What's the title going to be? "I Duh'd it My Way"?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Oh, yes, all those interventions at the request of United Fruit were just horseplay. We didn't really steal Hawaii, or crush the Philippines, or mess with Costa Rica and Haiti for 130 years.

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Sorry, TG, but that is ill-considered.

By comparison with actual, permanent empire building, horseplay is exactly what interventions in protection of US interests from things like expropriation by local-dictator men on horseback was. We'd go in, sort the matter more or less well, and then we'd take off. Look up how many times that happened -- it's a political act typical of Gap states.

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That is not the action of builders of empires, and that is very much our actions for those hundred and thirty years.

The Philippines were not crushed. They developed. Remember, they had Spanish rule to remember. They don't like Spain as much as they do us, even today. That should tell you a little something. Will it ever?

"Steal Hawaii"??? What, do the Hawaiians want it back to establish an autonomous collective? [/Monty Python & The Holy Grail voice]

Seriously, TGRR, your idea of "imperialism" is largely at variance with the historical examples. See, you've been taken in by another dumb leftist idea, where I have not.

Try Max Boot, The Savage Wars Of Peace for a good look at the whole.