Hi:

Is it possible to delete my initial reply to the Belmont blog?

I had done so previously while filing the earlier post in a noisy hole-in-the-wall cybercafe full of kids screaming while playing online games.

I had realized that the post was off tangent vis-a-vis what the author truly posted.

But what was the point of his post really?

His dismissal of the ilustrado class--now, the Filipino middle, upper middle, and upper classes is too sweeping.

A few corrections regarding the Filipino-American War:

With the transfer of allegiance of most among the ilustrados to the American side, the Filipinos who remained fighting degenerated into millenarian groups.
There no longer was a rational, coherent political philosophy to guide them against the Americans.

When Aguinaldo was still in command, it was the ideals of the French revolution that drove the Philippine revolutionary army.

Not too long afterwards, those who remained fighting broke up into several millineriann groups with religous overtones. Most of these groups wanted to set up a heaven on earth here in the Philippines. A good number of their leaders styled themselves as "Popes".

How this is similar to Iraq today, I do not know. Does anybody in this newsgroup know if there are any similarities?

Incidentally, the Belmont blogger quoted Dean Bocobo as source for some of his facts on the Philippines. He is the grandson of Dean Jorge Bocobo, first Filipino dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law.

Bocobo's grandfather is an example of the opportunities Americans gave to Filipinos with talent. That's why many among the middle class were won over.

Nevertheless, there is one fact I must admit. The "rough tactics"--and I am trying to be very polite-- the American Army employed against the Philippine revolutionary army would never work today if the Fil-Amercian War had been fought now, instead of a century earlier.

And incidentally, learning about these "rough tactics" often served as the gateway to the radicalization of Filipino college students during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among these was Dean Bocobo.

Fortunately, he has seen the light now.

Cheers.