion pieces—pro and con.
Then, after being denied independence, Philippine rebels turn against the Americans in February, 1899, and the real fight is joined. In the end, 500,000 Filipino civilians are killed in a clear act of American genocide. Independence is buried deep in the mass graves of those half-million dead freedom fighters and civilians. The anti-war movement is aghast.
Notables in the Anti-Imperialist League soon include celebrities like Mark Twain, William James and Andrew Carnegie, who are horrified at the accounts of the fighting, which resemble Vietnam in many ways.
"I am not afraid, and am always ready to do my duty, but I would like some one to tell me what we are fighting for."
--Arthur H. Vickers, Sergeant in the First Nebraska Regiment
"Talk about war being 'hell,' this war beats the hottest estimate ever made of that locality. Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and dismal prison alone remain. The village of Maypaja, where our first fight occurred on the night of the fourth, had five thousand people on that day, -- now not one stone remains upon top of another. You can only faintly imagine this terrible scene of desolation. War is worse than hell."
--Captain Elliott, of the Kansas Regiment, February 27th
Fueled by such reports, the Pacifist Movement—combined with a strong attitude among Americans that the U.S. should never follow the Europeans in their fights for colonies and subjects—makes the Anti-Imperialist League a vocal force. Nevertheless, it is derided as “mugwumpery” by the McKinley administration, which finally “pacifies” the islands in 1901.
William James writes: “Could there be a more damning indictment of that whole bloated idol termed ‘modern civilization’ than this amounts to? Civilization is, then, the big, hollow, resounding, corrupting, sophisticating, confusing torrent of mere brutal momentum and irrationality that brings forth fruits like this?”
Carl Shurz, editor of Harper’s Weekly, declares that the U.S. cannot “play the king over subject populations without creating in itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality.” The media, by not holding the President accountable, allows the Republicans to “purposely and systematically… keep the American people in ignorance of the true state of things at the seat of war, and by all sorts of deceitful tricks to deprive them of the knowledge required for the formulation of a correct judgment.”
Mark Twain had been away from America for 10 years, and when he returns he is besieged by the press wanting to know his views on imperialism, for they had heard he had turned anti-imperialist. In the New York Herald article of October 15, 1900–headlined “Mark Twain Home, An Anti-Imperialist”—his change of heart is explained:
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.
I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.
But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.
We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
Twain also writes: "I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel.... But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater." To solve the whole Philippines conflict, the pacifist Andrew Carnegie offers to buy the entire Philippines for $20 million and give them their independence. McKinley does not take him up on it.
There are many fascinating similarities in the political climate of then and the peace movement of today—despite being divided by more than a century of tremendous change. In both eras, the President’s unbridled expansionism is basically unchallenged by the political establishment—due to a traumatic event: The Maine in one case, 9/11 in the other. Instead of the drumbeat to war of 21st Century television and newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, there was the maniacal “Yellow Press” of William Randolph Hearst, which exploits and sensationalizes the sinking of The Maine to no end—all for Republican and colonial gain.
Many of the Anti-Imperialist League arguments against expansionism of 1898 hold true today. Today, however, the U.S. does have the power—with a draft—to invade much of the world, especially Central Asia, seen as the current prize thanks to its oil and gas reserves. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld referred reporters to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) when they ask what the Republican agenda is (The PNAC Plan is the neo-conservative’s scheme for America to dominate Central Asian oil and so the world). Both the Philippines and Iraq are touted as wars of liberation but in reality were aggressive invasions to gain precious resources and regional power.
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