Philippines Quotes - page 5
Ironically, during four years of war, MacArthur may have owed the most to the very people he was certain were out to discredit and disparage him. While never among his fans, Franklin Roosevelt and George Marshall nonetheless consistently supported MacArthur within the framework of their global priorities, from the first efforts to resupply the Philippines to MacArthur's appointment as Allied supreme commander. Even then, where would MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area have been had not Ernie King urged the Joint Chiefs to pour resources into the Pacific and wage a two-front war?
Douglas MacArthur
Many years before Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, there was another prima donna general, the renowned John C. Frémont. For issuing orders authorizing the emancipation of slaves in Missouri without presidential permission, Lincoln fired him on the spot. As for MacArthur, he should have known better: the same thing had also happened to his own father. Back in the early 1900s, General Arthur MacArthur, military governor of the Philippines, made the stupid mistake of not recognizing the superior authority of the civilian governor, William Howard Taft, who later became president. Years later, when MacArthur's turn came to be promoted to Army Chief of Staff, Taft blackballed him.
Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur always knew he was at the center of the world stage, and he had no intention of allowing the Philippines to fall without a struggle of legendary proportions. The very real difficulties he faced were daunting enough, and it is doubtful that he or any other American general could have saved the islands, but his own and others' errors put his forces at grave risk from the very first day of war.
Douglas MacArthur
Papers from Count Jules Greindl, who was the main collaborator of Leopold II in this curious affair, the author has drawn a very precise account, supplemented by documents. To take advantage of the financial ruin of Spain to make the Philippines a kingdom of its own, distinct from Belgium and then to form a company which would exploit the islands in the name of Spain, such were the successive ideas of Leopold. They failed both for lack of capital and for the reaction of Spanish pride. But they show, in Leopold II, the progress of the colonial idea with all the aspects that will then be found in the Congolese affair. When Stanley discovered the Congo, Leopold was ready.
Leopold II of Belgium
The U.S. Navy hated MacArthur, really hated him. Early in the Pacific War it began agitating for an overall command in the area, the idea being to get MacArthur and his troops under its control. Believing Marshall to share their antipathy, the Navy enlisted his support and was delighted when he appeared to give it. "But on one condition," he said. "If we're going to have an overall commander in the Pacific, there isn't any question about it, you will have to pick MacArthur- on the basis of pure competence alone." The Navy abruptly abandoned the idea. Later, when the Navy wished to bypass the liberation of the Philippines in favor of operations against Formosa, it was Marshall who again intervened to insist MacArthur be allowed to fulfill his pledge to the Philippine people, to whom he had vowed, "I shall return." He was given the go-ahead to do so, and, of course, was hailed as the greatest hero of the Pacific war.
Douglas MacArthur
With his flamboyant headgear, his sunglasses and corn cob pipe, he looked like an actor playing the role of a great general. He also had the sort of press an actor likes; he arranged that, in part, by keeping his subordinates as anonymous as possible. But the truth was that Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, was a great general. He had one of the most distinguished military careers on record (top of his class at West Point, a hero in the first war, Army Chief of Staff), and it is doubtful that anyone in any of the services knew more about the Pacific theater. Nonetheless, the war that would be waged to return him to the Philippines, as he had promised, would be a Navy war, and [three admirals] - Nimitz, King, and Halsey - would have every bit as much to do with the strategy and tactics of winning that war as he had.
Douglas MacArthur
We Filipinos are the most promising people in the world. We have unheard-of-possibilities. There have never been a people similarly situated. Here we are in the Orient with our Oriental thoughts and sentiments, but living amid a civilization more Western than was ever known in The East. The Philippines is the only country where East meets West. The Filipino is a true cosmopolitan. From him the world may expect something new and distinctive.
Epifanio de los Santos
An enormous amount is happening globally-different kinds of struggle in different countries, in different societies. When you look at South Africa, there's enormous leadership by women. Black women in South Africa are maintaining and creating a structure. In that violence-ridden society, in the midst of revolution, they are creating childcare centers, soup kitchens, planting gardens, keeping things going on that human level. Now I don't think that's just women doing the service work of the world; those women are also leaders of their communities. We could talk about feminism in the Philippines, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, not a monolithic global movement but many movements, all over the world, contending within and against many different cultures. The United States movement is only a small part of the picture.
Adrienne Rich
It goes back to the days when we were defending ourselves against the internal aggression of the Native American population, who we incidentally wiped out in the process. In the post World War II period, we've frequently had to carry out defense against internal aggression, that is against Salvadorans in El Salvador, Greeks in Greece, against Filipinos in the Philippines, against South Vietnamese in South Vietnam, and many other places. And the concept of internal aggression has been repeatedly invoked in this connection, and quite appropriately. It's an interesting concept, it's one that George Orwell would certainly have admired, and it's elaborated in many ways in the internal documentary record.
Noam Chomsky
Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians. [...] It was true when the American forces conquered the Philippines, killing a couple hundred thousand people. They were being helped by Philippine tribes, exploiting conflicts among local groups. There were plenty who were going to side with the conquerors. But forget the Third World, just take a look at the Nazi conquest of nice, civilized Western Europe, places like Belgium and Holland and France. Who was rounding up the Jews? Local people, often. In France they were rounding them up faster than the Nazis could handle them. The Nazis also used Jews to control Jews. If the United States was conquered by the Russians, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Elliott Abrams and the rest of them would probably be working for the invaders, sending people off to concentration camps. They're the right personality types.
Noam Chomsky
[In these stories, Lafferty mostly] seems to be writing about places that are not on the map but are real just the same. Lafferty was a traveler in his youth, and he may have glimpsed some of these places on the watery horizon; whether he was sober at the time is not the issue right now. ... [Lafferty] has a reading knowledge of all the languages of the Latin, German, and Slavic families, as well as Gaelic and Greek. The army sent him to Morotai, New Guinea and the Philippines, and at one time he could speak pretty good Passar Malay and Tagalog. He turned to writing about six years ago, as a substitute for serious drinking. The tavernkeepers weep while we rejoice: Lafferty's stories are full of a warm, Bacchic glow, recollected in sobriety - euphoria, comradeship, nostalgia, and the ever-renewed belief that something wonderful may happen.
R. A. Lafferty
Starting from the first day in office, this is the only way to urgently address the most pressing problems of every sector of the Philippines. In governing this country, we cannot afford to dawdle or hold ourselves hostage to analysis paralysis. We should hit the ground running from the first day until the last. We cannot afford to do otherwise.
Francis Escudero
