#THE BLIND PROPHET PHILIPPINES FULL#

Grand strategies do not typically arise from visionary thinking about the future.

international history usually have had a traumatic birth. They viewed it as a sort of original sin, one that now seemed to have foreshadowed all the other sins to come.ДЄs in the story of how America stepped across the Pacific, the grand strategies in U.S. During and after the Vietnam War, historians again looked back at the 1898-99 decision to take the Philippines. 3ДЄfter World War II, the American presence across the Pacific was vastly enlarged in every way. They then developed a war plan that included an opening attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the Philippines. To the Japanese, this conclusion meant that, if they moved south, war with America was unavoidable. In 19, Japanese naval planners concluded that any move through the South China Sea into the resource-rich Dutch East Indies and British Malaya had to include an attack on American bases in the Philippines.

By 1934, when the Philippines seemed to be a strategic millstone and the United States chose a path to full independence for the islands, the majority Democrats in Congress led the way, eager to gain American вЂњfreedom from the colony.вЂќ 2Д«ut before America could gain this вЂњfreedom,вЂќ the American presence in the Philippines became a great pivot point of world history. Since the decision was followed by an ugly war, it seemed even at the time to symbolize a loss of American innocence, or worse, in the countryвЂ™s dealings with the world. It is even more difficult to reconstruct, with a policymakerвЂ™s eye, the information available at the time, the institutional context and the plausibly available alternative courses of action. When it comes to historical episodes of import, even those that have been extensively written about and researched, it is often difficult to identify when the critical choices actually occurred. Satisfactory reconstructions of this kind are rare. This essay offers a micro-historical reconstruction of a fateful choice made by the United States. It is an indispensable condition of the historical knowledge itself.вЂќ 1 To offer insight, вЂњthis re-enactment is only accomplished вЂ¦ so far as the historian brings to bear on the problem all the powers of his own mind and all his knowledge of philosophy and politics.вЂќ Such critical analysis вЂњis not something secondary to tracing the history of it. To understand CaesarвЂ™s choice, вЂњThis implies envisaging for himself the situation in which Caesar stood, and thinking for himself what Caesar thought about the situation and the possible ways of dealing with it.вЂќ The work of the historian in this case is not mere reproduction or description. Consider Julius CaesarвЂ™s decision to вЂњcross the RubiconвЂќ with his army and challenge his Roman Republic.

Robin Collingwood, a British historian and philosopher, saw history as a reservoir of knowledge gained through instructive re-enactment.

#THE BLIND PROPHET PHILIPPINES FULL#

The blind prophet philippines