FIGHTING A

Abstract

Many scholars have written about the counterinsurgency phase of the Philippine- American War (1899-1902). Military historians often downplayed the impact of human rights abuses, while emphasizing the success of the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency instead. In contrast, social historians frequently focused on human rights abuses at the expense of understanding the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency efforts. Unlike the majority of earlier works, this thesis unifies military, social, and legal history to primarily answer these questions: what significant factors led U.S. soldiers to commit human rights abuses during the war, and at what cost did the U.S. pacify the Filipino rebellion? The war was successfully waged at the tactical, operational, and strategic level, but wavered at the grand strategic level.1 This study argues that racism, ambiguous rules and regulations, and a breakdown of discipline contributed to U.S. soldiers committing human rights abuses against Filipinos during the counterinsurgency. Primary sources from the perspectives of American policy makers, military leaders, and common soldiers—in addition to documents on U.S. Army regulations and its past traditions—reveal a comprehensive story of what happened during this conflict. The U.S. Army’s abuse were not a historical anomaly, but a growing trend extending from nineteenth century conflicts against other races. The counterinsurgency revealed that beneath the stated principles of 1 For the purposes of this thesis, grand strategy is “the direction and use made of any and all of the assets of a security community, including its military instruments, for the purposes of policy as decided by politics.” This differs from the strategic level of war, which is the direction and exclusive use of military forces for the purposes of policy as decided by politics. Finally, the operational level is the level of war where the tasks, decided by strategy, are coordinated and individual units are commanded. These units, in turn, engaging in tactics to achieve operational objectives. Colin S. Gray, The Future of Strategy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), 29, 47. iii America’s benevolent mission, violent racial underpinnings existed in U.S. desires for global and domestic hegemony. The U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency resulted in a flawed victory, won at the cost of combatants, innocent civilians, and American idealism.