Trump said to study General Pershing. Here’s what the president got wrong
Gen. John J. Pershing is shown on horseback in
front of his summer home and general headquarters at Chaumont, Haute-Marne,
France, in 1918. (AP)
A
sordid tale of Gen. John J. Pershing executing Muslim insurgents in the
Philippines at the turn of the century is a favorite of President Trump.
Pershing
“caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many
people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he
dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He
took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his
rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And
the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what
happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem.”
“Study
what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There
was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” he tweeted.
Brian
M. Linn, a history professor at Texas A&M University, did just that nearly
two decades ago when he published “Guardians of Empire,” a book on
the U.S. military presence in Asia from 1902 to 1940.
His
verdict on Trump’s claim?
“There
is absolutely no evidence this occurred,” he told The Washington Post.
“It’s a
made-up story. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times people say this isn’t
true. No one can say where or when this occurred.”
But
Trump’s claims, and the wider belief in a routinely debunked story, has far-reaching
effects. Not only is the story untrue, but the convenient twist — of an
insurgency defeated only with the use of brutal war tactics — points to
precisely the opposite lessons Pershing and his troops learned in the
Philippines campaign from 1899 to 1913, Linn said.
“The
U.S. military learned escalating counterterrorism was not
effective, and they took great steps, including Pershing, to de-escalate,”
Linn said.
Pershing
was a U.S. Military Academy graduate who first earned distinction in the
Indian-American Wars, and later his nickname, “Black Jack,” after commanding
the all-African American Buffalo Soldiers unit.
He was
an astute and battle-experienced captain who in 1899 first arrived in the
Philippines, where he learned the value of defusing tribal grievances among the
Moro, the followers of Islam on the archipelago engaged in tribal violence
and insurrection against the United States. The Philippines
were acquired after the United States won the Spanish-American War in
1898, and an insurrection arose following attempts to
pacify the country as it sought independence from colonial rule.
Pershing
studied the Koran and drank tea with tribal leaders to emphasize
he was there to put down violence, not continue a religious war the Spanish had
waged for centuries.
“He did
a lot of what we would call ‘winning hearts and minds’ and embraced reforms
which helped end their resistance,” Lance Janda, a military historian at
Cameron University, told PolitiFact. “He fought, too, but only
when he had to, and only against tribes or bands that just wouldn’t negotiate
with him.”
In one
series of campaigns between 1902 and 1903 around Lake Lanao on the southern
island, Pershing would focus on more violent religious groups in fortified
positions, allowing them room to escape, Linn said.
Pershing
then bypassed other factions in the area to show he could easily move his
forces around but would not deliberately attack, demonstrating to other tribes
he understood which groups posed a threat.
But
Pershing was also the commander of aggressive offensives that killed women and
children after insurrectionists occupied positions with their
families. Still, Pershing was made an honorary Moro chieftain, Linn said.
Other
atrocities were committed by U.S. forces during the conflict. After a garrison
of Army soldiers was overrun and massacred, a unit of Marines was dispatched in
September 1902 to root out insurgents on the island of Samar on the central
coast. Major Little Waller, who led the Marine unit, arrived from China and was
unfamiliar with the terrain. Fever overtook him, his men panicked and the
Filipino porters carrying his equipment mutinied.
Eleven
porters were executed in a remote area, but news of the act quickly spread.
“Dead men tell no tales, but they leave an awful smell” became a common
American saying afterward, Linn said. Waller was later acquitted in a
court-martial.
But the
episode points to an example of what happens when news of deliberate killings
spreads, Linn said, and if Pershing had committed a theatrical massacre, a
similar result would have been likely.
Linn
began to encounter the Pershing pig blood bullet story after Sept. 11, 2001,
when Internet users searched for religious-themed military operations in
the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
“It
seemed to me to be coming from sources that were strongly anti-Muslim, not
military historians or scholars,” Linn said.
Concerned
faculty at the U.S. Military Academy asked him to disprove the story of
arguably one of its most storied graduates. Pershing would later head the
American Expeditionary Forces in World War I as Commander of the Armies, a rank
held only by two generals in U.S. history — Pershing and George Washington, who
was posthumously awarded the rank in 1976.
Linn
told the U.S. Military Academy, along with fellow Texas A&M professor Frank
Vandiver and author of Pershing’s biography, that no evidence existed to back
up the story.
Still,
the myth persists with another twist of burying insurgents with dead pigs.
In Pershing’s memoir “My Life Before the World War, 1860 — 1917,” he says
fellow officer Col. Frank West told him at least one Muslim fighter was
“publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig.”
“It was
not pleasant to have to take such measures, but the prospect of going to hell
instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins,” Pershing wrote
about juramentados, knife-wielding religious extremists who targeted
Christians.
Linn
said it probably did happen at one point, but he doubts Pershing was involved
or ordered subordinates to commit religiously insulting acts. Other artifacts,
such as letters and memoirs from soldiers there describing similar events, do
not point to credible claims of Pershing’s involvement, Linn said. A 1939 movie
about the conflict starring Gary Cooper, “The Real Glory,” also includes a
scene that resembles those moments and likely fuels the myth, the
historian said.
The
Philippine-American War ended in 1902, with the death of more than 4,200
American and 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians
died of violence and widespread famine and disease, according to the State
Department. The Moro Insurrection continued for years.
Pershing
served as governor of the mostly Muslim Moro Province from 1909 to 1913, as the
rebellion festered. Pershing’s decision to disarm the Moro in 1913
triggered more unrest, culminating in the Battle of Bud Bagsak in the
south.
Pershing annihilated
the Moro, but Trump’s suggestion of a fabled mass execution leading to
peace is incorrect, Linn said.
Lost in
Trump’s falsehood, Linn said, is the distortion of an officer
who dedicated his life to a certain code of conduct.
“It’s a
terrible defamation of the American soldier,” Linn said. “What does it say
about Americans that they would take 50 people and shoot them? It’s a major war
crime.”
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