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Down The Middle - July 6, 2007 - Printable Version
- A Splendid Little War
by Down The Middle
“The time has arrived for this great nation of ours to step out upon the world stage. So, let the spotlight fall upon us.
I am reminded, today of the words of George Washington, who said, 'To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote the peace.'
We ask for a great navy, because no national life is worth having, if we are not willing to defend it.
All the great masterful races have been fighting races and to lose the fighting virtues is to lose the right to stand, at all.
There are higher things in life than the soft enjoyment of material comforts and it is through strife and the readiness for strife that a man or a nation must win greatness.
So, let the world know that we are here and willing to pour out our blood, our treasure, our tears…and that America is ready…and if need be, desirous of battle.”
---U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt
Naval War College May 9, 1898
The USS Enterprise, along with it’s strike group of Aegis cruisers, destroyers, frigates and at least one nuclear, fast-attack submarine is reported to be surging toward the Persian Gulf, to join ranks with the USS Nimitz and USS Stennis battle groups, which are already on station, aside two Marine Amphibious Assault Groups.
Although the recent dispatch of America’s oldest and largest nuclear powered aircraft carrier could be no more than the normal rotation of battle groups, it is more likely to be the third of four carriers said to have been promised to the Gulf states by Vice President Cheney, during his May visitation to the area. If in fact, this is the buildup of US naval forces for the long anticipated attack on Iran, a fourth carrier will take up position... probably in the Red Sea, sometime in the next few months.
Amazingly, most Americans continue to ignore the inevitable countdown to a nuclear bunker-busting attack upon Iran’s underground research and development facilities, opting instead to dwell upon the tired and distracting question of the elusive timetable for a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq…a question that I can easily answer with a single word…NEVER!
The confusion about this “War On Terror” stems from the menagerie of explanations offered up by the Administration. Most everyone readily accepted the act of 9/11 as reasonable cause to attack Afghanistan…but then, the military inexplicably allowed Bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora and turned it’s attention to Iraq’s disappearing weapons of mass destruction, resulting in much of the popular support for this war disappearing right along with them. Now, we are preparing to attack Iran, a move that will surely ignite a fire in the Middle East and eventually bring Russia into the fray.
I suppose, in one fashion or another, our keepers could associate most all of these Middle Eastern, Central Asian and North African countries with Islamic terrorists, as Islam is their religion…but what about sovereign nations such as Venezuela, who are also firmly in our gun sites and who are not Islamic but in fact, Christian. Unfortunately for Venezuela, being Christian doesn’t seem to pull any weight, {as Serbia found out during the Clinton Administration} if you’re not willing to go along with the program. As Bush said, “You’re either with us or against us.”
Of course, many Americans simply assume that we fight for oil, an assumption that seems quite reasonable, considering Venezuela has no weapons of mass destruction and is not known for overt terror attacks against the West…but it does have plenty of oil. In fact, all of our primary targets seem replete with natural resources…but are we to believe that our country is actually willing to take on the entire world and risk a nuclear exchange with Russia, just so this “oil field” administration and their friends can siphon off more of our borrowed money?
The answers lie in our own history, neatly buried away or masked with a smiley-face, as to why America fights…and as to why the American “citizen-soldier” has always answered the call to battle. Although this phenomenon runs from the moment of America’s discovery throughout the entirety of our history, perhaps the philosophy was best defined by our leaders of the 1840s, to justify our “right” to the annexation of the entire continent.
In 1845, columnist, editor and democratic leader John L. O'Sullivan coined a name for the movement, while attempting to explain America's unquenchable thirst for expansion and to defend America's claim to these new territories, when he wrote ".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative development of self government entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth."
Although the ideology had to wait on O’Sullivan for a proper name, Native Americans east of the Mississippi, such as the Cherokee had already lost most of their ancestral land to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 when in 1845, the Jackson Democrats began using the newly coined term of Manifest Destiny to promote the annexation of the West, including the Oregon Territory, Texas and the Mexican Cession {Southwestern United States}, of which Ulysses S. Grant later wrote “I do not think there ever was a more wicked war than that waged by the United States in Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.”
Abraham Lincoln, who expressed opposition to expanding the nation’s breadth, in favor of a “vertical expansion” {building up existing cities} "did not believe in enlarging our field, but in keeping our fences where they are and cultivating our present possession, making it a garden, improving the morals and education of the people." However, in 1862, he signed the Homestead Acts which greatly contributed to the western migration and the near extermination of the Native Americans in the West.
Mi>“Even in cruelty and bloodshed, how little have the Christians come behind them! And not the Spaniards or the Portuguese alone, butchering thousands in South America; not the Dutch only in the East Indies, or the French in North America, following the Spaniards step by step: our own countrymen, too, have wantoned in blood, and exterminated whole nations; plainly proving thereby what spirit it is that dwells and works in the children of disobedience.”
--John Wesley, Methodist Founder [sermon in England]
Although the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had warned European powers against economic interference or colonization in the Americas, as the political systems were essentially different and that “the United States would consider efforts by European nations 'to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety'", it was basically ignored {Spain re-annexed Santo Domingo in 1861 and France installed a Bourbon monarch in the 1860s, while the United States was consumed with the Civil War} and even set aside, allowing the British occupation of the Falkland Islands and other activities in Central America during the 1850s.
In the 1890s, Manifest Destiny was revived, once again…but this time by the Republicans, for further expansion outside the continental borders, while using the Monroe Doctrine as justification.
Spain had ruled over Cuba with an iron hand for decades, sparking the “Ten Year War” of revolution, from1868 to 1878 but the United States had remained aloof from the conflict, even with the execution of 53 US merchant sailors in 1873 at the hands of the Spanish. With $50,000,000 of investment, not to mention an annual 100,000,000 in sugar trade, wealthy American businessmen, including the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Andre Carnegie believed that war was bad for business and preferred to not “rock the boat” of prosperity. Boston financier S.M. Weld told Henry Cabot Lodge, "You were sent to Washington to represent one of the largest business states in the country. The business interests of the state require peace and quiet, not war. If we attempt to regulate the affairs of the whole world we will be in hot water from now until the end of time."
With the help of “yellow journalists” William Randolph Hearst {New York Journal} and Joseph Pulitzer {New York World} fabricating news stories about Spanish atrocities, including the starvation of children, the strip-searching of women and the executions of heroic insurrectas {insurgents}, expansionists Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge {among others} kept pushing the country towards war. When Hearst was messaged by his artist, Fredrick Remington…who was on location in Cuba…that “There is no war, here”, Hearst was said to have replied, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”.
To confuse the issue even more, the American consul in Havana, Fitzhugh Lee {nephew of Confederate General Robert E. Lee}, who had been asking for the US Navy to protect US lives and property every since the start of the insurrection, now suddenly reversed his position and urged the President to keep US forces away, as there were riots in the city {the riots were actually disgruntled Spanish officers, upset about their delayed payroll}. But on March 17, 1898, Republican Senator Proctor returned from an trip to Cuba to publicly describe the horrors that faced 400,000 Cuban civilians in Spanish concentration camps and urged the US to intervene. On or about the same time, The Wall Street Journal also called the US to intervene, as the American Sugar Trust was losing some $200 million due to the war.
"We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.” President William McKinley had told the nation, in his 1897 Inaugural Address…and although he was still reluctant to get involved in Cuba, he now feared his Party would suffer in the next election if he didn’t bend to the newly emboldened patriotism being spurred on by the “jingoes”. On January 24, 1898, he ordered the American battleship USS Maine into Cuban waters {ostensibly billed as a good will gesture} to protect American interests. A short time later, when Henry Cabot Lodge was asked about the situation in Cuba, he replied, “I think there will be an explosion there in a few days that will settle the whole thing.”
On February 15, the Maine exploded at anchor in Havana Harbor, killing 266 Americans, which was promptly blamed on Spain by Hearst and the other war hawks. McKinley urged patience on the part of Americans to wait for a complete investigation but Roosevelt pushed on, saying, “Let the fight come if it must. I rather hope that the fight will come soon. The clamor of the peace faction has convinced me that this country needs a war.”
Respected editor of the Nation E.L. Godkin wrote of the coverage of the Maine incident; "Nothing so disgraceful as the behavior of these two newspapers {New York Journal and New York World} has been known in the history of journalism. Gross misrepresentation of facts, deliberate misrepresentation of tales calculated to excite the public and wanton recklessness in the construction of headlines, have combined to make the issues of the most widely circulated newspapers firebrands scattered throughout the country. It is a crying shame that men should work such mischief simply in order to sell more newspapers.”
The New York Commercial Advertiser also called for intervention with “humanity and love of freedom, and above all, the desire that the commerce and industry of every part of the world shall have full freedom of development in the whole world’s interest.” …but the Cuban Revolution, leery of American intentions, issued a statement of their own to the U.S. “In the face of the present proposal of intervention without previous recognition of independence, it is necessary for us to go a step farther and say that we must and will regard such intervention as nothing less than a declaration of war by the United States against the Cuban revolutionists….”
On March 21, 1998, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote to McKinley to say that he had spoken with “bankers, brokers, businessmen, editors, clergymen and others” and that “everybody”, including “the most conservative classes” wanted the Cuban problem solved and that “for business, one shock and then an end was better than a succession of spasms such as we must have if this war on Cuba went on.” Just days later, McKinley received a message from an adviser that “Big corporations here now believe we will have war. Believe all would welcome it as relief to suspense.” The next day, the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry issued its findings on the sinking of the Maine, and the day after that, McKinley issued an ultimatum to Spain demanding an end to the conflict.
Cries of “Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain” went up throughout the country. McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers but over a million men actually tried to enlist. Roosevelt was commissioned a Lt. Colonel and along with his superior, Col. Leonard Wood {Medal of Honor winner and the attending surgeon to the President} organized the First United States Volunteer Calvary, made up primarily of cowboys and Native Americans from Oklahoma {Indian Territory}, New Mexico and Arizona, along with Roosevelt’s “Fifth Street” contingency…a handful of young, wealthy, East Coast graduates, which included notable family names such as Tiffany and Wadsworth.
Roosevelt said of his recruits, "They were a splendid set of men, these Southwesterners--tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without flinching. In all the world there could be no better material for soldiers than that afforded by these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains."
On June 22nd, V Corp Commander and Southern Civil War calvary hero, Congressman “Fighting Joe” Joseph Wheeler {who actually referred to his adversaries as “Yankee Spanish”} came ashore at Daiquiri, {US Marines had already landed at Guantanamo Bay, on June 10th} with Col. “Blackjack” Pershing’s 9th and 10th Calvary Regiments {known as the “Buffalo Soldiers} and Roosevelt’s 1st Volunteer Calvary {now known as the Rough Riders} and carried the battles of Kettle and San Juan Hills, making the way for a rapid conquest of Spanish Cuba. Unfortunately for the insurrectas, who’s independence we were supposed to be supporting, they were immediately informed that they would not be allowed to go into Santiago baring arms, realizing their earlier fears of a qualified independence.
"No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war." Roosevelt had claimed in a speech at the Naval War College.
In victory, the U.S. acquired Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands from Spain {also annexing Hawaii}, while Cuba was granted “independence”. U.S. casualties were 2,446 dead {385 killed in action, 2, 061 perished from disease} with1, 662 wounded. Casualty figures on the Spanish side are still sketchy, at best, but appears to be upward of 60,000 men dead {90 % from malaria, dysentery and other diseases and the remaining 10 % from battle}.
Although the United States had won a great victory, many Americans were absolutely shocked by the new foreign policy, which they viewed as nothing less than imperialism. Other Americans, however, began to speak of “Manifest Destiny” and the country’s “God-given” duty of spreading our form of government around the globe.
"The war of the United States with Spain was very brief. Its results were many, startling, and of world-wide meaning." Senator Lodge observed.
In the months following the war, the idea of expansionism gained in popularity across the country, with some Congressmen calling for the annexation of all Spanish territories, while some newspapers even went so far as suggesting the annexation of Spain, itself. Roosevelt and other expansionists argued for creating an American empire…but others, like former President Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain spoke out against the idea.
The next century of wars (including two world wars} would find Manifest Destiny rearing its head all over the globe, with the Monroe Doctrine still being contested in the western hemisphere in places like the Dominican, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Grenada, Cuba and Venezuela. The United States, however, would continue to ignore British influence, stirring debate during the Falklands War when “American” Argentina attacked a “European” British colony.
Today, we find ourselves engaged in an all-out war for the Middle East that will eventually encompass the entire world…and doing so, once again, by “our right” of Manifest Destiny. "It's been a splendid little war", John Milton Hay {Ambassador to England and later Secretary of State} wrote to his friend, President Teddy Roosevelt. Unfortunately, I can find nothing splendid in this one.
"Expansion of the White Races"
Theodore Roosevelt, January 18, 1909
“There is one feature in the expansion of the peoples of white, or European, blood during the past four centuries which should never be lost sight of, especially by those who denounce such expansion on moral grounds. On the whole, the movement has been fraught with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the lands over which the expansion took place. Of course any such general statement as this must be understood with the necessary reservations. Human nature being what it is, no movement lasting for four centuries and extending in one shape or another over the major part of the world could go on without cruel injustices being done at certain places and in certain times. Occasionally, although not very frequently, a mild and kindly race has been treated with wanton, brutal, and ruthless inhumanity by the white intruders. Moreover, mere savages, whose type of life was so primitive as to be absolutely incompatible with the existence of civilization, inevitably died out from the regions across which their sparse bands occasionally flitted, when these regions became filled with a dense population; they died out when they were kindly treated as quickly as when they were badly treated, for the simple reason that they were so little advanced that the conditions of life necessary to their existence were incompatible with any form of higher and better existence. It is also true that, even where great good has been done to the already existing inhabitants, where they have thriven under the new rule, it has sometimes brought with it discontent from the very fact that it has brought with it a certain amount of well-being and a certain amount of knowledge, so that people have learned enough to feel discontented and have prospered enough to be able to show their discontent. Such ingratitude is natural, and must be reckoned with as such; but it is also both unwarranted and foolish, and the fact of its existence in any given case does not justify any change of attitude on our part.”
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