FinermanWorks

For the past five years I have been writing a history column for BOSS magazine.  And I have yet to run out of history.  In fact, here is my latest column-on The Spanish-American War:

http://issuu.com/dixonvalve/docs/1354198938bosswinter2012/28

Spain made a perfect enemy.  The government was repressive and vile, the country was weak, and it had something worth stealing.  Really, the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico were too tempting not to conquer.  We were even an improvement over the Spanish.

Yes, we could also have extorted the Virgin Islands from Denmark, but even the Hearst Newspapers would have had a difficult time conjuring stories about Danish atrocities.  “Defenseless Natives Expected to Eat Herring.”  “Children Taught to Spell Kierkegaard.”  No, we saved ourselves the embarrassment and just bought the damn islands.

February 15, 1898:  Hot Time in Havana

On this day in 1898, God did William Randolph Hearst a big favor and blew up the boiler of the battleship Maine. The battleship blew up with it. (They just don’t make boilers like that, anymore.) Of course, the Spanish looked guilty; that is the disadvantage of being brunet.

Now Hearst had an excuse to incite a war against Spain. Of course, he would have found some pretext, perhaps depicting Miguel Cervantes and Francisco Goya torturing “The Katzenjammer Kids” on the comic pages. But the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine was very convenient. When Hearst blew up, so did the Congress. (They still do make Congresses like that!) So off to war we went.

Spain was no match for the United States. We quickly “liberated” Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines. We could have taken Spain itself. This was–in words of our Secretary of State John Hay–“a splendid little war.”

Furthermore, we created a fashion. Everyone else wanted ‘a splendid little war’ too. In 1899, the British decided to annex the Boers’ Republics in Southern Africa–and any adjacent gold and diamond mines. However, “Marching to Pretoria” proved easier to sing than accomplish. The Boers resisted–and used their gold and diamonds to buy machine guns. That splendid little war took three years and 22,000 British lives.

In 1904, Russia was posturing in the Far East, threatening the “Monkey Men”, the Tsar’s somewhat insensitive term for the Japanese. It promised to be a splendid, little war–except that the Japanese won. The Monkey Men evidently were more highly evolved than the Russians.

And in 1914 Austria-Hungary decided to teach Serbia a lesson. That didn’t end up splendid or little, either.

Apparently, “splendid little wars” only occur with Spain or perhaps Grenada. Definitely not with Iraq or Afghanistan.