In the Philippines, between 1899 and 1902, the United States fought a war most Americans have never heard of. After defeating Spain, America decided the Philippines should not be independent. Should not govern itself. Was not ready. The Filipinos disagreed. And so America, which had declared its own independence 123 years earlier, went to war to prevent another people from winning theirs. The methods: The "water cure": forcing water into a prisoner's stomach until they talked or died. The systematic burning of villages. The forced reconcentration of civilians and collective punishment in areas of resistance. General Jacob Smith's order: kill everyone over ten. Kill everyone over ten. Between 250,000 and 1 million Filipinos died. The American general who oversaw much of it, Arthur MacArthur, was celebrated back home. His son Douglas became an even more celebrated general. The war is not in most American textbooks. When it appears, it is described as the "Philippine Insurrection." Insurrection. A Filipino fighting for Filipino independence on Filipino soil is, in the American vocabulary, an insurgent. The Americans who crossed the Pacific to prevent that independence are, in the same vocabulary, soldiers. The words are the empire's first line of defense. They were doing their job in 1902. They are still doing their job now.