Interesting take; I must try to see the movie. One thing I would like to point out is that the Philippinos were mostly Catholic, correct? Islam is incompatible with Western-style democracy, and is itself imperialist to the core, brutalizing and massacring those who will not "submit" to the supremacy of Islam. Ask the Copts, Assyrians, Phoenicians (some in Lebanon still identify as Phoenician), Greeks, Armenians and Hindus.

One of my grandfathers fought in the that campaign. His bitter account, told me as a teen-aged boy, was that the American war was cruel, vicious, and utterly brutal, without mercy, and that the Filipinos. were fighting for the independence of their country. Although he was in the US military, his sympathies were for the Philippines, and he had great respect for Aguinaldo. He regretted his role there all his life.

Didn't the worst of the war occur with the Moros, the Muslim islanders?

I shared Ryan Cole's surprise at how even-handed and agenda-free the film "Amigo" was. It thoughtfully depicted the complicated ambiguities of a prototypical "war of national liberation." Also worthy of note were the youthfulness and immaturity of the American soldiers -- they truly were boys -- and the fascinating way that the Tagalog language incorporated Spanish and American vocabulary. I agree that the Chris Cooper character was grotesquely cartoonish.

I'm still trying to figure out The French Lieutenant's Woman.

This whole review is dripping in bias. Your employment of loaded terms such as 'self-appointed' attached to Aguinaldo is one of numerous examples. Then comes the clever writing out of 4,000 to identify the number of American lives lost and the writing oout of 'hundreds of thousands' for the Filipinos lost. The eye remembers '4000' better than 'hundreds of thousands'. Worst is the vague phrase 'cumulative toll' to suggest many of the Filipinos may have died from causes not related to the conflict. The United States 'liberated' the Philippines in order to occupy it. One needs to begin there. That the Americans 'advanced the archipelago's infrastructure' was done, to the extent that it was, in order to make occupation easier. When 'independence' did come in 1946, after the end of WWII, the result was American supported thinly disguised dictatorships such as the notorious Marcos family.

The Filipinos are the first of the Bamboo
nations They blow east and west.

That is depending on which way the pimp
pays.. Their friendships are based on
money from the USA

In a few short years after sleeping with
the chinese they cam running for help

The Spanish American War, unfortunately, set the precedent for US military intervention around the world that still haunts us today.

The immediate result of this war was the establishment of the USA as a colonial power, for the first time in American history, and greased the skids for further US intervention in the Pacific. It also facilitated the US entry into WWI - another war in which the USA had no business nor interest.

Since the Spanish American War the USA has been involved in one conflict after another; two World Wars, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic, Korea, Iraq, Afganistan and Haiti. It never seems to end.

There is no doubt that the USA won the hearts and minds of the Filipino people and helped establish a representative democracy there, and the Filipinos genuinely like americans. Unfortunately, that cannnot be said for most of the other conflicts in which the USA had participated.

A great read on all these seemingly never ending conflicts is Max Boot's "The Savage Wars of Peace."

George Washington and Alexander Hamilton warned that the USA should not get involved in the affairs of foreign nations. In 1898 this advice was ignored. We are still paying the price for this folly.