"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." --CGE
On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> You would have to go back to 1900 -- the time of Jim Crow and
> lynchings -- to discover the period when anti-imperialism was actually
> an explicit electoral issue and the Democratic Party, having absorbed
> populists into the party through the politics of fusion, was arguably
> less imperialist than the Republican Party...