ever here of a little thing called the Spanish-American War? That's how we became an Empire.

(But we had been trying hard before that, what with the attempts to annex Mexico and Nicaragua in the 1840s and all. )

That's how we ended up in WWII, ultimately. The [forcible] Opening of Japan, Commodore Perry, -- blowback.

We've never been Isolationists. Buchanan is either a liar or a dunce.

We just like to tell ourselves that we always just MYOB, but we've actually always "sent our armies forth" to guarantee a good climate for American Business Interests. (qv. Hawai'i, former nation of.)

And Oil was part of it all, a hundred years ago.