But Quezon didn’t believe that, and as he stewed, he came to appreciate the logic of Aguinaldo’s position. “This war is not of our making,” he pointed out in a cable to Washington. What right did the United States have to drag the Philippines into a war and then abandon it? Why was Washington defending an imperialist power, Britain, while letting its own people perish? “While enjoying security itself,” Quezon told Roosevelt, “the United States has in effect condemned the sixteen millions of Filipinos to practical destruction.”
