While the 1900 contest between Bryan vs. McKinley was taking place, America was bogged down attempting to end an insurrection in the Philippines. Glance through this
Philippine-American War site and choose one incident from this war that seems to you worth addressing in a presidential campaign either on the pro-war or anti-war side.
Battles in Manila and Suburbs February 5-6 1899
ReplyDeleteI scrolled through this battle when the war was escalating. I am a person who is pro-war, whatever the governments reason may be for entering a war, we have our soldiers over fighting for our freedoms’ so in my mind you support that no matter what. The fact that there are American's, like my fiancé, volunteering to put their lives on the line is enough reasoning for me, even if it’s a bad reason. As a corrupt candidate who would be running for Presidency, I would choose to be pro-war...but from what I read you would have to be that and keep information about the ruthlessness of that war from the Americans, or I don’t think I would be elected.
From this one battle, you could show the American’s that we were winning. One man wrote “most of them were shot through the head, some of them had the tops of their heads blown off, others parts of the face, in fact, the bullets seemed to reach all parts of the body. It must have simply rained lead." As an American, I would read this and feel confidence that we were winning the war…it makes it seem like this battle was easily won due to such the high massacre that was found in one trench. Another quote I found was “…Nearly every man has at least two suits of clothing, and our quarters are furnished in style; fine beds with silken drapery, mirrors, chairs, rockers, cushions, pianos, hanging-lamps, rugs, pictures, etc. We have horses and carriages, and bull-carts galore, and enough furniture and other plunder to load a steamer." This too would help Americans see that okay, our boys are being taken good care of over there so we would worry less about horrible living conditions that result in diseases that would be killing our soldiers off more than the enemy would be. It would help American’s think that we are doing so well and better off, that we have to be strong then our enemies so we could win this battle.
One example that I would hide from Americans, in fear of losing votes because of how ruthless this makes us seem as Americans is shown in this quote “One American soldier explained, "picking off niggers in the water" was "more fun than a turkey shoot."
the big thing that i would talk about is how many people that have died in the Philippines America and Filipino a like. in that we are losing good man over some thing that we should have never did in the first place. the Filipinos are get madder and madder at us ever time that we kill one of there's. they had a huge lose of man and a even bigger lose in civilians we burly lose and man and civilians compared to the Filipinos. that's what i would talk about.
ReplyDelete-Troy Winge