Warner Todd Huston

REMEMBER THE MAINE

On this day in 1898, USS Maine explodes in Havana Harbor. To this day, no one knows exactly why the warship was destroyed. But at the time, Americans were pretty sure that Spain was to blame.

You can imagine that didn’t go too well.

Spain was then in a period of transition. It had long been a powerful influence in the New World, but now it was losing its foothold in the western hemisphere. Its main remaining possessions were Cuba and Puerto Rico. On the other side of the Pacific, it retained islands in and around the Philippines.

By the 1890s, even those interests were in trouble. Cubans were fighting for their independence. Puerto Ricans were split between those who wanted autonomy and those who wanted to join the United States. Filipinos, too, were chafing under Spanish rule.

Meanwhile, many Americans sympathized with the plight of Cubans. It hadn’t been that long since the American Revolution, and many felt they saw similarities between the two fights for independence.

But did Spain really sabotage USS Maine or was something else to blame? The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-uss-maine

Tim adds:

This was the beginning of the rise of the imperial America, along with an imperial news media. William Randolf Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were locked in a death-struggle to corner the newspaper market, and both were radical lefties, the so-called "Progressives" who wanted to transform the country into something more in line with European socialism.

Hearst is famous for telling one of his editors, when told there was no news that day "well, go out and make some". And it was Hearst who pushed and pushed for a war with Spain, once one of our staunchest allies.

It was disgraceful, as was the war that followed.

It started the U.S. on the road to where we are now - an imperial America, meddling all over the world often where we have no interest. And it led to a foreign policy that emphasized the American idealism over practicality.

So we kicked Spain out of Cuba, giving them a dictator and eventually the Communist Castro.

That's what happens when you have a big heart and a pea-sized brain.

Ever since the Spanish American War we have been heavily involved all over the world, eschewing George Washington's admonition to avoid foreign entanglements. Now we are entangled in a Gordian knot.

At any rate, there was considerable evidence the Maine was a dirty trick by our own side. If not a dirty trick, it was a matter of gross incompetence. I've heard it said ammunition was stored too close to the coal fires. Maybe. But Hearst and Pulitzer immediately blamed Spain (who had no reason to sink an American ship) and thus fomented a war of conquest.

Of course, Teddy Roosevelt, the Godfather of Progressivism, made his fame climbing up San Juan Hill. Bully.

America changed profoundly after this. The Maine sunk the whole country, if you ask me.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:03 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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