Kevin McCarthy's announces his resignation; gains a "pants on fire" grade re: Philippines and Pacific island nations

SCREEN CAPTURE / X

California Congressman Kevin McCarthy in debate form.

Just before he announced his resignation from Congress this morning, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., showed his ignorance about the Philippines and the island nations in the Pacific Ocean when he said that the United States never sought land after winning wars.

McCarthy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday two months after being kicked out as Speaker of the House by a handful of ultra-conservative Republicans and the Democrats' 213 members. He would give up his seat by the end of this year.

McCarthy’s decision will narrow the House GOP’s shaky slim majority, which just last week got smaller after the expulsion of ex-Rep. George Santos of New York. 

The GOP's eight seat majority could possibly narrow to only two if Democrats win in a series of special elections slated for early next year, including a special election for McCarthy's 20th District in California's Central Valley.

McCarthy made his remarks regarding the United States' supposed largesse on October 28 at the Oxford Union, the 200-year-old debating society at the University of Oxford in England. About a month later he reached a much wider audiene when he uploaded his posts on X and YouTube on Nov. 26.

McCarthy's resignation was expected after he lost the speakership and was essentially powerless within his own party. His decision to leave the House had nothing to do with his erroneous claim.

In the debate, McCarthy said, "In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterwards, except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for that freedom we went in for."

There are so many examples to prove him wrong beginning with the land stolen from Native Americans, but we'll point out two glaring examples.

Historians gave Politifact, a project of the Poynter Institute, several examples where McCarthy was just plain wrong in his claim. Among them, they point out:

Spanish-American War, 1898: Under the Treaty of Paris, Spain relinquished claims on Cuba and ceded Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States. Guam and Puerto Rico remain US territories.

Although Filipinos seeking independence already had Spainish colonial government surrounded in Manila, the US joined with the Filipinos to defeat Spain.

The fighting did not end after Spain surrendered to the US and ignoring the Filipinos' declaration of independence. After that war, members of the Filipino independence movement shifted from fighting Spain to fighting the United States in the Philippine American War.

"It was a brutal affair that the United States won," said Joseph McCallus, an English professor at Columbus State University who has authored several books on the Philippines, including "Forgotten Under a Tropical Sun: War Stories by American Veterans in the Philippines, 1898-1913."

Officially, this second war lasted from 1899 to 1902, he said, but Filipino guerrillas fought on for several years afterward. "With the Filipino independence forces defeated, the United States took control of the entire Philippine archipelago," McCallus said. "In no uncertain terms, it was an unadulterated land grab. Its purpose was to position the United States in the Pacific."

Second Samoan Civil War, 1899: Under the Tripartite Convention of 1899, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States divided up the Samoan island chain in the Pacific Ocean. The portion the US took is now a US territory, American Samoa.

Trust Territory of the Pacific. Hundreds of islands controlled by Japan passed to the U.S. following World War II as a US trusteeship. After increasing sentiment in the islands for greater independence, the United Nations dissolved the arrangement in 1990. Today, the former trust territory consists of one US territory (the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) and three entities that are self-governing: (the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

PolitiFact tried to get a comment from McCarthy's office but there has been no response.

In one sense, McCarthy can't be blamed for his ignorance of history. His scanty knowledge is the result of an educational system that is biased towards White exceptionalism and fails to give a more accurate record of reality.  This distorted view of history reinforces  the world view of white supremacists.

A more balanced teaching of history might teach some humility and understanding of people and cultures that make up America and its place in the world.

McCarthy, one of the few Republican representatives from California, was facing challenges from the Democrats and from his own party if he had decided to run in 2024. The 20th District was seen as a "safe" seat for the GOP if McCarthy remained. With McCarthy's departure, that no longer holds true.

"It is time to pursue my passion in a new arena,” McCarthy said in a video he released Wednesday. “While I will be departing the House at the end of this year, I will never, ever give up fighting for this country that I love so much

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the  blog Views From the Edge.