This
Saturday, more than a thousand of America's top military
and government leaders and their guests are scheduled to
gather at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, for
a secretive tribal rite called the 103rd Annual Wallow of
the Military Order of the Carabao. And they won't be singing
"Kumbaya."
In
fact, on what these days feels like the eve of war, nothing
says "imperialism" better than the annual Wallow,
which celebrates the bloody conquest of the nascent Philippine
Republic a century ago in the aftermath of the Spanish-American
War.
The
exclusive Military Order of the Carabao (named after the
mud-loving water buffalo) was founded in 1900 by American
officers fighting in the Philippines, so naturally there
will be a lot of singing and cigar smoking by the 99.9 percent
male crowd. Recent guests have included Colin Powell and
General Richard B. Myers, current chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and many of the country's top military
leaders are listed as members. (You have to be an officer
to even be considered for membership.) Acting like a cluster
of Klingons, the guys will toss around revered imperial
slogans, such as "Civilize 'em with a Krag!" referring
to the rifles used by Americans to kill thousands of Filipinos,
who had fought Spain for their freedom and didn't want to
be handed over to another colonial power.
And
there will be rousing speeches, like last year's address
by top honoree James Schlesinger, the Nixon-era CIA director
and defense secretary, who decades later is still an influential
hawk urging a new war with Iraq.
A place
was reserved at the head table for President George W. Bush,
who was a no-show, but Schlesinger, who received the Carabaos'
Distinguished Service Award, delivered an appropriately
bellicose speech, telling the crowd, "Someone once
said that war is hell, and peace is heaven. But we know
that the opposite is true: War is heaven, and peace is hell."
An
aide to Schlesinger told the Voice late last week that Schlesinger said he recalls saying,
"You know, General Sherman had it all wrong. It's not
war that's hell, it's peace that's hell." The aide
added that Schlesinger didn't have time to talk further
about the Wallow but that what he told the crowd was a "humorous
remark made in reference to the defense budgetary situation."
The
conclusion is the same in both versions: "Peace is
hell." As more than a thousand Carabaos and their guests
roared approval of that notion, it wasn't difficult for
an observer to conclude that an imperial renaissance is
upon us.
The
Carabaos rarely rear their heads in public, even though
war correspondents can be chosen as "associates"
and a few mainstream reporters attend their events. But
a guest who had been attending the Wallow for several years
was fully debriefed right after the 2002 bash last February
and furnished the evening's seating chart, song lyrics and
other documents.
From
the official program of the 2002 Wallow.
As
our mole reported, the mood of the Wallow varies from year
to year, depending on how much military spending is going
on. The February 2002 crowd, basking in the second year
of Bush's rule, was enthusiastic. "This year was totally
different," one attendee said at the time. "With
the current White House and all the overseas activity, military
confidence is way up. I can't tell you how many excited
comments there were about the new budgetary reality."
This
Saturday, after another year of even more frenzied military
spending, the Carabaos ought to be friskier than the bulls
in Pamplona. "This year is extremely packed,"
Rear Admiral Ralph Ghormley, a Carabao official, told the
Voice last week. "In fact, we had to turn away over 100 people who wanted
to attend."
One
thing that fires up the bulls never changes: the bellowing
of the Carabao anthem, "The Soldier's Song." At
the 2002 Wallow, the room was already thick with smoke --every
place setting had been adorned with (forget that embargo)
an authentic Cuban cigar -- when a voice said, "Gentlemen,
please turn to your songbooks," and the US Marine Band,
seated to the side, struck up a tune. The Carabaos, most
of whom seemed to know the words by heart, lustily sang
the first stanza's story of the dreaded "bolo"
(the Filipino revolutionaries' machete -- they had few guns)
and deceitful "ladrones" ("thieves"):
In
the days of dopey dreams -- happy, peaceful Philippines,
When the bolomen were busy all night long.
When ladrones would steal and lie, and Americanos die,
Then you heard the soldiers sing this evening song:
And
then the bulls and their guests rhythmically banged their
fists on the tables during each rendition of the chorus:
Damn,
damn, damn the insurrectos!
Cross-eyed kakiac ladrones!
Underneath the starry flag, civilize 'em with a Krag,
And return us to our own beloved homes.
The
chorus originally began: Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos!
The US soldiers chanted the second line's surviving racial
slur about Filipinos as "khaki-colored thieves"
while marching through the jungle. Some accounts say that,
as the Americans marched and sang, some of them carried
ears they had lopped off the Filipinos' heads and kept as
souvenirs.
Bloody
ears aren't part of the rites of a modern-day Wallow, but
most of the Carabaos' other traditions have survived intact.
And if this year's mud-fest holds true to form, the revelry
will be even more enthusiastic than usual, and it will no
longer simply feel like nostalgia. The drumbeats of war
against Iraq will sound to this crowd like the rebirth of
an American Empire.
A typical
Wallow features parody songs by members of the Herd that
satirize politicos and often smack liberals who try to slash
the Pentagon's budget. "It's the military-industrial
complex's answer to the Gridiron," as one regular described
it, referring to the annual dinner put on by DC journalists
and politicians.
The
Wallows' guest lists often include not only the most powerful
money people in the nation's vast military industry, but
also the top political figures. An aide to Secretary of
State Powell said the general didn't make last year's Wallow
but confirmed his presence at the 2000 bash and told the
Voice that he has often attended them.
Ancient
Strom Thurmond was plunked down at the 2002 Wallow's head
table, where he was assigned a cigar alongside those reserved
for Schlesinger, General Myers, Pete Aldridge (the Pentagon's
chief of acquisition, technology, and logistics), Dov Zakheim
(the Pentagon's comptroller), Gordon England (top deputy
to Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge), Sean O'Keefe (the
NASA director) and other bigwigs. Marine General Peter Pace,
the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, and Air Force Secretary
James Roche, both Carabaos, were assigned the roles of hosting
tables of their own.
Among
the assigned greeters was last year's Grand Paramount Carabao,
General P. X. Kelley, a retired commandant of the marine
corps, whose last real tour of duty was the 1992 GOP presidential
primaries, when his pro-war TV pitches helped deliver the
South for George Bush the Elder against isolationist Pat
Buchanan. Joining Kelley on the Reception Committee were
General Alfred M. Gray Jr., the marine commandant during
the previous war with Iraq; Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, a
chairman of the Joint Chiefs during Vietnam; and an assortment
of other admirals and generals.
Last
year's Grand Paramount Carabao-Elect, presumably the bull
who will lead the charge this Saturday, is Admiral James
M. Loy, a former coast guard commandant who heads the Transportation
Security Administration, the agency now responsible for
US airport security. His experience in making fun of Filipinos
may come in handy when his security personnel run into dark-skinned
travelers: Last August, Loy told the Boston Globe that the controversial practice of profiling "has
the capacity to serve as one of the growth elements"
of his brand-new agency.
Carabaos
pop up in other situations involving minorities or others
fighting discrimination. The last all-male Advisory Council
at the Citadel, the South Carolina school that was the scene
of serious gender discrimination battles in the 1990s, was
chaired by retired army general Jack Merritt, a Carabao,
and included at least three other bulls: Moorer, retired
marine commandant General Carl Mundy, and retired Atlantic
Fleet chief Admiral Wesley McDonald. Under Merritt's watch,
the Citadel's Advisory Council was finally prodded into
adding its first women members.
All
four of those Carabaos were listed as members of the 2002
Wallow's Reception Committee. When it comes to gays, however,
Merritt, for one, has not been so welcoming. In 1993, during
the furor over the military's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy, Merritt, in his role as president of the Association
of the US Army, spoke out against "avowed homosexuals."
In July 1993, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing
on whether to lift the formal ban on gays in the military,
Merritt testified, "The dynamic of the marine and a
squad leader, the soldier and his lieutenant, is one of
trust. The first time the lieutenant helps a suspected homosexual,
he is in trouble."
Merritt
and the other Carabaos also have the ear of that committee
during more relaxed times. One of the guests assigned a
cigar at the head table at the 2002 Wallow was Missouri's
Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on House Armed Services.
Sometimes
it's difficult to tell who's working for the government
and who's working for the defense contractors. Pentagon
official Aldridge, who decides which defense contractors
get the boodle, used to head a big defense contractor, the
Aerospace Corporation. Schlesinger not only has ties to
Wall Street, but is also chairman of the board of trustees
of the Mitre Corporation, a huge quasi-public operation,
registered as a nonprofit organization, which runs an array
of research facilities working with both the government
and defense contractors and which has received billions
of dollars in government contracts.
The
Carabao gatherings remain a good place for all these people
to meet because, even though the Philippine war's combatants
may have died out, the organization has relaxed its admission
rules so it can always find high-flying hawks it can turn
into bulls. In 1993, any officer who served in any overseas
war, specifically Desert Storm, was deemed eligible to at
least submit an application to join the exclusive group
and wallow around every February in black tie, military
dress uniforms or even kilts.
Saddam
Hussein, of course, is likely to dominate this Saturday's
sketches, skits and songs. Last year's villain was an obvious
choice, sparking such ditties as "Big Bad Bin Laden"
and "An Afghan Lullaby." The Carabaos, founded
by officers who thought of themselves as fun-loving, poked
fun at their own obsessions with the "Contractor's
Ode to Joy." (Ernie Sult, a featured voice in that
one and a member of the evening's "Taliban Boys Choir,"
reportedly brought down the house at a 2001 Gridiron Club
gathering with a Joe Lieberman shtick.) The Carabaos' Star
Wars medley featured songs by "Rummy Skywalker,"
"Darth Biden," "Mediadroids," "Industrydroids"
and even "Princess Condoleia" -- though her ode
to unilateralism was sung by a white guy.
The
most fiery musical manifesto, however, remains the original
one, "The Soldier's Song." In 1914, President
Woodrow Wilson, hardly noted for a progressive stance on
race, publicly flogged the Carabaos for their insults to
Filipinos. The song already had been softened by the substitution
of "insurrectos" for "Filipinos."
Despite
such songs, the Carabaos have their defenders. "The
historic songs do reflect a racism prevalent in the military
and in society at large at the beginning of the twentieth
century," one person heavily involved in the Philippine
Scouts Heritage Society acknowledged to the Voice. (The society honors those Filipinos whom the US convinced
to fight against their revolutionary brethren.) That person
said he has attended a Wallow "and saw absolutely no
evidence that such attitudes toward Filipinos exist."
The
general public isn't able to see a Wallow, or even read
stories about one so that it can make up its own mind about
that. For the most part, the Herd thunders only in closely
guarded seclusion.
"Look,
we have never given out press passes," Ghormley, the
group's official historian, told the Voice. "We have never been fond of having press there.
Now, some journalists have come -- in fact some are even
members -- but we do not give out passes to any of the press."
Apart
from brief mentions in obituaries, just about the last time
a Carabao reared his horned head publicly was in 1985, when
General Dynamics Corporation was caught billing the government
a little more than $1000 so that its employees could wallow
with the Herd.
But
with so many government officials openly donning desert
gear and strapping on six-shooters these days, the Carabaos
may not need to be so circumspect on Saturday night when
the US Marine Band strikes up the tune to "It's a Long
Way to Tipperary," a popular World War I anthem for
solders who were pining for the gals back home. The Carabaos'
version is "It's a Long Way to Old Manila," in
which they pine for "the happy Empire Day."
(Ian
Urbina is a journalist based at the Middle
East Research and Information Project in Washington, DC.)
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and the City New York Times Magazine May 17, 2010
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