Submitted by Evan P. Garcia, Feb 28, 2007 01:46

Although I have not yet read Silbey's new book, the review by Kirsch makes me look forward to doing so. As a Filipino, I naturally welcome fair and balanced treatment of what was a truly dreadul episode in Philippine-American relations. While purely militarily technical comparisons can be drawn between the Philippine-American War and Vietnam and then Iraq, doing so courts the danger of making them all appear to be morally equivalent to one another, which is a terrible mistake. Filipinos who know their history are proud that their forbears resisted American imperialism and came out of the contest with an even stronger sense of nationalism. At the same time, the American colonial experience was far more beneficial overall for the Philippines than was the case in almost any other colonized country. It was this positive record, further seared into the national consciousness by World War II, when Filipinos and Americans fought side by side, that made Filipinos and Americans the friends they are today.

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