SUNDAY'S QUOTES

         The New York Times on Sunday, February 19, 2012 reviewed Honor in The Dust, Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream by Gregg Jones [New American Library, 2012].

          The review notes that “[w]hat is striking about “Honor in the Dust”, Gregg Jones fascinating new book about the Philippine-American War, is not how much war has changed in more than a century, but how little.”

          “On every page, there is a scene that feels it could have taken place during the Bush and Obama administrations rather than those of McKinley and Roosevelt.”

          The reviewer, Candice Millard, then embarks on a litany of the horrors of that war: devastation, torture, rape, water boarding or, as it was then called, “water cure”, all with overreaching hubris. She includes two quotes worth noting:

          “There have been lies, yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous, but that was only in order for the real good might come out of apparent evil.” Mark Twain

          She concludes with:

          “You have wasted 600 millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly 10,000 American lives – the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit… [You have] succeeded in converting a people … into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.” Senator George Frisbie Hoar, 1902, addressing the United States Senate.

          A review, if not a book well worth reading.