The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 15 | Issue 20 | Number 4 | Article ID 5078 | Oct 15, 2017

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An Enemy You Can Depend On: Trump, Pershing’s Bullets,and the Folklore of the War on Terror

Paul Kramer

Abstract

This essay, adapted and expanded from anarticle published in Foreign Affairs, exploresthe origins of the legend used by Donald Trumpto justify torture and war crimes againstterrorists that Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershinghad Muslim prisoners in the Philippines shotwith bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. While thestory is patently false, it is worth revisingPershing’s knowledge that his men attemptedto terrorize Philippine Muslims with pigskinburials, while asking what widespreadAmerican beliefs about Islam the story tradedin. Approached in this way, the Pershing legendemerges not just as Trumpian fabrication, butas an archetypal parable of the “war on terror.”

Keywords: Pershing, Philippines, Moro,historical legend, terror

Gary Cooper: A still from the 1939colonialist action movie "The Real Glory":William Canavan (Gary Cooper) confrontsa treacherous datu who has beenpretending to aid American forces.

The most intriguing thing about DonaldTrump’s speeches and tweets about GeneralPershing around 1910—which claim he had hismen shoot 49 captured terrorists in thePhilippines with pig-dipped bullets in order toterrorize the rest—is not that he made the storyup. That the tale is a fabrication is not patternbreaking when it comes to Trump’s generalapproach to history, or reality. One thing that isdistinctive about the yarn is that it may qualifyas the quintessential Trumpian use of history:the story’s naked and brutal hatred of Islam, itsromance of aggressive, martial masculinity, itsraw violence and obsession with blood releasedfrom bodies point squarely to its teller.

But while important, it’s not enough to simplycall out a uniquely mendacious demagogue forplaying fast and loose with historical facts forhis own purposes. It is far more illuminating toask why Trump has repeatedly (most recently,in response to an attack in Barcelona) chosento transport his audiences to the early 20th

century’s colonialist pith-helmet tropics. Wheredoes the story comes from, how does it work,who is it meant to hail, and why—thoseexultant audiences—has it hailed them?Without doubt, the fable reveals more about itsspeaker than most would ever want to know.But what does it say about America?

Here is how Trump introduced the legend to

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supporters at a campaign rally in NorthCharleston, South Carolina on February 19,2016, the day before the state’s Republicanprimary. He’s about a half-hour into his stumpspeech, mocking his rivals’ leeriness abouttalking about water-boarding—“your minimal,minimal, minimal torture”—and embracing itand more extreme measures as necessary tocounter ruthless, medieval-style decapitators.He baits his audience. “You know, I read astory, it’s a terrible story, but I’ll tell you,” hesays. “Should I tell you, or should I not?” Thereare cheers. Trump proceeds. It’s early in thel a s t c e n t u r y , h e s a y s , a n d G e n .Pershing—“rough guy, rough guy”—is facing aterrorism problem, somewhere. Trump doesn’tsay outright who the terrorists are, but “there’sa whole thing with swine, and animals and pigs,and you know the story, OK? They don’t likethat.”

Pershing sits upright on his horse, “veryastute”—Trump chops his hand straightdownward—“like a ramrod.” He catches fiftyterrorists who have done “tremendous damageand killed many people.” He has fifty of his mentake fifty bullets and dip them in pigs’ blood.Then they line up the prisoners and shoot forty-nine of them. To the fiftieth, Pershing says:“You go back to your people and you tell themwhat happened.” Pershing’s approach toterrorism works: “For twenty-five years, therewasn’t a problem. OK?” The crowd roars, andTrump’s repeats the happy ending, thenconcludes with an ominous message.. “So webetter start getting tough, and we better startgetting vigilant, and we better start using ourheads,” he warns, “or we’re not going to have acountry, folks.”

The story is a hit, and Trump takes it on theroad. He tells it again ten days’ later at a rallyin Radford, Virginia, this time setting it in thePhilippines. He always inserts the tale rightafter he’s primed the audience by imitatingsomeone in the Middle East slicing off theheads of Christians, then mocking the United

States’ weak, law-bound responses. Themessage is always the same: the enemy obeysno law, and so America must get tough andruthless, stretching or disregarding the rules,or be defeated and humiliated. But the story’sdetails swivel a bit in transit. SometimesPershing’s men dump the bullets into sliced-open pigs, rather than dipping them;sometimes they splash blood around. Usually,Pershing hands the fiftieth bullet to the sparedterrorist, a token of coiled mercy and threat.Sometimes Pershing’s cure for terrorism laststwenty-eight years instead of twenty-five and,on one occasion, forty-two.

In Orlando, Trump makes a revealing slip. He’sexplaining that Pershing has “a huge problemwith” and the word “Islam” slips out. Hecatches himself, tries to back up. He swaps inthe word “terrorism.” Then he decides tocharge on ahead, smashing it all together as“radical Islamic terrorism.” From Daytononward, this is the name for what Pershing isfighting, right from the start. “Some thingsnever change, folks,” he says, wearily. “Somethings never change.”

Journalists, historians and fact-checkingwebsites instantly debunked the story. A writerfor the National Review condemned Trump forfalsification, endorsing war crimes, and libelingan American hero. Scholars who had studiedPershing said there was absolutely no evidenceto support the account, and that the killing ofprisoners of war in this way was inconsistentwith Pershing’s command style.

What these commentators tended to underplayor overlook was that Pershing, while he did notorder the shooting of prisoners as far as weknow, did participate in forms of warfare thatused pigs and the threat of pigs to spreadterror in Moro society. As early as April 1911,he had heard of such terrorizing approaches tothe war from his commanding officer, Maj.General J. Franklin Bell. Pershing had writtenBell about the recent killing of a sergeant, and

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Bell replied: “I understand it has long been acustom to bury juramentados”—Moro suicideattackers—“with pigs when they ki l lAmericans.” Bell thought this was “a goodplan,” as “the prospect of going to hell insteadof to heaven” would discourage them. “You canrely on me to stand by you in maintaining thiscustom,” he wrote. “It is the only possible thingwe can do to discourage crazy fanatics.”

It’s not clear whether Pershing initiated suchburials himself, received orders from hissuperiors, or whether soldiers under hiscommand engaged in the practice on their own.But he later endorsed these actions, somewhatdefensively, in his autobiography. Writing inthe 1920s and 1930s, in a memoir publishedonly in 2013, he recalled that juramentadoattacks had been “materially reduced innumber” by the burial of attackers’ bodies withdead pigs, “a practice that the Mohamedansheld in abhorrence.” It was “not pleasant tohave to take such measures,” he wrote, “butthe prospect of going to hell instead of heavensometimes deterred the would-be assassins.”So Persh ing d idn’ t order p ig -bul le tmassacres—of which no record has so farsurfaced—but he knew of the burial of Muslimassailants with pigs and later reflected that hethought this technique was effective andnecessary.

Over the decades that followed, this gruesometerror tactic made its way into Americans’popular understanding of the war the UnitedStates had fought in the Southern Philippines.As in the slippery, twisting arc of folktale, onecan see elements combined and recombined,found and lost, whispered down across thedecades and overheard by half-listeninglisteners with their own agendas. In 1927, aCaptain Herman Archer wrote of Pershing’scareer in a Chicago Tribune feature awash incolonialist derring-do. To stop juramentados,had used their belief that “if they ever weresprinkled with pig’s blood they were doomedforever to their own particular hell.” According

to Archer, Pershing had “sprinkled some withpig’s blood and let them go”—with “muchceremony”—letting them know other assailantswould be treated the same way. “And thosedrops of porcine gore,” Archer wrote “provedmore powerful than bullets.”

Hanging at a distance: The execution ofthree Moros in Jolo during Pershing'scommand in the Southern Philippines, July21, 1911.

In his 1938 book Jungle Patrol, the author VicHurley, a colonial adventurer, formerplantation owner and honorary ThirdLieutenant in the Philippine Constabulary,credited the pig burials to Colonel AlexanderRodgers of the 6th Cavalry. According to Hurley,Rodgers “inaugurated a system of burying alldead juramentados in a common grave with thecarcasses of slaughtered pigs.” Other Americanmilitary officers had added “new refinements.”Some had beheaded an attacker after deathand had the head sewn inside a pig carcass.“And so the rite of running juramentado, atleast semi-religious in character, ceased to bein Sulu,” he wrote. The “last cases of thisreligious mania occurred in the early decadesof the century.” Rodgers and these others had,“by taking advantage of religious prejudice,”achieved “what the bayonets and Krags hadbeen unable to accomplish.”

The weaponizing of pigs also features

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prominently in the 1939 adventure film “TheReal Glory.” Gary Cooper plays WilliamCanavan, an American doctor who arrives inthe Southern Philippines just as the US militaryis handing over control to civilian authoritiesand Filipino troops. They are preyed upon byMoro pirates led by the reliably sinisterchieftain Alipang, who deploys fierce,seemingly unstoppable suicide warriors againstthem. (In a different, unfilmed screenplay, asoldier refers to Alipang as “an enemy you candepend on.”) Successive commanders arekilled, and Filipino troops—depicted asobedient, child-like, and cowardly—areterrified. That is, until Canavan marches ontothe parade ground with a captured attacker:“genus homo moro juramentado,” he quips.Lambasting the Filipino soldiers for their fear,he has the man forced onto a pig skin. He wailsand pleads; the Filipinos are stunned, thenemboldened. “How can you be afraid of thatworm crawling on the ground, howling formercy, begging for help?” Canavan hollers.“Scared out of his skin by the skin of a deadpig!” The Filipinos are transformed. They walkpast a straw dummy of Alipang and, for the firsttime, they jeer. One of them jabs it with hisbayonet.

It’s still unclear what kept the various versionsand elements of the story alive across thedecades that stretched between The Real Gloryand the turn of the 21st century. (One strongpossibility is the well-established fact that theColt .45 was adopted as the US Army’sstandard-issue sidearm in response toPershing’s request for a weapon that could stopon-rushing juramentados, where .38-caliberweapons didn’t. Based on personal, anecdotalevidence, this fragment appears to be one ofthe few things commonly known amongAmericans about US colonial rule in thePhilippines. Upon hearing that I research thesethemes, dozens of history buffs over the yearshave suddenly related the Pershing Colt .45origin story to me or asked me if it’s true.)

But one thing is certain: the Pershing pigs’blood story, in its fully elaborated form, is thechild of 9/11, rising as the debris settled inLower Manhattan. Just weeks after the attacks,the story had emerged full-blown, crafted toturn Americans’ rage, shame and fear of 9/11into vengeful, Islamophobic violence. As earlyas September 21, 2001, emails carrying pigs’blood stories were ricocheting across theInternet; one was entitled “HOW TO STOPISLAMIC TERRORISTS… it worked once in ourHistory…” They elaborated the pig story in theoutlines that Trump would later employ.There’s the take-home point: “Once in U. S.history an episode of Islamic terrorism wasvery quickly stopped.” The stage is set: it’s theSouthern Philippines “around 1911” (Pershingserved as governor of Moro Province from1909-1913; was it just coincidental that thedate the authors chose happened to have “911”in it?). Pershing’s men shoot capturedterrorists with pig-dipped bullets and bury theirbodies with pig guts. The terrorists aren’tafraid of dying—they welcome it—but they’reafraid contamination with pigs will preventthem from entering a promised martyr’sheaven full of virgins. “Thus the terrorists wereterrorized,” one email reads.

Within weeks, versions of the narrative were inplay at high levels of policy-making. In aninterview in October, the Democratic chairmanof the Senate Intelligence Committee, SenatorBob Graham, referred to conversations he’dhad at a recent dinner with members of theintelligence community about how far US’stactics could go in the newly-declared “war onterror.” The dialogue, he said, had “ranged inpart” on “how U. S. military commander ‘BlackJack’ Pershing used Islam’s prohibition on porkto help crush an insurgency on the southernPhilippine island of Mindanao.” Grahamexplained that US soldiers had captured twelveMuslims, killed six with “bullets dipped into thefat of pigs,” wrapped them in funeral shroudsmade of pigskin and “buried them face down sothey could not see Mecca.” They also “poured

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the entrails of the pigs over them.” The othersix had been forced to watch. “And that was theend of the insurrection in Mindanao,” Grahamsaid.

The story had legs. In December the followingyear, the National Review (apparently not yetaware of the story’s falsehood and libel),applauded Pershing’s strategic use of pigsagainst Muslim enemies, drawing on the storyspecifics that Graham had (six terrorists,entrails, the spared messenger, the rebellion’send.) At some point, a poster featuring thefable was posted on a wall inside the CaliforniaNational Guard’s Civil Support Division, anagency which had been established to carry outanti-terrorism operations in the state. “Maybeit is time for this segment of history to repeatitself, maybe in Iraq?” it read. “The question is,where do we f ind another Black JackPershing?”

A scandal over the poster erupted in thesummer of 2005, two years into the Iraq War,when it was spotted by antiwar activists. Criticshad accused the Division of surveillingAmerican citizens during a Mother’s Dayprotest against the Iraq War, and been invitedto its Sacramento headquarters for aninspection tour meant to reassure them. Whilethere, the visitors—Muslim leaders, a statesenator, and peace activists—caught sight ofthe poster as they were preparing to leave. TheCouncil on American-Islamic Relations issued astatement of protest. “It is troubling to see agovernmental organization that is dedicated tosecurity, promoting religiously insensitiveideas,” said William Youmans, its mediarelations spokesman. “It’s very possible tocombat terrorism without offending thecultural values of a major world religion.” Aguard spokesman, Lt. Col. Doug Hart, defendedthe poster as “historically accurate,” but it wasquickly removed. (An army investigation intothe allegations of domestic spying by theDivision found “questionable activities” thatmight have included “egregious violations of

intelligence laws, policies or procedures”; theDivision was quietly disbanded.)

By this point, as the Bush administration andits allies defended the invasion of Iraq as partof an expansive, boundless “war on terror,” theUS colonial experience in the Philippines wasback with a vengeance. Military historian MaxBoot wrote in 2002 that the United States’ warin the Philippines represented “one of the mostsuccessful counter-insurgencies waged by aWestern army in modern times,” celebratingthe United States’ garrisoning of thecountryside, its intelligence operations, and thetraining and discipline of its soldiers. In asummer 2003 art ic le in the Atlantic ,“Supremacy by Stealth: Ten Rules forManaging the World,” foreign affairs writerand Defense Department consultant Robert D.Kaplan made Rule #7 “Remember thePhilippines.” Like Boot, Kaplan attempted torecuperate the Philippine-American War,praising the US military’s reliance ondecentralized, locally adaptive commands, itsinterrogation of prisoners, and its exploitationof ethnic divisions. There were valuable lessonsto be learned. Given the challenges the USfaced, “our experience a century ago in theanarchic Philippines” was newly relevant.

So why did the Pershing parable’s disparateelements find each other, snap together, andtake off when they did after 9/11? The Pershingpig story is not just the archetypal Trump story;it’s also an archetypal “war on terror” story.The particular kind of conflict the United Stateshas repeatedly engaged in since 9/11—withoutgeographic or temporal limits, often withoutethical or legal stricture, undertaken in thename of maximalist principles of freedom andcivilization embodied in, safeguarded by, andoutwardly imposed by one particular nation,and one in which victory was difficult if notimpossible to gauge—badly needed a story likethis one. One might say that if this specific taleof prowess, violence and mastery had notexisted, the advocates of a US-led global war

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on terror would have had to invent it. It didn’t,and they did.

First and foremost, it’s a myth about how Islamand terrorism connect. It holds that they aremore or less identical. The religious,theological or ritual connections are not alwaysspecified; indeed, that they don’t requireexplanation is part of the point. This linkagerenders any Muslim-identified community—orcountry—suspect until, or after, being proven“innocent.” In fact, the question of innocence isnot in play: even if Islam has not “caused”terrorism in any particular case, it isunderstood to leave Muslims susceptible and inneed of preemptive surveillance and control.Making terrorism the essence of Islam, andIslam the essence of terrorism, makes itdifficult to impossible to conceive of terroristswho are not Muslim. Trump’s slip of thetongue—did he mean to say Is lam orterrorism?—was, in its own way, eloquent.

It’s a story about the radical, intractable linesthat separate “us” and “them.” They havebizarre, silly, superstitious ideas about deaththat we don’t. Our approach to fighting, tacticsand strategy—and life—is scientific andrational, while theirs is mystical and stupid.And the gap in the civilizational planesseparating us—about which we are aware andthey are not—prevents us from communicatingwith them except through violence, politics’most primal, seemingly universal language. Thestory is, therefore, about the impossibility ofpeaceful co-existence beyond relations ofhierarchy and domination.

It’s also about superior cultural know-how:while they are mired in dreamscapes of pigsand heaven, we have keen, anthropologicalinsights into the (remarkably easy-to-operationalize) rules that govern theirbehavior. Where both 9/11 and the guerrillawarfare American forces face on theproliferating front-lines of the “war on terror”have involved unknown enemies that know the

United States’ vulnerabilities and sometimesexploit them to deadly effect, the storyrepresents a viscerally satisfying reversal: wecan defeat you because we know you. It’s also aclassic, colonialist fantasy: the white man whoscares the natives by posing as one of theirgods, brandishing one of their sacred relics, orclaiming to summon an eclipse he knows willterrify.

It’s a story about Islam’s homogeneity and all-determining character. It isn’t different in oneplace or another: the Southern Philippinesmight as well be Iraq, which might as wellbeing the international terminal at JFK or, forthat matter, the ordinary-seeming family withthe Prius that just moved in next door. This is aconvenient way to approach cultural geographyif your goal is a war without borders. Accordingto the myth, Islam completely defines theworldview and actions of all its participants:their beliefs, practices and institutions aresaturated by dangerous religious fervor. Thejuramentado and the terrorist do everythingthey do—especially, fight—exclusively becauseof Islam. When the correct religions do this, itis called devotion; when the wrong ones do, itis called fanaticism.

It’s also conveys the message that Islam neverchanges over time. When figuring out how todeal with contemporary opponents who areMuslim, you don’t need to think about what erathey are living in or about their economic,political social or cultural conditions: you cango back in time (and, presumably, forward),and the beliefs and actions of those underIslam’s sway will be the same. Such time travelp e e l s a w a y c o n f u s i n g l a y e r s o fmodernity—what to make of their use of cellphones and Twitter?—revealing an unchangingcore beneath.

Relatedly, it’s about the dream of returning tothe good old days before the GenevaConventions of 1949 or, even further, to a timebefore the United States’ adoption of a code of

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military regulation. Here the fantasy has to gointo overdrive: during the years of Pershing’sservice, the U. S. military in the Philippines wasactually operating under General Orders No.1 0 0https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-101534687-bk, which barred theintentional abuse of prisoners of war. Trump’sPershing doesn’t consult American orinternational rulebooks about the treatment ofprisoners of war, even to reject them. Suchlaws are for losers. The violence Pershingdeploys springs only from his individual willand what needs to get done.

In the largest sense, the fable is about the waysthat propaganda which smells sufficiently likehistory can preempt a serious wrestling withthe past by seizing the place in our collectivememory that should be dedicated to events thatactually happened. What other actual historiesmight justifiably take the place in our collectivememory currently occupied by this fabricated,mythological one?

Bagsak trench: A photograph taken of atrench at Bud Bagsak, where Gen.Pershing's forces killed several hundredMoros, including non-combatants.

Pershing did not tell his men to kill forty-nineprisoners with pig-bullets. What he and hisforces did do, and what we aren’t talking aboutwhile we’re talking about this myth, was carryout a brutal campaign of colonial conquest andpacification in the Southern Philippines. As thecommander of the US military governmentthere, Pershing’s task was to disarm Morofighters, compel local communities to paytaxes, and create conditions safe for U. S.colonial rule, trade and investment. In June1913, several thousand Moros who refused tosubmit to US military authority withdrew to

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fortifications inside the extinct volcanic craterof Bud Bagsak. Pershing hoped to starve themout. Concerned about a possible mass killing ofnon-combatants, however, as had happened in1906 when U. S. forces massacred Moros at thecra te r o f Bud Da jo , Persh ing madearrangements so that those who desire to leavecould do so. Then, on June 11th, his forcesattacked. In the end, five days of hard fightingleft several hundred Moros, including non-combatants, and fourteen US soldiers, dead.The resistance was broken. “Submission to lawand authority is complete,” Pershing reportedthe following January.

Bud Bagsak helped launch the Pershing legend,to which Trump would later attach himself. Oneobserver noted in 1917 that, in officers’ clubs,“not a night goes by but [one] hears a rehearsalof the story of the battle of Bagsak,” whenPershing, with “a handful of men,” had chargedup the sacred mountain and taken itssupposedly unconquerable fortress. In 1940,Pershing received the Distinguished ServiceCross for his “extraordinary heroism in actionagainst hostile, fanatical Moros” there. Butothers hoped to see histories like this fade.When, in 1938, Colonel Adelno Gibsonsubmitted an article to Military Engineer thatmade reference to Bud Bagsak, it was rejected;the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service saidthat the battles of Bud Dajo and Bud Bagsak“represent incidents which should not beunduly publicized.” He feared Gibson’s“discussion of these actions may revive publicattention to military operations that might wellremain forgotten.”

K n o c k i n g o u t t h e M o r o s : T h i sromantic ized image of Americancampaigns against the Moros, entitled"Knocking out the Moros: The U. S. Armyin Action," was commissioned by theDepartment of the Army in 1953 as arecruitment poster.

As the result of such deliberate erasures, thekillings at Bud Bagsak and similar events are“forgotten,” at least by some. In their place, webuild for ourselves—telling and retelling,enlisting and reworking—histories like the onesthat Trump tells us: about a resolute militarycommander, a savage enemy, a cunning tactic,and a winnable war. Such fictions authorize,then forgive, then marginalize the massacres ofthe past, in order to do the same for thosecurrently underway and those yet to come. Attheir most ambitious, these tales can help usforget such violence before it takes place. Thathistory’s lessons about this process are elusivemay prove the most meaningful lesson of all.

Paul A. Kramer is an Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, with researchand teaching interests centering on the United States’ transnational, imperial and globalhistories since the mid-19th century. He is the author of The Blood of Government: Race,

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Empire, the United States and the Philippines (University of North Carolina Press, 2006),winner of SHAFR’s 2007 Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize and the OAH’s 2007 James A. RawleyPrize, and numerous articles, including “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of theUnited States in the World,” American Historical Review, Vol. 116, No. 5 (December 2011),pp. 1348-1391. He is co-editor of “The United States in the World,” a series published byCornell University Press. He is currently at work on a book-length project on the geopoliticsof U. S. immigration policy across the 20th century.