Operation Filipino Freedom

So I took Molly's advice to "look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines" and wow:

CommonDreams.org
Mark Twain in Iraq?
The Famous Writer Championed a Proud Tradition of American Anti-imperialism
by Mark Engler

It was autumn, electoral campaigns were in full swing, and U.S. intervention abroad represented a crucial issue separating the political candidates. Amidst the excitement, one of America's foremost literary personalities made a homecoming that was both celebrated and politically charged.

The writer was Mark Twain and the year was 1900. The nation was engaged in an intense debate over its military action in the Philippines, a country that it had recently bought for $20 million dollars at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Twain, who had been living abroad for nearly ten years, brought a prescient analysis of the situation.

Initially, he had supported the war. "I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered," Twain explained, echoing the White House's rationale for action. "We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat... start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world."

"But I have thought some more, since then," he said. Upon reading the 1898 Treaty of Paris and questioning the official motives for war, Twain concluded: "We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem."

"And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

[...]

And when apologists for the White House, like General Frederick Funston, argued that anti-imperialist critics should be "hanged for treason," Twain retorted that he was "quite willing to be called a traitor -- quite willing to wear that honorable badge -- and not willing to be affronted with the title of Patriot and classed with the Funstons when so help me God I have not done anything to deserve it."