Gregg Jones

I recommend this book to anyone who wants (and needs) a true understanding of our nation’s evolution into a global power.
They were like a couple of good old boys joshing each other. When Teddy Roosevelt asked his Attorney General about the legality of his administration’s conduct in the Philippines he replied: “No, Mr. President, if I were you I would not have any taint of legality about it.” Furthermore, he added: “… you were accused of seduction and you have conclusively show more proved that you were guilty of rape.”
That’s my favorite quote in the book, on page 350. It gives us the lighter note on the military horror-show our government visited upon the would-be independent nation, after saving them from the imperial clutches of Spain. Sad to say that in order to crush any ideas of independence, we used the same brutal methods of imposing our will, including “Reconcentration Camps," burning towns, shooting prisoners and those merely suspected of hostility, and the “Water Cure,” which was a version of the water boarding we later used in our war on terror. The cruel war we waged, without respect for human rights was a self-conscious continuation of the wars against Native Americans. In fact a number of senior officers had been involved in the recently completed conquest of the west and described handling ‘savage’ inferior peoples in the same disdainful way.
History repeats, especially when we sleepwalk into the same situations without a true understanding of our legacy, how we got there and where we claim to be going. We easily become hypocrites, espousing freedom for ourselves while avidly abusing the rights of others. Words like democracy become stripped of meaning when due process is ignored and authority figures are allowed free reign above the law, as our military, winked at by our civil government, was allowed to operate to crush independence movements. show less

Jones does an astounding job at his singular goal of recounting the siege of Khe Sanh from the perspective of the men who were there. Stitching together interviews with veterans and after action reports, he blows away the fog of war to depict the terror of night assaults by the NVA, and hunking in the trenches and bunkers waiting for your number to come up.

There's a little bit of stage setting, with just enough gestures at the context: The Tet Offensive, Bernard Fall's release of Hell in a show more Very Small Place, LBJ, and interservice rivalry, to make sense of the story, but mostly he sticks close to the men and their experiences. Jones rates Khe Sanh a limited tactical victory. American air and artillery devastated the NVA regulars, and while giving up the base was a strategic embarrassment, a more secure location a few miles away continued to control the NW corner of South Vietnam. show less

This easy-to-read and intelligent nonfiction work focuses on the Spanish-American War with an emphasis on American behavior and abuses in the Philippines. I have read many books on Theodore Roosevelt, and while works on his early presidency mention the public relations disaster out of the Philippines, none went into detail. This one does. It's disturbing and thought-provoking.

Jones is a Pulitzer-Prize finalist journalist with years of firsthand experience in the Philippines. The events in show more his book took place over a hundred years ago but remain incredibly relevant today as the United States engages in war, holds prisoners, and confronts issues of confessions arising from torture. America entered the Philippines in 1898, boasting that it would save the benighted people from Spanish abuses... and within years, ended up doing many of the same things as the Spanish. The American takeover was fairly straightforward, but when the Americans allowed the Filipinos no representation (not even in the peace talks with Spain) and treated citizens as subhuman, a brutal guerilla war began. American soldiers and marines engaged in terrible acts, including "water cure" torture. War trials took place and the media and public were appalled by what happened, but the only soldier to really be punished was a whistleblower.

Roosevelt's role in everything was complicated, as he was a very complicated man. His pushed for an American empire abroad, one with high ideals, and his administration did whatever it could to cover up what really happened in the Far East. He didn't approve of brutal tactics but also excused what happened as part of war. At the same time, he was still a progressive who wanted to see American blacks treated as full citizens; he called out his critics who railed against him about actions in the Philippines, even as the United States dealt with horrible lynchings of blacks across the South.

I found this to be a fantastic book for my research, and one I think more people should read. It's part of American history that is almost entirely ignored due to its shameful nature, and as a country, we should face what happened and actively seek to do better. show less

If for the knowledgeable Operation Iraqi Freedom generated the spark of recognition of parallels with an earlier colonial war, with its mix of self-promotional bombast, protestations of good intentions, and the all-too-often ghastly results of an unwanted occupation, the author here doesn't have to invoke the previous decade once in this tale of America stepping onto the world stage as a major player to make his points; even if the rationales for 1898 and all that are more difficult to show more recapture now.

Rather more of a general study of the Spanish-American War and the follow-on conflict in the Philippines, the particular virtue Jones brings to his book is a better understanding and appreciation of the Filipino people then one usually sees in the standard accounts of the war. Jones also turns a more critical eye than is normal to the foibles of the American military leaders who directed operations, and not just the politicians who launched the war. I felt this was about the best overall narrative that I've read of this conflict, and I've read a lot of the modern studies that have come out in the last generation.

What surprises me somewhat is that there is actually less of Teddy Roosevelt in this book than I expected; again, this is much more of a general study of the period than the subtitle suggests. Though perhaps that is an additional illustration of Jones' observation of how Teddy sanitized the record of his personal feelings when the going got really rough. Also, Jones could have perhaps dealt a bit more with the notion that the United States reaching out for world empire was an exercise in re-union, which possibly explains why Roosevelt and his fellow imperialists found it relatively easy (at least in retrospect) to overcome public dissension when it became clear what a hard-handed war the U.S. was waging in the Philippines; few really wanted to break the golden moment of unity.

However, few also hungered for more imperial adventure the way that Teddy did, showing the ephemeral nature of the whole project; at least prior to America's rise to "globalism" after World War II. show less