Despite assiduous efforts by discredited partisan "fact checking" sites, Snopes and FactCheck, their history denial has failed utterly in the face of the facts.
Assorted other attacks have claimed that it would have been out of character for General Pershing to act this way. But while Pershing, like most commanders in that kind of situation, employed both carrot and stick, alternating between force and diplomacy, his views on Islam were quite clear.
He described the Mohammedan Moro as having "a fanatical disregard of the consequences of crime and an inborn desire to fight and plunder."
"The Moro is of a peculiar make-up as to character though the reason is plain when considered, first, that he is a savage, second that he is a Malay, and that he is a Mohammedan."
When there was talk of integrating Islam into the school system, Pershing quickly warned about the dangers of Islamization.
"It has been seriously suggested that Islamic preceptors be brought into the Province to teach Mohammedanism through the medium of the public schools... to anyone who has even casually investigated the character of the prosyletizing Arabian and other Mohammedan teachers who have hitherto cursed this Province, there appears every reason to oppose the suggestion. Their presence here has been detrimental to good government and there is little doubt that to their occult inspiration may be charged much of the opposition that we have met among the Moros during the last ten years.
"The provinicial government could not consistently approve any plan for the propogation of Mohammedanism through the prostitution of the public schools."
General Pershing had also observed, "In the development of the individual, control by datus, whose authority is founded on Mohammedanism must eventually be abolished."
Pershing proved to be much wiser about the dangers of Islamization spread from the Middle East than most modern officers. If men like McMaster understood what Pershing did, our national policy would be in far better hands.