William McKinley Quotes
I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance and one night late it came to me this way. We could not leave (the Philippines) to themselves-they were unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was. There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.
Rusling, James F. "Interview with President William McKinley." The Christian Advocate, vol. 78, 22 Jan. 1903, pp. 137-138.
There already was a revolutionary effort of Filipinos to obtain independence from Spain when the U. S. defeated the Spanish in the Spanish American War. The revolutionaries then split. Most trusted the United States and looked to America to help them set up an independent government. Others wanted all foreign forces out. They continued their insurrection against the Americans which produced atrocities on both sides. Finally the insurrection was defeated, and the Philippines have been independent ever since. This quotation was the policy justification that President McKinley used to justify the American involvement in the Philippines after the defeat of Spain.
He had concluded that Spain, who then ruled the Philippines, was incompetent, cruel and immoral in its rule, but that the Filipinos were not educated or sophisticated enough to rule themselves. However, he felt that he had to protect our commercial interests in the islands and the region, and was worried that commercial interests of other countries would take over and control the area. Another reason that this is a very important quotation is that it indicates the anti-Catholic bias in America at the time. Note that the President stated that one objective was to “Christianize” them. However, Spain had been in the islands for over 300 years and most Filipinos were already Roman Catholic. However, Roman Catholics were then a much smaller proportion of the American population and many Protestants didn’t think Catholicism was a legitimate Christian Religion. When the majority of Americans thought of Christianizing other people, they thought of Protestant missionaries much like England. At the time there was very little criticism of the President for the “error” of stating that Filipinos should be Christianized when they were so already Spanish Colonial Policy and Practice was generally terrible and particularly so in the Philippines, See {629450}.
In 1898 the President was faced with a great dilemma in the Philippines. Giving the islands back to Spain after the war was unthinkable. Germany and France were waiting to step in. Self government was viewed as impractical, given the state of affairs at the time. The President decided to take the islands.
This quotation is one of the best statements reflecting the logic and thinking of a large part of American expansionists and imperialists. Mark Twain and others formed an Anti-Imperialistic League to combat this viewpoint and ideology and both political parties had members on each side of this issue. A little over a century later, we ended up with similar dilemmas regarding nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan after our invasions removed their terrible government. One really notable factor in this quotation is that expansionists like McKinley believed sincerely that imperialism was our DUTY which we could not fairly shirk. That is perhaps the biggest difference between America then and 100 years later.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. England had occupied Iraq, expecting to be welcomed by the natives, but like the George W. Bush ill-fated invasion almost a century afterward calls for withdrawal were met by the same rationale for maintaining the occupation. The English policy makers like the Bush administration were expecting a more welcoming reaction. See {585250}.
The Assistant Secretary of the Navy to whom he referred was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The Germans were brutal in their occupation of Poland.
See {587318} and {34913} for the Ambassador�s worst statements. After this tragic affair, Ambassadors were never again given the amount of autonomy that John L. Stevens had. There was no way to repair the damage effectively and Hawaii remained a territory of the United States.
Buchanan was then Secretary of State.
James K. Polk was nominated for the Presidency as a "dark horse," and won the presidency against Henry Clay and James G. Birney
Two years later, In August 1990, Iraq invaded and conquered Kuwait. This quotation was used in the 1990 Iraq crisis by President George W. Bush in his television speech to the Iraqi people.
Critics of his position observe that the Islamic fundamentalists will never allow girls to go to school even if they were built and they might blow up any school that might be constructed if the allies did not have enough troops in Iraq to protect them and suppress the terrorists. When the Taliban fundamentalists controlled Afghanistan before the coalition drove them out, neither little girls not big girls could acquire education and women were not even allowed to work.
She was referring to the aftermath of the Iraq War.
Note the propaganda use of the fear of sexual contact between Black men and white women. Ironically, America was at the time even more fearful of interracial union. The rape accusations had never been documented, but when many racial bigots saw colored offspring of mixed sexual union, the assumed that the white woman must have been raped. This official pamphlet was used in German schools starting in 1934. This propaganda was so effective that by the time the Nazis started the military aggression setting off WWII, the Germans already despised the French, Poles, Russians and other Europeans and were highly anti-Semitic. Americans and others in the world knew about the Catechism but did not believe that such nonsense would be believed by anyone. We have the same reaction today to the propaganda that the Palestinians and some Islamic nations use in their schools teaching hate for America, the Christian West and the Israeli and other Jews.
William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. McKinley was president during the Spanish–American War of 1898, raised protective tariffs to boost American industry, and rejected the expansionary monetary policy of free silver, keeping the nation on the gold standard.
