Philippine–American War in the context of "United States involvement in regime change"

The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba. It represented U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and Philippine Revolution, with the latter later leading to the Philippine–American War. The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific; the United States meanwhile not only became a major world power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

The 19th century represented a clear decline for the Spanish Empire, while the United States went from a newly founded country to a rising power. In 1895, Cuban nationalists began a revolt against Spanish rule, which was brutally suppressed by the colonial authorities. W. Joseph Campbell argues that yellow journalism in the U.S. exaggerated the atrocities in Cuba to sell more newspapers and magazines, which swayed American public opinion in support of the rebels. But historian Andrea Pitzer also points to the actual shift toward savagery of the Spanish military leadership, who adopted the brutal reconcentration policy after replacing the relatively conservative Governor-General of Cuba Arsenio Martínez Campos with the more unscrupulous and aggressive Valeriano Weyler, nicknamed "The Butcher." President Grover Cleveland resisted mounting demands for U.S. intervention, as did his successor William McKinley. Though not seeking a war, McKinley made preparations in readiness for one.

Samar (/ˈsɑːmɑːr/ SAH-mar) is the third largest island in the Philippines, with a total population of 1,924,651 as of the 2024 census. It is located in the eastern Visayas and its main language and ethnicity is Waray while its main religion is Roman Catholic. Since 1965, the island is divided into three provinces: Western Samar, Northern Samar, and Eastern Samar. The capitals of these provinces are, respectively, Catarman, Catbalogan, and Borongan., all part of the Eastern Visayas region. In commemoration of the establishment of these provinces, June 19 is celebrated as an annual holiday. The island was first sighted by Ferdinand Magellan on March 16, 1521. Although he did not land, other expeditions were made. Many names, such as Samal, Ibabao, and Tandaya, were given to the island prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1596. During the early days of Spanish occupation, Samar was under the jurisdiction of Cebu. In the Philippine–American War, Eugenio Daza led a successful attack against the United States Army, later called the Balangiga massacre. This attack led to the Pacification of Samar and deaths of 2,000 people.

In the American colonization of the Philippines, two uprisings were created; the former was the Pulajan movement which caused massacres in the country. The Battle off Samar was held off the island. In the martial law under Ferdinand Marcos, the Sag-od massacre was caused. After the martial law, the island still has the New People's Army rebellion. Samar is the easternmost island in the Visayas archipelago. The island lies to the northeast of Leyte and lies to the southeast of the Bicol Peninsula on Luzon. To the west is the Samar Sea, and to the north and east of Samar lies the Philippine Sea. The island has the Samar Island Natural Park and has numerous biological discoveries and forests.

"The White Man's Burden" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country.

In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago purchased in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898). As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire; nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century. With a central motif of the poem being the superiority of white men, it has long been criticised as a racist poem.

The Philippine Independent Church (Filipino: Malayang Simbahan ng Pilipinas; Ilocano: Nawaya a Simbaan ti Filipinas), officially referred to by its Philippine Spanish name Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) and colloquially called the Aglipayan Church, is an independent catholic Christian denomination, in the form of a nationalist church, in the Philippines. Its revolutionary nationalist schism from the Catholic Church in the Philippines was proclaimed during the American colonial period in 1902, following the end of the Philippine–American War, by members of the country's first labor union federation, the Unión Obrera Democrática Filipina.

The foundation of the church was a response to the historical mistreatment and racial discrimination of Filipinos by Spaniard priests and partly influenced by the unjust executions of José Rizal and Filipino priests and prominent secularization movement figures Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, during the former Spanish colonial rule in the country when Catholicism was still the state religion.

Waterboarding or controlled drowning is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.

Waterboarding has been used in diverse places and at various points in history, including the Spanish and Flemish Inquisitions, by the United States military during the Philippine–American War, by Japanese and German officials during World War II, by the French in the Algerian War, by the U.S. during the Vietnam War and the war on terror, by the Pinochet regime in Chile, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, by British security forces during the Troubles, and by South African police during the Apartheid era. Historically, waterboarding has been viewed as an especially severe form of torture.

Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement after having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. The word internment is also occasionally used to describe a neutral country's practice of detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Convention of 1907.

Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps or concentration camps. The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps.

Lawton is a city in and the county seat of Comanche County, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Located in western Oklahoma, approximately 87 mi (140 km) southwest of Oklahoma City, it is the principal city of the Lawton, Oklahoma, metropolitan statistical area. According to the 2020 census, Lawton's population was 90,381, making it the sixth-largest city in the state, and the largest in Western Oklahoma.

Developed on former reservation lands of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache peoples, Lawton was incorporated in 1901. It was named after Major General Henry Ware Lawton, who served in the Civil War, where he earned the Medal of Honor, and was killed in action in the Philippine–American War. Lawton's landscape is typical of the Great Plains, with flat topography and gently rolling hills, while the area north of the city is marked by the Wichita Mountains.

George Catlett Marshall Jr. (31 December 1880 – 16 October 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. Winston Churchill lauded Marshall as the "organizer of victory" for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II. During the subsequent year, he unsuccessfully tried to prevent the continuation of the Chinese Civil War. As Secretary of State, Marshall advocated for a U.S. economic and political commitment to post-war European recovery, including the Marshall Plan that bore his name. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only Army general ever to receive the honor.

Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1901. He received his commission as a second lieutenant of Infantry in February 1902 and immediately went to the Philippines. He served in the United States and overseas in positions of increasing rank, including platoon leader and company commander in the Philippines during the Philippine–American War. He was the top-ranked of the five Honor Graduates of his Infantry-Cavalry School Course in 1907 and graduated first in his 1908 Army Staff College class. In 1916 Marshall was assigned as aide-de-camp to J. Franklin Bell, the commander of the Western Department. After the nation entered the First World War in 1917, Marshall served with Bell, who commanded the Department of the East. He was assigned to the staff of the 1st Division; he assisted with the organization's mobilization and training in the United States, as well as planning of its combat operations in France. Subsequently assigned to the staff of the American Expeditionary Forces headquarters, he was a key planner of American operations, including the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.