Posted: March 13th, 2022

Write an original essay of about five paragraphs that makes use of the sources provided to answer the prompt.

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Assignment Descriiption
Write an original essay of about five paragraphs that makes use of the sources provided to answer the prompt.
You are not expected to take all 48 hours to write the essay–this assignment replaces the blue book exam that would take about an hour to write, so use that as a guide.
The essay is considered an “open book” assignment, so you are allowed to make use of the assigned textbooks, course lectures and lecture notes, and other assigned materials in preparing your answer.
However, your essay must be in your own words, with the exception of brief quotations.
Quotations may only come from the sources provided on the day of the exam.
You must not quote from any other sources (regardless of attribution), so do not copy/paste from:
the textbook reading,
lectures, or
other students’ writing.
Do not use ANY sources beyond those assigned for this class. (Google is not your friend.)
To ensure that all students are getting credit for work they’ve done themselves, the essay will be submitted on Canvas and compared against Turnitin.com’s database of sources and student papers.
From this point on, do not collaborate with other students: Do not share your writing, discuss the prompt and sources, or otherwise work with or help other students with this assignment during the time it is available.
CITE your sources, whether you quote them or paraphrase them, by putting the author and the number below in parentheses after the reference, as so: (McKinley, 1)
Write your essay in a word processing app, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Submit your essay using the tool at the bottom of this page (scroll all the way down).
Essay Question
Write an original essay of about five paragraphs that makes use of the sources provided below to answer the prompt. Structure your answer with a clear thesis statement in the first sentence, and supporting examples and reasoning in subsequent paragraphs. Choose specific examples from the sources provided. Be sure to demonstrate your knowledge of relevant events, ideas, and terms from the reading, lectures, and quizzes. (100 points)
ESSAY PROMPT: Consider the major American wars since 1898: Why did the United States fight—was each war primarily for reasons of ideology, or interest? Were the underlying reasons for war consistent, or did they vary from one war to the next?
In your answer, be sure to discuss each major war since 1898: identify the events that led to each war, and the rationale given at the time.
Sources
1. President William McKinley, letter to Congress, April 25, 1898.
[I took action] under the joint resolution approved April 20, 1898, “for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and Government in the island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters…”
…The Government of Spain…responds by treating the reasonable demands of this Government as measures of hostility, following with that instant and complete severance of relations by its action which by the usage of nations accompanies an existent state of war between sovereign powers.
I now recommend the adoption of a joint resolution declaring that a state of war exists between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain…
2. Teller Amendment, Adopted by the Senate, April 19, 1898
[The United States] hereby disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.
3. Senator Alfred Beveridge (R-Indiana), in Congress, January 9, 1900.
. . . [J]ust beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee of God, of the civilization of the world. . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus?. . . China is our natural customer. . . [England, Germany and Russia] have moved nearer to China by securing permanent bases on her borders. The Philippines gives us a base at the door of all the East. . .
They [the Filipinos] are a barbarous race, modified by three centuries of contact with a decadent race [the Spanish]. . . It is barely possible that 1,000 men in all the archipelago are capable of self-government in the Anglo-Saxon sense. . .
The Declaration [of Independence] applies only to people capable of self-government. How dare any man prostitute this expression of the very elect of self-government peoples to a race of Malay children of barbarism, schooled in Spanish methods and ideas? And you, who say the Declaration applies to all men, how dare you deny its application to the American Indian? And if you deny it to the Indian at home, how dare you grant it to the Malay abroad.
4. President Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress, 1917
The Imperial German Government [announced that] it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.…
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind.…
… I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps … to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.
…Our object now…is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
…We are glad, now … to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
5. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941 address to Congress
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
6. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941 address to Congress
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.…
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong….Guam… the Philippine Islands… Wake Island.…And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves.…
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
7. President Harry S. Truman, February 21, 1947 address to Congress
…Totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.…
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
8. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, August 4, 1952 Remarks at Governors’ Conference
You have seen the war in Indochina [Vietnam] described variously as an outgrowth of French colonialism, and its French refusal to treat indigenous populations decently. You find it again described as a war between the communists and the other elements in southeast Asia…. You don’t know, really, why we are so concerned with the far-off southeast corner of Asia.
Why is it? Now, first of all, the last great population remaining in Asia that has not become dominated by the Kremlin, of course, is the sub-continent of India, including the Pakistan government. Here are 350 million people still free. Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible–and tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming. But all India would be outflanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense. Now, India is surrounded on that side by the Communist empire. Iran on its left is in a weakened condition…. All of that weakening position around there is very ominous for the United States, because finally if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. That is what the French are doing.
So, when the United States votes $400 million to help that war, we are…voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance for the United States of America–our security, our power and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indonesian territory, and from southeast Asia.
9. President Lyndon Johnson, July 28, 1965 Press Conference
Vietnam…is a different kind of war. There are no marching armies or solemn declarations. Some citizens of South Vietnam at times, with understandable grievances, have joined in the attack on their own government.
But we must not let this mask the central fact that this is really war. It is guided by North Vietnam and it is spurred by Communist China. Its goal is to conquer the South, to defeat American power, and to extend the Asiatic dominion of communism. There are great stakes in the balance. Most of the non-Communist nations of Asia cannot, by themselves and alone, resist the growing might and the grasping ambition of Asian communism.
Our power, therefore, is a very vital shield. If we are driven from the field in Vietnam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise, or in American protection.
In each land the forces of independence would be considerably weakened, and an Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself….
Nor would surrender in Vietnam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.
Moreover, …three Presidents…over 11 years have committed themselves and have promised to help defend this small and valiant nation.
Strengthened by that promise, the people of South Vietnam have fought for many long years…. We just cannot now dishonor our word, or abandon our commitment, or leave those who believed us and who trusted us to the terror and repression and murder that would follow.
This, then, my fellow Americans, is why we are in Vietnam.
10. President George H. W. Bush, September 11, 1990 Address to Joint Session of Congress
We gather tonight, witness to events in the Persian Gulf as significant as they are tragic. In the early morning hours of August 2d, following negotiations and promises by Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein not to use force, a powerful Iraqi army invaded its trusting and much weaker neighbor, Kuwait. Within 3 days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression….
Our objectives in the Persian Gulf are clear, our goals defined and familiar: Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately, and without condition. Kuwait’s legitimate government must be restored. The security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be assured. And American citizens abroad must be protected. These goals are not ours alone. They’ve been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council five times in as many weeks. Most countries share our concern for principle. And many have a stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf….
We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward … a new world order… A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak….
Vital issues of principle are at stake. Saddam Hussein is literally trying to wipe a country off the face of the Earth…. Vital economic interests are at risk as well. Iraq itself controls some 10 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that. An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbors — neighbors who control the lion’s share of the world’s remaining oil reserves. We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless. And we won’t….
Our interest, our involvement in the Gulf is not transitory. It predated Saddam Hussein’s aggression and will survive it. Long after all our troops come home…there will be a lasting role for the United States in assisting the nations of the Persian Gulf. Our role then: to deter future aggression. Our role is to help our friends in their own self-defense. And something else: to curb the proliferation of chemical, biological, ballistic missile and, above all, nuclear technologies.
Let me also make clear that the United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Our quarrel is with Iraq’s dictator and with his aggression. Iraq will not be permitted to annex Kuwait. That’s not a threat, that’s not a boast, that’s just the way it’s going to be.
11. President George W. Bush, September 20, 2001 address to the Nation
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, “Who attacked our country?”
The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al-Qaida. They are some of the murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.…
The leadership of al-Qaida has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan we see al-Qaida’s vision for the world. Afghanistan’s people have been brutalized, many are starving and many have fled.…
The United States…condemn the Taliban regime.
It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists.
By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban.
Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of al-Qaida who hide in your land…. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities….
These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion.
The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.
12. President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January, 2003.
Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.…
…Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction.…
With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.… The American people must recognize another threat.… Secretly, and without fingerprints, [Saddam Hussien] could provide one of [Iraq’s] hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans — this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.…
The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm.…
But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

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