Here's a summary of the Jolo incident as reported at the time, from the
Literary Digest 32, March 24, 1906.

"No one, to judge from the press comment, feels much elation over the
mountain-top battle in the island of Jolo a few days ago, in which 600 Moro
men, women, and children were killed by our troops under the command of Gen.
Leonard Wood. The President, it is true, speaks of it as "a most gallant and
soldierly feat," performed "in a way that confers added credit on the American
army," and one that entitles the soldiers to "the heartiest admiration and
praise of all those of their fellow-citizens who are glad to see the honor of
the flag upheld by the courage of the men wearing the American uniform." His
newspaper defenders, however, do not go further than to consider it a grim but
necessary bit of police work. His critics take the other extreme. It was "a
frightful atrocity," declares the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Dem.); and the
Boston Post (Ind. Dem.) exclaims that if this is "imperial expansion," "heaven
save us from any more!" A list of the papers that express their horror and
disgust at this thoroughgoing victory would include practically every
Democratic and "anti-imperialist" paper in the United States. In Congress the
Democrats have branded the affair as a "horrible massacre" and an
"assassination," and Representative Williams read a derisive poem on 'The
Charge of the Wood Brigade'
The battle is represented by General Wood as the storming of a Moro bandits'
nest in the crater of Mount Dajo, and the extermination of the bandits, who
fought fanatically to the death. The crater was almost unassailable, and the
artillery had to be hoisted by block and tackle up its well-nigh precipitous
sides. The American forces lost 18 killed and 52 wounded, while the Moros lost
600 killed. General Wood says in a despatch to the Secretary of War:

'I was present throughout practically entire action and inspected top of crater
after action was finished. Am convinced no man, woman, or child was wantonly
killed. A considerable number of women and children were killed in the fight --
number unknown, for the reason that they were actually in the works when
assaulted, and were unavoidably killed in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting
which took place in the narrow enclosed spaces. Moro women wore trousers and
were dressed and armed much like the men and charged with them. The children
were in many cases used by the men as shields while charging troops.'

This explanation is accepted as valid by the expansionist press. The
extermination of these outlaws "was a necessity, and, in the long run, it was
humanity," declares the Philadelphia Press (Rep.), for "it was a question
either of subjugating them or of enduring their savage attacks for an
indefinite period." "If Aguinaldo himself were ruler of Jolo," says the
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph (Rep.) to the anti-imperialists, "he would be
compelled to kill off these murdering Malays in order to protect peaceable
people from their wild raids." And the Louisville Courier-Journal, one of the
leading Democratic papers in the country, declares that "a band of outlaws in
the mountains of Kentucky or of Colorado or of Tennessee would have had to
contend with the agencies of law and order in the same way -- resistance would
have led in similar fashion to the shedding of blood." "Was there no
possibility of forcing these Moros to surrender by starving them out?" asks one
critic. To this the New York Tribune (Rep.) replies:

"Talk of starving them into submission and thus securing their capitulation
simply indicates lack of understanding. The probability is that if Mount Dajo
had been surrounded with an army of a hundred thousand men in unbroken ring, in
an attempt to starve the outlaws into surrender, at the last moment the men
would have come rushing from the crater to hurl themselves in fanatic fury
against their besiegers, and the end would have been the same, excepting at
much greater cost. On the other hand, the daring and extraordinary achievements
of our troops in scaling those heights which had been thought by the natives
inaccessible, and in storming a stronghold which had been thought impregnable,
must have a most valuable moral effect. The remaining outlaw bands will be
panic-striken when they hear of it, they will realize that there is no
stronghold or retreat in which they will be secure, and that the new forces for
law and order in the islands are irresistable."

Sounds like reporting from the Vietnam War and even the Iraq war. The more
things change....





Chris Mark