The "Spanish-American War" Was Based on a Bloody Lie

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

BY HARVEY WASSERMAN



USS Maine: Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.


This week in 1898, the United States screamed for what became one of the most consequential imperial wars in world history—based on a lie. On February 15, the Battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor. According to the US Navy, 267 sailors were killed.

Led by the new-born mass circulation “yellow press,” and by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, the “dastardly Spanish” were at fault.

Imperial Spain was at the time brutally suppressing a popular rebellion in Cuba. The sickening slaughter was picked up by the American press, which ignited a popular uproar. Among other things, its front pages featured line drawings of naked white women being assaulted by swarthy Spaniards, evoking the same kinds of racist shrieks spread by the Ku Klux Klan in the unreconstructed post-Confederate South.

Never mind that the US had just brutally suppressed a similar resistance in Hawaii. There pineapple and sugar plantation owners, led by the Dole family, crushed a long-standing constitutional monarchy presided over by the legendary songwriter (“Aloha Oe”) and globally recognized Queen Liliuokalani.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/16/the-spanish-american-war-was-based-on-a-lie/