A Long-Hidden War for Empire and "Nation-Building" It was Mark
Twain who said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does
rhyme." Few today remember that the celebrated author was also a
vocal critic of a U.S. war of empire a century ago: the invasion
of the Philippines. Historian Paul Kramer, in his new book The
Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the
Philippines (University of North Carolina Press), details the
long-forgotten history of the Philippine- American war and the
40-year occupation that followed. He argues that the Philippine
adventure in many ways "rhymes" with the current U.S.
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the "eerier
similarities," said Kramer, professor of history at The Johns
Hopkins University: "I'm not surprised at these parallels,"
Kramer said. "Indeed, what's remarkable is our persistence in
suppressing the memory of this earlier war, a persistence that I
think is all that makes debacles like the present one
'surprising.'" The U.S. experience in Vietnam