In April, 1898, the United States basically provoked a war with Spain. Only 33 years had passed since the horrible fratricide of the Civil War before America embarked on this equally immoral enterprise. A new generation of ambitious politicians and a dishonest, war-mongering press combined to push America into a war against a European nation that generally had friendly relations with the United States and which had supported us in the Revolutionary War against British tyranny.
It should be noted that there is an old saying in journalism that "war sells newspapers." Newspaper editors are often the first to go screaming for blood whenever some international incident occurs. After all, newspaper editors are usually fat, middle-aged men, well beyond the draft age.
On February 15th, 1898, a United States battleship, the Maine, anchored in Havana harbor blew up. What was a U.S. battleship doing in Havana harbor? The United States military is paid for by U.S. taxpayers to protect the United States. How was a U.S. battleship in Havana defending the U.S.? Unfortunately the United States was making a transition from a republic to a meddling world empire by the turn of the century. The United States was increasingly intervening in the affairs of Central America (as if Americans really care who the current dictator of any of those countries is at any time.) Just two years later U.S. ground troops also became part of an International military force in China that meddled with the running of that nation's affairs and fought against Chinese peasants in the Boxer Rebellion. Over a hundred years ago the United States was already acting like the present day United Nations.
The same brain dead liberal elitists in New England, who caused the Civil War because they cared more about Black slaves than about Whites-not-killing-Whites, had become obsessed with the issue of Cuba by 1898. Supposedly the Cubans were being oppressed by the Spanish, and the liberal "do-gooders" of New England, once again, felt like shedding blood over something that could have been solved peacefully. The U.S. battleship, the Maine, had been sent down to Cuba primarily to intimidate the Spanish. Cuba had been part of the Spanish empire for 400 years and had enjoyed relative peace and prosperity during this long period of time. Liberals, however, never care much about the facts of an issue. If their latest false prophet in the press tells them "war is necessary" to drive Spain out of Cuba, why should the facts get in their way?
It should be noted that the Spanish made the mistake of interbreeding with the natives in most of their empire. As a result, Spain created a number of unstable, mestizo (mixed-breed) nations in Central and South America, which typically have unstable currencies, massive corruption and frequent revolutions. The only real exceptions were Cuba and Argentina. The Indians of Cuba had died off from Small Pox very early on, and Cuba had been a White colony with Black slaves working the plantations much like the U.S. South. Even the Spanish had enough sense not to interbreed with Blacks (at least until the Communists took over Cuba in 1959.) In Argentina the Indians were almost completely killed off by warfare and disease. Today Argentina is the most prosperous and most White nation in South America.
The Spanish clearly didn't want our battleship in Cuba in 1898. The Cuban rebels had a motivation to blow up our battleship and to try to blame it on the Spanish to draw us into the war. Our sailors were basically sitting ducks with none of the security that they would have at a United States port. (This whole incident has a strong similarity to the needless incident on October 12th, 2000, with the destroyer Cole in Yemen.) Two months passed, after the Feb. 15th explosion of the Maine, and a naval investigation of dubious impartiality claimed that the Spanish had blown up our battleship with a mine. President McKinley ordered a blockade of Cuba. (Most Americans oppose starting wars over a dubious reason, and McKinley decided to provoke the Spanish rather than, more honestly, making an outright declaration of war.) The Spanish responded by declaring war on the United States on April 24th, 1898.
It should be noted that Spain did not have to allow our battleship to dock in one of their harbors. Allowing the Maine to dock in Havana was basically an act of friendship, and the Spanish only had to tell us to move the Maine to get it out of Havana so there is no logical reason for the Spanish to blow it up. The United States Navy had a number of powerful warships in 1898 so the destruction of the Maine would not have tipped the balance of naval power in Spain's favor. If anyone blew up the Maine, it would have been the rebels. Most historians attribute the explosion of the Maine to a coal fire that eventually blew up the boilers. If the Maine had been in a U.S. port, it would have been under much tighter inspection and better fire fighting equipment would have been available. The accidental explosion of the Maine could have been prevented had it not been on a "mission of empire" visiting a foreign port.
Another significant factor that provoked the Spanish-American War was the issue of colonies. By the end of the nineteenth century, all the major European powers controlled colonies in the Third World. Americans had been too busy settling the huge expanse of the lower 48 states to be bothered with colonies. By 1898 possessing colonies had become a status symbol for the major powers of the world. For this thoroughly bad reason, the United States went to war with Spain to steal their colonies.
The Spanish had let their navy deteriorate. The American press and politicians picked out Spain as a target because they were weak. The French and British navies, in contrast, were much more powerful, and no one was willing to pick a fight with them for fear of getting into a long, expensive and potentially disastrous war. Spain was viewed as a "push over" and so the press and our politicians singled them out. The war against Spain lasted only a few months and resulted in the sinking of the Spanish Pacific Fleet at Manila Bay by Commodore George Dewey. A peace agreement was signed on August 12th, 1898.
The war with Spain was a new low. The United States had gone out of its way to provoke a war with a European nation. Once again White men were killing White men for no good reason. The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 with England, while fratricidal, were against tyranny. Liberal hand-wringing about Cuban rebels helped to push the U.S. into war with Spain. The Spanish-American war was a war of aggression to steal Third World colonies (which would later cause us nothing but headaches.) The war also advanced the careers of ambitious politicians and appeased a war-mongering press.
Another troubling aspect of the Spanish-American War is that it involved a "rigged investigation." After two months of alleged investigating, an extremely "political" decision was made about the explosion of the Maine intended to give the United States an excuse to attack Spain and steal its colonies. Today most historians believe that an accidental explosion in the boiler room sank the Maine. One only needs to think of Flight 800, the massacre at Waco and most recently Flight 587 to see that "rigged investigations" by our federal government have become commonplace today. Our federal government knows that it can continue to get away with phony investigations because the American people have always failed to object strongly enough in the past.
The original reason for the Spanish-American War was the freedom of the Cuban people. A Cuban republic was set up on May 20th, 1902. Four years later, election fraud and injustice led to another revolution. The United States had to set up a provisional government to restore order. A race war broke out in Cuba in 1912. Cuba found itself frequently in economic chaos or under a dictator in the decades following. Cuba finally wound up controlled by an oppressive Communist dictatorship under Fidel Castro from 1959 to the present day, making Cuba the most miserable nation in the entire New World. Cuba would have been better off if the Spanish continued to occupy it. Our "liberation" of Cuba only served to bring chaos and eventually communism to that unfortunate nation.