American Imperialism

[den]

I'm growing tired of hearing about American Imperialism and Western Imperialism.

The only land the US has gained in all the wars over the last 100 years are the little plots the soldiers are buried in.

Comments

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Mostly true, except that's because we secured the territorial extent we wanted during the wars of the previous 100 years; we went to war with the Indian nations of the west for the purposes of annexing their land, and did; Texas ginned up a war with Mexico that resulted in the seizure of huge tracts of land; we annexed Hawaii and Guam under the excuse of needing them for the Spanish American War, and annexed Puerto Rico as booty from said war. One can deny anything by being able to set an arbitrary time period. It's a cute line, and I'm sure Powell's speechwriter provided him with a stock of such lines, but it doesn't mean anything.

Having pretty much gotten what we wanted, most of our acquisitions since then have been the acquisition of permanent military bases. One could consider Guantanamo, which we required our Cuban puppet goverment (installed after the Spanish American war) to yield to us as the first occasion of that. I expect that's likely to be the plan the neocons have for Iraq; they view it as a base where they can station large amounts of military to dominate the middle east, so they are not dependent on Saudia Arabia.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I am very familiar with the history of Texas, and of Hawaii. I would have to assume from your writings that you are not. I am much less familiar with the history of Guam and Puerto Rico, but I am forced to be cautious about your information there without further research.

Hawaii and Texas both have interesting stories. I recommend them.

It's interesting that you used the phrase "ginned up", as this has quite a lot to do with Texas history.

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