By Maurice “Moe” A. Lescault, Jr.
Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.1
History . . . is a larger way of looking at life . . . . It is about who we are and what we stand for and is essential to our understanding of what our own role should be in our time . . . . Our history, our American story, is our definition as a people and a nation.2
The following scenario seems like it might have been ripped from the headlines in the early years of the twenty-first century:
I’m going to die. The terrifying realization seized the slight, middle-aged man as he lay pinned to the . . . floor. . . . A stick prevented him from closing his mouth while water poured down his throat, strangling him and swelling his stomach and intestines until surely they must explode. . . . A bearded officer asked the questions through a native interpreter. . . . After less than ten minutes, [he] could endure no more. . . . He would tell [them] what they wanted to hear.3
If asked to identify when and where this event occurred, most judge advocates (JAs) would likely say Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the early 2000s. This would be a reasonable conclusion given the intense debate that occurred regarding so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” specifically “waterboarding” in the early days of the War on Terror.4 But, the reality is that this event occurred on Panay Island in the Philippines on 27 November 1900. Journalist and author, Gregg Jones, uses it as the prologue to his compelling book, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of American Imperialism.5 While Jones’s work is now ten years old, it remains an important read for JAs, effectively emphasizing the need to undergird our principled legal practice with lessons drawn from historical knowledge. In a work of readable length, Jones crafts a captivating story of the jingoistic mindset that led to American imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Honor in the Dust covers the travails of guerilla warfare and its impact on the psyche, morale, and behavior of American Soldiers and leaders. Also, Jones unflinchingly discusses the inadequate response of the military legal system prior to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) when addressing allegations of atrocities by U.S. troops.
Works of historical non-fiction often fail to tell a story, losing the reader in an academic prose that is accurate but not compelling.6 A journalist by trade, Jones avoids this trap by weaving the historical narrative into an intensely engaging story framed in the context of America’s rise on the world stage. Jones covers his topic with an eye towards presidential politics and the Spanish-American War that led to the United States’ involvement in the Philippines. Jones provides fascinating and contextually useful descriptions of the domestic impacts of the United States’ imperialist impulses during the first administration of President William McKinley and McKinley’s campaign for reelection in 1900.7 That said, the focus of Jones’s book is the United States’ effort to annex the Philippine Islands, despite the initial belief by the Philippine resistance that America’s involvement would bring them freedom and self-government.8 Arguably, the United States was an improvement over Spanish colonial administration, at least espousing a policy of “benevolent assimilation”9 even establishing “the first parliament ever freely elected in Asia,”10 in 1907. However, the United States would not recognize the Philippines as a sovereign nation until 1946, after liberation from Japanese occupation.11
In describing the rising imperialist impulses in the minds of the Americans and their leaders, Jones provides exceptional opportunities for discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) and the Army value of respect, particularly in his chapter entitled, “The White Man’s Burden.”12 While the ideas and language seem shocking to the modern mind, beliefs of white superiority were sincerely held at the time. Many, including President McKinley, espoused altruistic motives for the paternalistic approach the United States took in administering the Philippines.13 Of course, the Filipinos neither appreciated these motives nor wanted American governance. They wanted freedom and self-government—something that they had been fighting for against the Spanish colonialists before the United States ever arrived in the Philippines.14 Despite the disparaging view of American leaders to the contrary, the Filipinos were fully capable of governing themselves, having already established a revolutionary government under Emilio Aguinaldo.15 Jones’s description of the U.S. approach to the Philippines and attitude toward the Filipinos would form an excellent basis for DEI discussions about racial attitudes, the impact that discriminatory beliefs and a lack of respect has on policies and decisions (whether local or national), and the rationalization of prejudicial actions with misplaced motives that viewing people with disrespect and racial animus engenders.
American Soldiers of the 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry in trenches in the Philippines during the insurrection. (Credit: Library of Congress)
Central to Jones’s narrative is the rise of a legendary American leader, President Theodore Roosevelt. Coming to prominence in New York politics, Roosevelt would begin to develop true national renown as the hero of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.16 Jones includes short episodes from Roosevelt’s life, specifically those that intersect with policy in the Philippines, including his ascendancy to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination in 1901.17 Throughout this time, Roosevelt’s views on diplomacy are squarely in the jingoistic, imperialist camp.18 Roosevelt is also left with the problem of accountability when courts-martial are held for crimes committed in the Philippines by U.S. military personnel.19 As a well-known and admired leader, Roosevelt’s inclusion in the book adds depth to the study of this period. Roosevelt is often lionized for progressive policies and achievements, including establishing the Department of Commerce to regulate corporations (so-called “trust busting”), beginning the Panama Canal, and establishing national parks and monuments.20 However, his views on imperialism and racial equality are certainly not what we would expect today from a national leader. This text studies the entire person, recognizing both achievements and flaws—even serious moral failures. Professor Wilfred M. McClay of the University of Oklahoma expresses this well, saying:
[T]he history of the United States . . . includes the activity of searching self-criticism as part of its foundational makeup. There is immense hope in that process if we go about it in the right way. That means approaching the work of criticism with constructive intentions and a certain generosity that flows from the mature awareness that none of us is perfect and that we should therefore judge others as we would ourselves wish to be judged, blending justice and mercy. One of the worst sins of the present—not just ours but any present—is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn’t trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time.21
Studying history, in the way that Professor McClay suggests, creates a truly human picture that provides valuable lessons that all of us, with our own limitations, biases, and failings, can realistically either seek to emulate or avoid. In short, we should learn from historical figures not as deities or devils, but as frail human beings with the same weaknesses and propensities for both good and evil that we all possess. By doing so, we can seek to accurately develop principles and live out what we learn from these figures, recognizing that we, like they, have equal propensity for both great success and great failure.
A real strength of Honor in the Dust is that it intertwines the political events on the home front with the situation on the ground in the Philippines. This conflict was teaching the United States that conventional forces face difficulty when fighting an enemy using guerilla tactics on their home terrain in tropical jungles.22 America would ostensibly forget this lesson and have to relearn it at great cost during the Vietnam War over sixty years later.23 Judge advocates will see in Jones’s detailed accounts of warfare in the Philippines many of the common scenarios that they might think about when conducting training about the law of war with their units. Soldiers and Marines in the Philippines faced intense natural conditions, disease, and privation.24 Marines and Soldiers experienced atrocities committed by the enemy, they received vague orders, committed atrocities themselves, and attempted the defense of following orders when called to account.25 Among the photos included in the center of the book are pictures of Soldiers posing with Filipino corpses and a set of three pictures of American Soldiers administering the “water cure” to Filipinos.26 Consequently, one great use of Jones’s work is that it provides interesting historical training scenarios that remain applicable today— particularly in a counter-insurgency environment. And the fact that the scenarios are drawn from history provides a real-world response to the scenario that can serve to set up discussion about the propriety of the response at the time of the events as well as a comparison to a proper response under today’s standards.
Maurice “Moe” Lescault is the Senior Civilian at TJAGLCS and the Associate Dean for Academics. (Photo courtesy of author)
Honor in the Dust also presents contextual situations that are useful when thinking about the military legal system, how it is structured today, and why the system must sometimes change. The main protagonist in the story, Littleton Tazewell Waller, commonly referred to as Tony Waller, serves as a “judge advocate” in the Marines as a line officer with no legal training, even arguing before the United States Supreme Court as a Marine lieutenant.27 Waller later faces his own court-martial for his actions in the Philippines.28 Jones’s description of Waller’s acquittal and its aftermath would form the basis of very interesting discussions about the pre-UCMJ court-martial system and the importance of changes to that system over the latter half of the twentieth century.29 The impact of politics and popular opinion on the Philippine courts-martial would foster excellent discussions about the responsibilities of convening authorities and command influence of leaders within the court-martial system, up to and including the President of the United States.30 The actions of the then-Judge Advocate General, Major General George B. Davis, who dealt with the originator of the term “bully pulpit,” Theodore Roosevelt, highlight issues touching on principled counsel.31
Academic historians would likely find Jones’s work too lightly noted, despite the extensive bibliography that he provides. Jones also has a clear viewpoint that is critical of the U.S. role in the Philippines, the atrocities committed there, and the outcome of the courts-martial proceedings throughout the book. Some portions stray into opinion and commentary. Still, for most readers, the factual structure of the work is sound, and the presentation carries the reader along in almost the same way as a novel. An engaging read, Honor in the Dust will be a profitable addition to the leader development reading list for any JA office. Not only does it provide reading enjoyment, but it also provides excellent material that will support profitable discussions of numerous aspects of JA practice, from national security law and military justice to leadership, officership, and DEI.
On the back cover, Jones’s editors describe Honor in the Dust in this way:
From Admiral George Dewey’s legendary naval victory in Manila Bay to the Rough Riders’ daring charge up San Juan Hill, from Roosevelt’s ascendancy to the presidency amid national tragedy to charges of U.S. military misconduct and torture in the Philippines, Gregg Jones brilliantly captures America’s exuberant and at times painful coming of age.32
Given the many parallels between issues in the Philippines and those faced once again in the War on Terror over one-hundred years later, one might question whether America has ever truly “come of age.” Of course, it is beyond question that America did emerge as a world leader in the twentieth century, starting with the McKinley and the Roosevelt administrations and continuing through America’s critical participation in two world wars. The real question of America’s growth, then, should not be whether we have come of age as a nation, but whether we have effectively learned the critical lessons that we should have learned in that process. Given the fact that our republican form of government changes to some degree with every election, the tumult of history can drown out critical policy and moral lessons. It is therefore essential for our culture to maintain an accurate and honest approach to our history within the educational system, which itself should be aimed primarily at producing informed citizens. Failure to do so will undercut our Nation’s ability to remain principled in its leadership on the world stage because we will not develop the type of citizens that understand the lessons of the past and can hold our leaders accountable to the constitutional principles that undergird our republic.
The same challenge is true in our military, including the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. In our military culture, where we also transition to new jobs and locations every two or three years with new leadership forming (or re-forming) teams, it is the study of history—works like Honor in the Dust—that can help us to learn (or remember) timeless lessons, sustain defining principles, and pass these principles on to the next generation. It is only through this type of learning, self-reflection, and application of timeless principles that we can ensure that our military maintains its place as one of our Nation’s most trusted institutions.33 TAL
Mr. Lescault is the Associate Dean for Academics and the Senior Civilian at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Notes
1. Winston Churchill spoke this version of the oftused quote in a 1948 speech before the House of Commons. However, Churchill was paraphrasing the quote generally attributed to philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Laurence Geller, Folger Library — Churchill’s Shakespeare, Churchill Int’l Soc’y (21 Oct. 2018), https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/in-the-media/ churchill-in-the-news/folger-library-churchills-shakespeare.
2. David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We are and What We Stand For xiii (2017).
3. Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream 1-2 (2012).
4. See Major General Thomas J. Romig, The Thirty-First Charles L. Decker Lecture in Administrative and Civil Law, 221 Mil. L. Rev., 257, 274-77 (2014); Alberto Mora, The First Thomas J. Romig Lecture in Principled Legal Practice, 227 Mil. L. Rev. 433 (2019).
5. Jones, supra note 3.
6. No less of an authority than bestselling historian David McCullough levelled this critique in a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal, where he stated the following about history texts:
They’re boring! Historians are never required to write for people other than historians . . . . Most of them are doing excellent work. I draw on their excellent work. I admire some of them more than anybody I know. But, by and large, they haven’t learned to write very well.
Brian Bolduc, Don’t Know Much About History, . The Wall St. J. (June 18, 2011), https://www.wsj.com/ articles/SB10001424052702304432304576369421525 987128.
7. Jones, supra note 3, parts I and II.
8. See Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines 110-11 (1990); Jones, supra note 3, at 45-46, 86-87.
9. Karnow,supra note 8, at 134; Jones, supra note 3, at 107.
10. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism 525-26 (2013) (quoting Karnow, supra note 8, at 238).
11. Karnow, supra note 8, at 323.
12. Jones, supra note 3, ch. 8. Jones takes the title of his chapter from a poem by British author Rudyard Kipling which, according to Jones, was written to shore up American resolve in the Philippines. Jones, supra note 3, at 106. Kipling’s poem in part says:
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
George Mason Univ., ‘The White Man’s Burden’: Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Imperialism, History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478 (last visited Dec. 16, 2022).
13. See, e.g., Jones, supra note 3, at 103 (describing at least one account of President McKinley claiming divine guidance to annex the Philippines to “educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ died”). See also Karnow, supra note 8, at 131. Karnow comments that “[c]haracteristically, . . . the Americans combined contempt for the natives with an evangelical impulse to improve their conditions.” For example, roads were repaired, public health clinics set up, schools were established, and even the unsavory task of removing human waste was taken up by the Americans. Karnow, supra note 8, at 131.
14. See, e.g., Jones, supra note 3, at 100-03 (describing the efforts of Felipe Agoncillo, the Filipino envoy from Emilio Aguinoldo’s revolutionary government, to meet with President McKinley, participate in the peace negotiations with Spain, and to attain self-rule).
15. Aguinaldo’s chief advisor, Apolinario Mabini had already “drafted a ‘constitutional program’ that . . . envisioned democratic institutions then unique in Asia, like a national legislature and elected officials.” Ironically, Mabini warned Aguinoldo not to declare independence prematurely so that the Filipinos could “demonstrate to the world their ability to govern themselves,” but Aguinoldo declared independence anyway on June 12, 1898—a declaration that Admiral Dewey and other U.S. leaders would ignore. Karnow, supra note 8, at 116-17.
16. Jones, supra note 3, ch. 6. Jones quotes Roosevelt in the title of the chapter, “It Was War, and it Was Magnificent.” To his credit, Roosevelt, unlike some political hawks, was willing to fight in the wars he advocated. Quoted in the New York Sun, Roosevelt said regarding the war with Spain, “I have always intended to act up on my preachings if occasion arose. Now the occasion has arisen, and I ought to meet it.” Jones, supra note 3, at 67.
17. Jones, supra note 3, at 221-24 (describing the tumultuous time between McKinley’s reelection, his assassination, and Roosevelt’s assumption of the presidency).
18. See, e.g., Jones, supra note 3, at 189 (arguing that to not pursue imperialism and expansion would “mean to trail the American flag in the dust”); Jones, supra note 3, at 271 (calling the Filipinos “savages” in an attempt to justify the actions of U.S. troops there).
19. Jones, supra note 3, at 274–281 (interweaving Roosevelt’s actions and reactions during the investigation of atrocities in the Philippines and the courts-martial to attempt to hold service members accountable).
20. See generally, Goodwin, supra note 10. Goodwin summarizes that, following his presidency, Roosevelt enjoyed a “popularity unrivaled since Abraham Lincoln.” Goodwin, supra note 10, at 1.
21. Wilfred M. McClay, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story xiv (2019). Professor McClay also expresses these sentiments in a speech he delivered at Hillsdale College. Wilfred M. McClay, Rediscovering the Wisdom in American History, Imprimis (Aug. 23, 2019), https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/rediscovering-wisdom-american-history.
22. Jones, supra note 3, ch. 11. This chapter, entitled “A Nasty Little War,” provides a microcosm of battlefield success, challenging terrain, and disastrous losses to the guerillas that will sound reminiscent of the United States’ experience in Vietnam sixty years later. This aspect of the book takes center stage in Part III labelled “The Bloody Work of Empire.” From total war on the island of Panay, to the massacre of a U.S. Infantry Company at Balangiga, to operations conducted by Tony Waller on the island of Samar, under orders from General Jacob Smith to “Kill and Burn!”, this part of the book would be central for any study applying the law of war to operations in the Philippines. Jones, supra note 3, chs. 15, 16, and 18.
23. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History 11-15 (1983).
24. See, e.g., Jones, supra note 3, at 195. Jones describes casualties for the first seven months of the year 1900 with 995 total casualties, or 4.7 casualties per day. While 254 had been killed in action, “[t]wenty committed suicide, 40 had drowned, and 653 had died from disease.” Jones, supra note 3, at 195.
25. See, e.g., Jones, supra note 3, at 193. Jones does an excellent job of providing details from the Soldier’s perspective. On this page, he includes excerpts from letters Soldiers wrote to loved ones that somehow made their way to reporters. One Soldier said: “‘We make everyone get into his house by 7 p.m., and we only tell a man once . . . . If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night.’” Another said:
‘Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight, which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.’
26. Photographs of Soldiers, in Jones, supra note 3, at 208-09.
27. Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream 36-37 (2012).
28. Id. ch. 21.
29. Id. ch. 21-23.
30. Id. chs. 21-25, Epilogue.
31. Theodore Roosevelt coined this phrase himself “to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action.” Goodwin, supra note 7, at xi.
32. Jones, supra note 3, back cover.
33. The Gallup Organization conducts an annual poll to determine the confidence America has in its institutions. The military has been included in this poll at least as far back as 1975. Since 2001, 70-80 percent of the country, on average, has a “[g]reat [d]eal” or “[q] uite a lot” of confidence in the military, placing it as the top one or two institutions in which Americans have most confidence. Since 2019, however, that number slipped three percentage points to a still strong, but slightly lower, 69 percent in 2021. That number was still enough for the military to remain the second most trusted institution. Megan Brenan, Americans’ Confidence in Major U.S. Institutions Dips, Gallup (July 14, 2021), https://news.gallup.com/poll/352316/americans-confidence-major-institutions-dips.aspx.