![]() It begins with the origins of the war but really gets going with the story of the roles of the Navy and Army that makes up the largest part of this lengthy book. “Empire by Default,” by Ivan Musicant, is primarily a military history. ![]() Once his mind was made up, however, he went to the other extreme and decided to get the most out of the war. ![]() William McKinley, a cautious president, did not make up his mind to attack the Spanish colonies of Cuba and the Philippines until he was sure that most people wanted decisive action and that the Republican Party was going to benefit from the war in the next election. Yet the Spanish-American War was enormously popular at the time, and the pressure of popular opinion was probably the most important factor in getting us into it. ![]() Both wars have something vaguely unpleasant about them, a stigma that has made them unappealing to the collective American memory and has deprived them of the importance they merit. In some ways, the war with Spain resembled the war with Mexico of the 1840s that lasted much longer and brought in far more territory. It has not been a favorite American war-nothing like the Revolution or the Civil War, which for one thing did not take territory from other countries. ![]() The Spanish-American War of 1898 was the shortest and easiest of all American wars. ![]()
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