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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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A Fat and Hungry Nation
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 27, 2009 05:19pm |
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| Category | Review |
| Author | Justin Kaplan |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Sunday, June 14, 1987 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "It has been a splendid little war," wrote John Hay, a central historical figure in Gore Vidal's new novel, during the summer of 1898, a war "begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave." As reward for 10 weeks of intermittent land and sea combat with Spain, the United States acquired Puerto Rico and added Guam and the Philippines to a Pacific empire that already included the Hawaiian Islands. By 1905 we had also established proprietary protectorates over Panama and the Dominican Republic as well as Cuba. Continued by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, President William McKinley's policy of dilation and incorporation answered strategic and ideological imperatives of the day, the old cry of Manifest Destiny, and the old itch, in eruption earlier during General Grant's occupation of the White House, to achieve a commanding American presence in the Caribbean and Central America, Nicaragua in particular.
Commenting on the extermination of more than 100,000 Filipino insurgents who, starting in 1899, rejected the colonizing bear hug of their North American brothers, Mark Twain welcomed the United States to pre-eminence in the "Blessings-of-Civilization Trust." He wanted the white stripes of the national banner painted black "and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones." |
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