The Salvosas, Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain

The Salvosas, Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain
By Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net 04/23/2007


US President Bush’s decision to “surge” the number of US troops in Iraq is resulting in what Time magazine called “reduced training, shorter breaks and disintegrating equipment” causing the U.S. Army to crack under its “greatest strain in a generation.”

This problem hit home when Ray and Daity Salvosa sent out an email to the Filipino American community expressing concern about their son, Alan, a US soldier stationed in Iraq.

According to them, Alan’s 5-year enlistment in the US Army is set to end this July and “with his accumulated leaves, he should be able to leave the army and return to civilian life and live a normal life with his wife and hopefully raise a family. He has served his country honorably, serving 2 years of that 5- year Army stint in Iraq.”

The Salvosas decided to reach out to the Filipino American community after Alan “was informed recently that he might not be allowed to leave the Army this May. Instead, he has been sent for more combat training and was informed that he will probably not be allowed to leave the army and will have to go back to Iraq for one more tour.”

The Salvosas are requesting members of the community to “write your US Congressman, your US Senator, and/or President Bush … to demand that the US Government honor its commitment to its soldiers who have served her honorably, who have already spent more than their fair share of time in combat and to do the right thing. I hope and trust you understand why I am compelled to ask this favor.”

When I received the Salvosa’s email from a friend, I also received another email about the death last week of Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors. The best selling author of "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle," Vonnegut was a vocal critic of the Bush administration. Vonnegut wrote of the 3200 American soldiers who have died in the Iraq war that they were being treated "like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

In February of 2003, just as President George W. Bush was preparing to launch his invasion of Iraq, Vonnegut participated in a reading of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's book, "Voices of a People's History of the United States." Vonnegut chose to read Mark Twain's response to President Theodore Roosevelt when he congratulated US Commanding General (later Philippine Governor-General) Leonard Wood for his military victory against the Moros in the Philippines in 1906.

It was a prescient choice because the impending 2003 invasion of Iraq bore eerie similarities to the US invasion of the Philippines in 1899, especially in how US soldiers dealt with the Muslim civilians in the south.

US President Theodore Roosevelt issued a similar "Mission Accomplished" statement on July 4, 1902, declaring victory even though the Filipino-American War was far from over, especially in Muslim Mindanao where the Moros continued to resist US rule as successfully as they had repulsed Spanish attempts to subjugate them.

In the Battle of Bud Dajo in the island of Sulu, southern Philippines, on March 10, 1906, a naval detachment of 540 US soldiers under the command of Major General Leonard Wood attacked a Moro village situated in the crater of the dormant volcano Bud Dajo. No American soldiers were killed in a "battle" whose initial reports showed that 16 were killed when they were merely wounded. More than 600 mostly unarmed Muslim villagers were slaughtered, none wounded.

Kurt Vonnegut reading Mark Twain: "This incident burst upon the world last Friday in an official cablegram from the commander of our forces in the Philippines to our Government at Washington. The substance of it was as follows: A tribe of Moros, dark-skinned savages, had fortified themselves in the bowl of an extinct crater not many miles from Jolo; and as they were hostile, and bitter against us because we have been trying for eight years to take their liberties away from them, their presence in that position was a menace. Our commander, Gen. Leonard Wood, ordered a reconnaissance. It was found that the Moros numbered six hundred, counting women and children; that their crater bowl was in the summit of a peak or mountain twenty-two hundred feet above sea level, and very difficult of access for Christian troops and artillery. Then General Wood ordered a surprise, and went along himself to see the order carried out.

“Gen. Wood's order was, ‘Kill or capture the six hundred.’ There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded - counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred –including women and children - and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.

“So far as I can find out, there was only one person among our eighty millions who allowed himself the privilege of a public remark on this great occasion – that was the President of the United States. All day Friday he was as studiously silent as the rest. But on Saturday he recognized that his duty required him to say something, and he took his pen and performed that duty. This is what he said:

‘Washington, March 10, 1906, Wood, Manila - I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag. (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.’

“I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris. I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make these people free and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way; and so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

From Mark Twain in 1906 to Kurt Vonnegut in 2003 to the Salvosas in 2007.

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