The US' experience in the Philippines was really one of a kind among the Western powers, in that the U.S. never bought into colonialism the way that the Great Powers of Europe did. American public opinion was much more ambivalent toward direct colonialism than the French, British, Belgians, etc.

Part of this is because of the American experience as a former British colony-- but, perhaps more importantly, the Americans had a Western frontier to settle during most of the 19th century. (Why go abroad for land and raw materials when you could just take the land from savage Indians?) Indeed, the Americans went to great lengths to avoid major population centers when they settled the West. Given the opportunity to annex all of Mexico in 1848 at the conclusion of the Mexican War, the Americans took only the underdeveloped provinces of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico, which would soon be swarming with American settlers.

Now, let's fast-forward to 1898. The settlement of the frontier is complete, Victorian imperialism is in full swing, and the American economy has grown to be the largest in the world. Like any other aspiring Great Power, the call has gone out for America to get some colonies of its own. So we declare war on Spain to take Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.

BUT, unlike the other Great Powers, the American polity isn't totally comfortable with this kind of expansion, and even imperialists like President McKinley have to sell their new acquisitions as a means to protect liberty, justice and so forth. In Cuba, this leads to the Platt Amendment, an Act of Congress that leaves Cuba at least nominally independent-- both to satisfy American public opinion and to keep up the appearance of humane colonization.

This doesn't happen in the Phillippines, and instead the Filipino guerrillas who fought alongside the Americans against the Spanish fight the Americans for three years. The Americans defeat the Filipinos at enormous cost in blood and treasure and take control of the islands. By this time, the Americans had realized that they painted themselves into a corner: independence was not an option, because another Great Power would simply swoop in and take the islands. Instead, the Americans began the long, difficult process of building up infrastructure and governing structures that could assume power once the Americans withdrew.

And key to this was a bargain with the Philippine elites which was virtually unheard-of at the time: in 1916, under the Jones Act, the Americans committed to eventual withdrawal from the Philippines, contingent on the development of Filipino governing institutions and a state strong enough to resist foreign influences-- especially Japan. Eventually, over the course of 18 years and continuous back-and-forth between Washington and Manila, the conditions were set in 1934 by the Tydings-McDuffie Act.

Under Tydings-McDuffie, the Philippines was to draft a national constitution, and be granted independence on July 4, 1946, which is when the Philippines gained its independence from the United States, even though World War II intervened.

This is hugely different than the decolonization process of the British and French Empires, which were rushed affairs forced upon them by postwar economic collapse. In many cases, the colonial powers put virtually no effort into preparing their empires for independence-- with the end results ranging from merely bad to horrific.