Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, was in Havana in 1898, investigating the terrible conditions endured by Cubans whom the Spanish government had forced into concentration camps, where an estimated 425,000 people died of disease and starvation. While she was there, the American warship USS Maine exploded in Havana's harbor, which served as the pretext for an American invasion, leading to the Spanish-American War. The United States swiftly invaded and won the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898 due to its superior naval power, the decisive charge led by Theodore Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" at San Juan Hill, and the crucial assistance from Cuban insurgents against the already exhausted Spanish forces. In the wake of the Spanish-American war, the United States freed Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish control and, in turn, became an empire.

This created beliefs that America was a stern yet benevolent country tasked by Destiny to enforce peace and bring prosperity to the world. That comforting thought was soon disproven, especially in the Philippines, whose people discovered they had merely swapped one colonial power for another. They then endured a vicious war that saw an estimated 600,000 Filipino deaths. Whereas the Cuban campaign brought glory to Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, “the Philippine War would be America’s most quickly forgotten war, the one least celebrated in song or legend, the one least memorialized.” And for good reason, Jackson recounts: American soldiers committed countless atrocities while being felled right and left by disease and starvation themselves; many soldiers committed suicide, and others deserted to join Filipino rebels.

Today’s guest is Joe Jackson, author of “Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of the American Empire.” We look at this decisive war that turned American into a global power, and how poor planning turned into a disaster in the Philippines, creating our first quagmire of a war, long before Iraq or Vietnam.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.