Just before the war in Iraq broke out, I had finished reading Gore Vidal's Empire/Hollywood novels and felt that they were very much like the current situation, with Iraq being the new Phillipines.
In the last weeks I have been reading Wililam James as I work through modern philosphy and I came across these quotes about that war which again seem very relevant:
Teddy Roosevelt is "in the Sturm und Drang period of early adolescence, treats human affairs when he makes speeches about them from the sole point of view of the organic excitement and difficulty they may bring, gushes over war. . .for the manly strenuousness it involves, and treats peace as a condition of blubberlike and swollen ignobility fit only for huckstering weaklings, dwelling in gray twilight and heedless of the higher life."
and
The McKinley Administration is "openly engaged in crushing out the sacredest thing in this great human world–the attempt of a people long enslaved to attain to the possession of itself, to organize its laws and government, to be free to follow its internal destinies according to its own ideals."
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister