Post at the Belmont Club blog - The First Iraq:

Although history never quite repeats itself, current events often resemble earlier occasions so closely there is a temptation to draw lessons from them. Imagine a time when America found itself in a war against a foreign foe whose strategy was to inflict a constant rate of loss on the army; invited US and British reporters to feed antiwar elements with atrocity stories; when US commanders who expected a quick war against a corrupt and oligarchic native elite found they had roused the countryside against them. Imagine a time when the issue of this war was central to an American Presidential election, caused a split in one of the major parties and planted the seeds for a world war. Not Iraq. The war was Philippine-American War and the election of 1912.

According to the McKinley administration the enemy was not the Filipino population. It was the Spanish oppressor and later, the perfidious and parasitical indigenous landed elite. At the opposite end, "the goal, or end-state, sought by the Filipino Republic was a sovereign, independent, socially stable Philippines led by the illustrado oligarchy. ... The peasants, who provided the bulk of guerilla manpower, had interests different from their illustrado leaders." What flung the oligarchy and the peasants together momentarily was common opposition to the invading US Army. Far from being unsophisticated yokels, the strategic goal of Philippine Republic generals was to send home enough body bags to persuade the mainstream media of the day to electorally repudiate the Republican administration in Washington...
Much more at the link...