The snake-oil salesmen at the Associated Press have taken up the cause of the u.$. troops in the Philippines. The blandly titled article "Troops in the Philippines evoke memories," which ran in the Los Angeles Times this 20 January, itself evokes a grotesque fiction of a "love-hate" relationship between the Filipino people and the Amerikan military. Such fairy stories are a bold attempt to stir emotions of noblesse oblige in the Amerikan people, as the united snakes and the reactionary government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo concoct their schemes to make the Philippine island of Mindanao the next front in the so-called War against Terrorism.

U.$. troops are now to serve in the Philippines under a tortured agreement intended to retain the appearance of legality. It is a violation of the Philippine constitution to have foreign troops fighting on Philippine soil. So the Amerikans will be there as advisers in name, but they may wind up in combat zones and they will be permitted to carry weapons -- for self defense of course! The claim that the Amerikan soldiers will have need of self-defense in the Philippines is about as credible as the version of history that says Amerika liberated the Philippines from Spain in 1898. How fitting then that these two fallacies would fall side by side in the AP's recounting of the Filipino people's war of independence against Spain and then Amerika. The Filipino people launched their own heroic war of liberation against the Spanish colonialists before the United $tates opportunistically declared war on Spain. This revolution crippled the Spanish colonial power, and the Filipinos prepared to seize control of their country. But imperialism is defined by its stubborn refusal to colonized peoples as actor in their own destinies, Spain would not surrender to the Filipinos. Instead, the two colonial powers staged a mock battle at sea in which Amerika pretended to win the military victory that the Philippine people had already accomplished. Spain then sold the Philippines to the united snakes for $20 million. In the Filipino-Amerikan War that followed, the united snakes conducted a brutal campaign against the people in which 250,000- 600,000 Filipinos were killed. The AP reduces this war to the Filipino people's lack of gratitude that Amerika would not "grant" immediate independence -- when it was this very independence that the united $tates denied to the people.