All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

There is some question as to whether this quote is from Edmond Burke or whether it is a translation of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace". Whoever actually coined the phrase the message rings true. It compels me to speak up once again against the ignorance being perpetuated by those unwilling to challenge their own prejudices. Those unwilling to accept responsibility for sins of their / our history.

Mitt Romney recently stated: "The president also claimed on Arabic TV that America has dictated to other nations," Romney said. "No, America has sacrificed to free nations from dictators."

This sentiment is echoed by a chain email I received not too long ago stating that the US soldiers have fought numerous times over the years to free other nations from the grips of tyranny and asked for nothing more than enough land to bury their soldiers.

First, I mean absolutely no disrespect for the men who honorably serve in the armed forces. I carry great esteem for those willing to sacrifice their lives to protect others. I honor the sacrifices of those who have and do fight to enable my ability to freely write this very post. The significance of it is not lost upon me.

That said, I cannot allow the sacrifices and best intents of those very soldiers to be sullied by ethnocentric extremist views like those I mentioned above. Such lies must not be allowed to go unchallenged or we risk proving George Santayana correct:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The Life of Reason, vol 1 "Reason in Common Sense"

Let's examine just a small portion US History and see how these statements hold water.

The email, of course is low-hanging fruit.

• Native North American tribes killed and forcibly relocated to reservations. Remember these telling words from Theodore Roosevelt:

I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian. I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked Sheridan for a cannon. "What! Do you want to kill my soldiers with it?" asked the general. "No," replied the chief, "want to kill the cowboy; kill soldier with a club."

Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 355

• Add to that our acquisition of half of mexico via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This ceded half of the nation of Mexico to the United States, becoming the bulk of the Western states. The reason for this war? US speculators venturing into Mexico refused to honor the agreements they signed with the Mexican government and declared their independence, seeking help from the US Army.
  
• If that isn't convincing enough, how about The Spanish-American War (1889), where we "liberated" Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands from Spain then promptly laid claim to them? These became US Territories, which means they are owned and controlled by the US, but are not officially states. I suspect this might be a more politically correct way to describe a colony, since colonization is now taboo.
  
• Of course there's always Hawaii, where we overthrew the sovereign monarchy of Queen Lili'uokalani. This action was investigated by President Grover and found to be illegal, but the new government still refused to back down. Hawaii continued as a US Territory until 1959 when it was officially granted statehood.
• If you want some smaller scale examples, look at the large bases we still maintain in Cuba, Brazil, Iraq, etc. We might say that these are not technically US-owned, but tell that to the local resident staring down the barrel of an M1 Abrams tank. Posession is 9/10ths of the law, right?
  

So the facts, for anyone who chooses not to ignore them, clearly show that the US has numerous times expanded its territory through conquest. Some of these conquests are under the guise of freeing land from tyrants, but when that land is annexed I believe it is safe to say we claimed more than "just enough space to bury our fallen soldiers". That email can be safely filed in the round bin.

As this post has grown far longer than I intended I'll follow up with another to address Mitt Romney's statement more directly.