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The very idea of arming Filipinos and turning them loose in the countryside was utterly abhorrent to the American military brass.

"These people are right and we are wrong...terribly wrong!"

I hold Waller's actions in Samar as reprehensible, as egregious abuses of his constitutional privileges as a a military commander.

In the meantime, General Smith's combined Brigade was following his orders to turn Samar into a "howling wilderness."

As the now infamous town of Balangiga burned behind him, Capt. Bookmiller famously quoted the book of Hosea: "They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind!"

No matter what you call it, the event at Balangiga was the worst defeat of American troops since the Battle of the Little Big Horn!

Funston, four other Americans, and a renegade Spaniard would pose as POWs in the "custody" of a group of Macabebe Scouts in captured Insurrecto uniforms.

"To see nine men, the officers in their drawers and the privates naked, cross such a stream by such means, and drive off an entrenched force not less than ten times their number, in broad daylight, where their number must soon become known, is something not soon to be forgotten!"

I find the story of David Fagen fascinating. We seldom rationally depict such figures in history.

The leaders of the Philippine independence movement had tremendous admiration for the American founding fathers and the government they wrought!

The depth and breadth, the sheer comprehensiveness of Filipino martial technology stands as a shining example, a tribute to defiance in the face of tyranny and oppression!

But it turns out that the Filipino people didn't WANT themselves and their property to be the property of the United States!

On June 12, 1898, the Filipino rebels officially declared independence from Spain, in a document that, ironically, in light of what was to come, drew elements from the American Declaration of Independence.

Pershing was an instructor at West Point when the war broke out, and quickly sought to rejoin his old unit, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry.

In order to get to Santiago, his troops would need to get past the fortified San Juan Heights on its outskirts, which loomed across their path like a fortified roadblock.

The history of the world in the upcoming decade would have played out quite differently if Teddy Roosevelt had perished on that hot June day in the Cuban jungle!

If there's one thing that can be learned from human history, it's that there is no crisis so bad that it cannot be made worse by our tendency to engage in over-emotional, "monkeys in shoes" behavior!

When you picture a scene from the old west in which the cavalry comes charging to the rescue, in reality at least ten percent of the time those "boys in blue"...were black!

The epic story of the relationship between the USA and the Philippines started in war a little over a century ago.

Despite the fact that ethical jiujitsu players shouldn't SEEK to render their opponent unconscious, it's not at all uncommon for unintended "choke-outs" to occur.