Yanks Biffed at Pulang Lupa 13 September

In December 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines and other territories from Spain at the Treaty of Paris for 20 million US dollars. The US had plans to make the Philippines an American colony - which is a bit of a cheek for a nation that was and is, supposedly, against colonialism.

The people of the Philippines, who had had been fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896, rightly, had a different idea, and had already declared their independence on June 12. The US response, was to send, on August 14, 11,000 ground troops to occupy the Philippines. This was the start of The Philippine-American War and 129,000 more US troops were soon to follow. (We might ask, a century later, if the US has learned anything at all from history?)

On this day, September 13, in 1900 at Pulang Lupa, which is in Torrijos on Marinduque island in the Philippines, resistance fighters and guerrillas led by Colonel Maximo Abad inflicted a crushing defeat on a detachment of the US 29th Infantry, who were commanded by Captain Devereux Shields. The battle began when Abad and his men surrounded the infantrymen and fired a volley into the soldiers. Shields, realising that he was almost completely surrounded, ordered a retreat. But before his forces got far, Colonel Abad led a charge against the Americans. The result of the charge was a short but extremely vicious hand to hand fight, with Abad's men making use of their native machete - the bolo. The Americans took very heavy casualties, and retreated further. The guerrillas pursued and harried the Americans as they fled. The battle lasted all that day and into the early morning of the next day, when Captain Shields and his surviving men attempted to surrender en masse. But as they did, Abads men fired upon them and hacked them up with bolo knives. Many experts consider this the most bloody engagement of the war. Unfortunately, while it was undoubtedly one of only a few confidence-boosting victories for the Filipinos, it could not avert the inevitable defeat, which came, finally in 1913.

A very nasty, unnecessary and bloody war, the US lost some 4,324 American soldiers with 2,818 wounded. The Philippine Constabulary - in support of the US occupation, suffered 2,000 casualties, of which over a thousand were fatalities. In contrast, the Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000, while civilian deaths numbered around 1,000,000. The high casualty figures suffered by the people of the Philippines were due mostly to the superior arms and numbers of the Americans who were utterly merciless in suppressing what they viewed as an insurrection.

I wonder, if the US had not have won (since history is written by the victors), would the world have called this genocide?