Moyar Mark. A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
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80 e Philippine Insurrection
gency. Chaee had served under Sheridan in 1864 during the devastation of
the Shenandoah Valley, and aer the Civil War he had spent decades ghting
the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Apaches, giving him intimate famil-
iarity with the harsh forms of counterinsurgency that he soon employed in the
Philippines. A tough man who always put the mission ahead of compassion,
Chaee did not hesitate to remove ocers who were reluctant to use harsh
measures.44
e two big insurgent strongholds that remained to be subdued aer Chaf-
fee’s assumption of power were Samar and Batangas. Samar, an eastern island,
had never been completely controlled by the Spanish. e 5,000-square-mile
interior was lled with swamps, mountains, jungles, and disease-ridden ani-
mals, ranking it among the least inviting areas in the archipelago. e persis-
tence of insurgent activity on Samar could be traced not only to terrain but
also to the quality of the insurgent commanders, who were among the best the
insurgents had to oer.45 e American troop presence on the island, more-
over, had been small in 1900 and most of 1901. Samar did not attract much
attention from Manila until a series of assaults in the autumn of 1901, culmi-
nating with an attack at Balangiga on September 28.
Of the seventy-four Americans performing garrison duty in the town of
Balangiga, nearly all were having breakfast at an outdoor kitchen when the in-
surgents struck. e town mayor, an insurgent agent, had previously obtained
American consent to let 100 covert insurgents into the town on the pretext
of employing them in public works projects. e Balangiga police chief, an-
other covert insurgent, began the sneak attack, leading a handful of men in
silently killing the three unsuspecting American sentries, the only Americans
who were carrying ries. e rest of the 100 insurgents then stormed out of
tents and the parish church, clutching bolos and axes, and descended on the
kitchen. Most of the Americans were eating at tables when the attackers set
upon them, and many were cut to death before they knew what was happen-
ing. e company sergeant’s head was split apart by an axe. Another man’s
head was severed with a bolo and fell into his breakfast plate. e company
commander, Captain omas W. Connell, was standing in his pajamas in the
ocer quarters, a former convent, when the onslaught commenced. Jumping
down from his second-story window, he ran toward his troops but was cut
down by a bolo before he reached them.
ose who survived the insurgents’ rst slashes grabbed meat cleavers,
cookpots, baseball bats, rocks, and whatever else they could nd and met the
e Philippine Insurrection 81
attacking horde in desperate and vicious battle. e slaughter might have been
total had it not been for one enormous American, Sergeant George F. Markley,
who brawled his way to the enlisted barracks where the weapons were stacked,
grabbed a rie, and started shooting down insurgents. e survivors rallied
around Markley and fought their way to a beach, where they escaped by boat.
When the bloodbath was over, forty-eight Americans were dead and twenty-
two wounded. e insurgents mutilated the American corpses, in one case
gouging out a lieutenant’s eyes and spreading jam on his face to attract in-
sects.46
Chaee concluded that the American soldiers had been attacked because
of Captain Connell’s excessive kindness to the natives, but Connell had been
far from kind to the people of Balangiga. His poor conduct and that of his men
may, in fact, have triggered the attack. Connell had infuriated the townspeople
by forcing them to work without pay and live in conditions so overcrowded
and squalid that they appalled some of the American soldiers. Troops under
Connell’s command had reportedly committed numerous acts of violence and
the against the populace, another clear indication of a decit in leadership.47
Chaee would have replied vigorously to such a slaughter in any case, but
his misperception of its causes ensured that the retribution was extreme. e
navy’s gunboats and the army’s forces on Samar received orders to “make a
desert of Balangiga.” Vengeful sailors and soldiers attened everything in the
town save for the stone walls of the church. Next, Chaee increased the army’s
troop strength on Samar to 4,000 soldiers and assigned a new commander,
Brigadier General Jacob “Hell Roaring Jake” Smith, a diminutive man named
for his booming war cries.
As a rule, Chaee liked to replace a new commander when a job was not
getting done, and he usually found a new commander who was more eec-
tive than his predecessor, but in this instance Chaee erred badly in choosing
the replacement. Having served previously with Smith, Chaee should have
heeded the indications that Smith deserved to be kept away from such a job
at all costs. Aer performing without distinction in the Civil War, Smith had
spent three decades at the rank of captain. He had been court-martialed three
times, twice for insubordination and once for the illegal sale of alcohol. In the
Philippines, Smith had improved his reputation by performing competently as
a regimental commander and district commander, but he owed his appoint-
ment at Samar more to his success in schmoozing MacArthur and Ta than to
worthy service. If giving command to an erratic man like Smith was unavoid-
82 e Philippine Insurrection
able, he should have been kept on a short leash, yet Chaee not only instructed
Smith to impose draconian measures but set no limits on what he could do on
Samar.48
To halt the shipment of contraband to Samar, Smith ordered tight restric-
tions on the movements of commercial boats—a good rst step. But Smith
thereaer neglected to issue sound orders or to supervise, critical failures in
so trying an environment. Smith was “wholly lacking in tact, judgement and
administrative capacity,” observed Ta’s deputy. Smith informed American
gunboat crews and infantry companies that they could destroy any village that
was abetting the insurgents, which, in conjunction with his lack of oversight,
made him culpable for several atrocities committed by his subordinates.49
e greatest notoriety accrued to Major Littleton W. T. Waller, commander
of a Marine battalion that had been shipped to Samar aer the Balangiga dis-
aster. Smith told Waller, “I want no prisoners. I wish you to burn and kill; the
more you burn and kill, the better it will please me.”50 Every male over the
age of ten should be killed, Smith said, and the interior of the island should
be turned into a “howling wilderness.” Waller did not systematically slaugh-
ter males over the age of ten, but he did orchestrate much burning and kill-
ing. During an eleven-day stretch in October and November, Waller’s Marines
burned down 255 houses, destroyed one ton of hemp and half a ton of rice,
killed thirty-nine men, and captured another eighteen. In December, Waller
took y Marines, two Filipino scouts, and thirty-three Filipino porters on a
hasty and senseless expedition to Basey, ignoring warnings from more experi-
enced army ocers about the perilous terrain and the diculties of resupply.
Waller and his followers met thick jungle that had to be hacked away at a snail’s
pace. Within six days, the men were near exhaustion, and so were their sup-
plies, so Waller and his followers turned back. At one point, Waller and some
of the other ocers split o into small groups to fend for themselves, leaving
other Marines and the porters behind, stranded until relief parties reached
them on January 18. Eleven Marines perished during the debacle.
Some of the surviving Marines reported that three Filipino porters had
hidden food or disobeyed orders during the expedition, so Waller and his
adjutant, Lieutenant John H. A. Day, summarily executed these three—plus
nine others in order to put the number of dead porters above the number of
dead Marines. Waller and Day were subsequently court-martialed for mur-
der. Day evaded punishment by saying that he was under orders from Waller,
e Philippine Insurrection 83
and Waller evaded punishment by claiming that he was under orders from
Smith.51
In January 1902, following barrages of complaints about Smith’s conduct
from every conceivable direction, Chaee ordered Smith to abandon the
harshest measures and get food to famished Filipino civilians. Smith said that
he would do so. Before these changes made their way to the eld, however, the
American forces and their Filipino allies nished o the insurgents, who by
now had been driven close to starvation by the ruination of the island’s farm-
land. e top guerrilla commander on the island was captured on February 18,
and the last guerrillas surrendered on April 27.52
Justice caught up with Smith in April, when he was relieved of command,
sent to Manila, and put under investigation. By this time, word of the mis-
deeds on Samar had spread across the Philippines and the United States, stir-
ring up outraged condemnation in both countries. Smith was found guilty of
“conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline” for the orders
he had issued on Samar. His only punishment, however, was forced retire-
ment, leniency being granted in recognition of his “long career distinguished
for gallantry and on the whole for good conduct.”53
In the province of Batangas, the counterinsurgents faced a situation no
less daunting than the one in Samar. Well-led guerrilla troops ran rampant,
aided by a civilian populace that freely gave them food and forewarned them
of American operations. Such was the military strength of the guerillas that
the Americans needed thirty to forty soldiers to go anywhere and had to keep
troops so concentrated that they could garrison only a few of the towns. In
October 1901, Chaee decided that the commander responsible for Batan-
gas was not good enough and replaced him with J. Franklin Bell. is time,
Chaee chose well. Just about everyone in the Philippines viewed Bell as the
best American ocer of the war. Even the American reporters who hated the
military liked him. e army, to its credit, had kept Bell and some other ne
American ocers in the Philippines for the duration of the war, now under
way for more than three years, rather than rotating them to the United States
or other countries.
Bell spent the rst week of his new job meeting with Filipino elites across
Batangas, probing for information on present conditions and options. Once
he had taken in the dynamics of the insurgent environment to his satisfac-
tion, he decided that victory could best be reached by punishing into sub-
84 e Philippine Insurrection
mission the principalia who were guiding and underwriting the insurgency.
Possessed of a bluntness that would have necessitated unceasing apologies and
early retirement had he lived a century later, Bell remarked that punishing
one member of the principalia was more valuable than punishing 100 com-
moners, for “the common people amount to nothing. ey are merely densely
ignorant tools, who blindly follow the lead of the principalia.”54 Bell told his
men to be “considerate and courteous in manner” and to refrain from cruelty
toward Filipinos, including prisoners; he refused to tolerate the agrant atroci-
ties that Smith had countenanced in Samar. Such dierences help account for
the widely diering impressions that Bell and Smith made on their military
colleagues during these campaigns, with Bell adding to his fame and Smith
becoming an embarrassment.55
Bell, nevertheless, fully appreciated the shortcomings of benevolent paci-
cation and was convinced that the stern application of armed force and
population control measures was the most eective, and hence also the most
humane, way to win. “A short and severe war,” he said, “creates in the aggregate
less loss and suering than benevolent war indenitely prolonged.”56 In pub-
lic proclamations, Bell warned that Filipinos who did not actively participate
in counterinsurgency activities would be classied as enemies and penalized
with nes, property destruction, imprisonment, or perhaps even death. Bell
delivered this threat in the most dispassionate tone possible, and he other-
wise avoided issuing threats at all, for he was convinced that threats from the
counterinsurgents generally conveyed weakness to the population, particu-
larly when made in anger or exasperation. “Say little, and let acts, not words,
convey your meaning,” he instructed his subordinates. “Words count for noth-
ing. e more an ocer talks, the less they think he is going to do. e more
he does and the less he says, the more apprehensive they become while waiting
for what is to happen next.”57
Bell employed some of the best U.S. counterinsurgency ocers as provost
marshals and granted them authority to make mass arrests and impose hey
nes. Swily carrying out interrogations and investigations, the provost mar-
shals unearthed and broke apart the shadow governments. Bell’s ocers con-
scated the weapons of Filipino policemen and cut their pay, then told them
that to regain their weapons and their pay they would have to help the U.S.
Army defeat the insurgents, a policy that had a salutary eect on the police. At
Bell’s command, American ocers took their troops into insurgent hotbeds to
eliminate every form of animal and plant life t for human consumption.58 In
e Philippine Insurrection 85
all of these endeavors, Bell gave his subordinate commanders much freedom
of action, assuring them that “it is not necessary to seek or wait for authority
from these headquarters to do anything or take any action which will contrib-
ute to the end in view.”59
On December 8, Bell told his commanders that they had twenty days to
transplant all civilians and their possessions into protected areas. Aer the
twenty days had elapsed, anything outside these areas was subject to destruc-
tion, and any male caught beyond the boundaries would be arrested or, if he
resisted arrest, shot. Bell gave his post commanders latitude in enforcing this
order, permitting them to exempt civilians in areas of minimal guerrilla ac-
tivity and to use the threat of concentration, not necessarily its implementa-
tion, to coerce local Filipino leaders.
Once the people had been relocated, they were compelled to partici-
pate in support tasks for the U.S. armed forces without compensation. ey
could harvest crops only under the watch of American troops. Bell ordered
post commanders to ensure that the relocated Filipinos had adequate food,
health care, and sanitation, and commanders generally did their best to com-
ply, although in a few instances they did not provide enough food or failed to
maintain adequate public sanitation. Unfortunately, the concentration of the
civilian population facilitated the spread of diseases, especially malaria. Ap-
proximately 11,000 people died during the rst months of 1902 in Batangas,
almost all from disease.60
With Bell preaching relentless action, the American lieutenants and cap-
tains in Batangas searched unaggingly for the insurgents and their strong-
holds. Filipinos served alongside them as guides and informants, in some cases
willingly, in other cases not. As with everything else he put in his sights, Bell
greatly improved the collection and dissemination of intelligence, especially
that pertaining to the principalia. Although he had approximately the same
number of troops as the insurgents, he devastated the insurgents militarily in
a few months, thanks to the removal of civilians and food from the country-
side, eective intelligence gathering, and well-executed military operations.
Counterinsurgent military victories and the Americans’ punitive measures
caused numerous principalia to switch their allegiance to the Americans, with
some signing up for work as counterinsurgent leaders. A number of guerrillas
killed their ocers and surrendered, and others deserted. e insurgency was
thoroughly gutted by the time Miguel Malvar, the top insurgent leader, surren-
dered in April 1902.
86 e Philippine Insurrection
Bell’s methods and the thousands of civilian deaths in the relocation zones
aroused indignation in some quarters of the United States, where it was em-
phatically noted that the United States had condemned the Spanish for em-
ploying similar methods in Cuba. Most American soldiers, on the other hand,
believed that Bell had done a superb job, and he even gained the respect of
his insurgent adversaries. Insurgent leaders subsequently attested that the war
would have gone on for at least a few more years had it not been for Bell’s
harsh methods, lending credence to Bell’s judgment that a severe war would
be shorter and thus less harmful than a benevolent war.61
Bell’s campaign in Batangas and Smith’s campaign in Samar underscored
one of the most important lessons of the Philippine Insurrection—that dras-
tic measures could defeat the insurgents quickly without large-scale violence
against the civilian populace, but only if the right type of leader commanded
the counterinsurgents. Dedicated commanders with integrity and strong orga-
nizational skills made sure that the troops remained disciplined and did not
murder and pillage. e American atrocities during the war, in Samar and else-
where, most oen occurred because commanders did not keep an eye on sub-
ordinates or gave them directions that sanctioned indiscriminate destruction.
When excesses occurred on the watch of a good ocer, the ocer meted out
stern punishments to prevent repetition, while the ocer who did not punish
permitted and encouraged more excesses. Good commanders, moreover, were
selective in the use of the most highly destructive instruments, recognizing
that in some locations a pair of scissors worked better than a saw. Of course,
political considerations oen deny twenty-rst-century counterinsurgents the
use of the saw, but the same cautions apply to less drastic measures.
e U.S. response to the Philippine Insurrection contradicts the view, held
nowadays by a preponderance of highly educated Westerners, that civic action
is invariably more eective than military action in defeating insurgents. For
most of 1900, the United States concentrated on civic action but failed to curb
the insurgency or to obtain much assistance from the civilian populace, be-
cause the citizenry either sympathized with the insurgents or submitted to
them to avoid assassination by insurgent hit men. In most areas aicted with
rebellion, the Americans did not begin to weaken the insurgency until they
started arresting and killing insurgents and punishing their civilian accom-
plices. Once the Americans resorted to force, elites began switching their alle-
giance—they realized that the cost of supporting the insurgents had gone up,
e Philippine Insurrection 87
the risk of falling victim to insurgent assassins had gone down, and the likeli-
hood of ultimate victory had shied to the counterinsurgent side. Civic action
did help convince some Filipinos to support the Americans, both early in the
war and later, by showing that American rule could better their lives, but many
willingly switched sides where civic action was scarce. e optimal mix of civic
action and military action depended upon local circumstances; whether the
counterinsurgents achieved that mix or something approximating it depended
on the ability of the local commander to comprehend those circumstances and
act accordingly.
Except in a few places where the United States empowered entire tribes
or sects and not rival groups that belonged to the insurgency, American com-
manders did not try to supplant the traditional elites with new elites, as had
been tried so unsuccessfully in the United States during Reconstruction. In-
stead, they gained the cooperation of the traditional elites, the principalia,
which ensured the cooperation of the masses, since the masses largely did as
the principalia told them. Although the counterinsurgency started out princi-
pally as an American aair, in its later stages it relied heavily on the members
of the principalia who took on leading roles in municipal governments, secu-
rity forces, and the Federal Party. e defections of the principalia eventually
enabled the United States to turn over most security duties to the Filipinos, an
important consideration in light of the mounting U.S. public opposition to the
war.
e repeated American command changes during the Philippine Insur-
rection produced an excellent database from which to glean conclusions about
various leadership practices. American commanders at higher levels beneted
a great deal from traveling into the eld to acquire information from local
ocers. Upper-level leaders who micromanaged the war unfailingly impaired
the counterinsurgency, since local commanders were more familiar with local
conditions and most had the judgment and other traits required to make sound
decisions on their own. e most eective senior leaders minimized con-
straints on local commanders, aside from those forbidding unlawful conduct,
thereby allowing ocers to improvise and adapt nearly unfettered, which was
crucial in a war where the multiplicity of challenges deed textbook solutions.
e ability of U.S. forces to adapt to the demands of the situation contradicts
the view of most modern counterinsurgency theorists that armies trained for
conventional war reexively treat irregular wars as conventional wars. It also
88 e Philippine Insurrection
contradicts the conclusion, popularly derived from that view, that the prepa-
ration of counterinsurgency forces requires massive changes in training and
doctrine.
Last, the Philippine Insurrection highlights the importance of command
selection in defeating insurgents. Some American commanders had the power
to remove subordinate commanders for inferior performance, and when they
exercised this power, they usually installed replacements who were richer in the
necessary leadership attributes and thus improved the output of the American
forces. At the more rareed levels of command, however, appointments were
very oen made and sustained based on seniority. is was an understandable
policy in peacetime but a harmful policy in wartime, for it gave life-and-death
decisions to older ocers of sundry abilities while excluding highly capable
young ocers. In the few cases where junior ocers were promoted upward
rapidly, they outperformed most of their new peers. e War Department did
demonstrate noteworthy exibility in its personnel policies by retaining su-
perior ocers in command positions throughout the war. Counterinsurgent
forces reached their maximum eectiveness when the relatively small num-
ber of key commands were occupied for long stretches by the most talented
ocers.
89
er the defeat of Aguinaldo’s Army of Liberation of the Philippines,
Manuel Tinio returned to his 1,000-acre estate in the central Luzon
barrio of San Ricardo. An upstanding member of the principalia,
Tinio had served as a general under Aguinaldo, but now he put politics aside
and concentrated on his piece of land, an expanse of virgin forest and mead-
ows. Over the next two decades, he allowed peasants from other areas to clear
parcels, a few acres per family, and cultivate rice; they gave him 55 percent
of the crop as rent. As was customary, the tenants helped Tinio with various
chores, and he accorded them a variety of benets and privileges. Tinio al-
lowed them to grow vegetables and raise chickens for their own consumption
and to cut down trees for rewood and lumber. Becoming almost a member
of their families, he paid for baptisms and weddings, became the godfather of
their children, and helped in the rice elds when a family member was sick.
Most important, Tinio loaned them rice or cash at no interest for months at
a time, providing a critical safety net when typhoons or oods or other dis-
ruptions deprived the tenants of food for their families. ese arrangements
pleased both Tinio and his tenants.
When Manuel Tinio died in 1924, his son Manolo inherited the estate. A
recent graduate of Cornell University, Manolo Tinio had absorbed modern
business ideas in America. He viewed the tenants strictly as business clients,
and the 1,000 acres as a business enterprise from which to pull out the maxi-
mum prot. Consequently, he discontinued the interest-free lending of money
and rice to the tenants, which forced them to borrow at crippling interest rates
CHAPTER 5
e Huk Rebellion
A