Annexation Of The Phillipians Essay, Research Paper

In my opinion The United States ordeal with Annexing the Philippines and the idea that we had of going into war with them was great mistake and should have been avoided. The Filipinos and Americans were deadlocked in war with each other. This all became a controversy with the two nations in 1898 when the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United Stated ceded all seven thousand islands of the Philippine archipelago to the United States, for just a mere twenty-million dollars. Congress had approved the treaty with Spain, by February of 1899. Mckinley was on the verge of calling for the annexation of the Philippines which brought on a bloody two year struggle. In my opinion the United States was the cause of all of this because of three different reasons, for one our government would not listen any other people besides them self s on the situation and secondly because of some of Mckinley s decisions, and the third reason is the United States always has to be the big bad nation that everybody should be scared of!

First of all I think that the if we would have maybe let some of the well respected citizens in our great nation to speak their opinions and if the government would have listened to the that maybe we could have evaded war and ended our struggle with the Filipinos peacefully. One example of the great citizens that I was talking about would be Mark Twain who said “We have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have debauched America s honor and blackened her face before the world ” If we would have listened to Mark Twain who knows how things would have ended up!

Secondly I believe that Mckinley made a few mistakes in some of the decisions that he made. He asked for Congress to help him make a declaration for the war. He also was hurt and insulted be the terms of him being weak and hypocritical, so I believe that he was starting to take all of this a little personal and he ended up taking it just a bit to far. If he would have been rational in the decisions that he made than maybe we would have not went to war with the Filipino s.

My third and final argument is that the United States always has to be the big bad bully and we can t let anyone push us around but we always have to be pushing everybody else around. So when The Philippine rebels were not willing to trade Spain s domination for America s we acted just like the big bully that we were and would not back away or try to do something peaceful to resolve our problems. If we would have treated this situation different and maybe taken a more peaceful rout to the situation things would have ended up different and more peaceful!