Document V Analysis. Leading American personalities.History Essay

Document V Analysis
This source does a great job at highlighting the reservations of some of the leading American personalities at the time when the US was occupying Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands. After establishing the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1899, the league demonstrated a commitment to upholding the values and principles that had given birth to the American society, and which had inspired the fight against Imperial colonialism. The core purpose of this league was to remind the American society of the inhumanity and injustice of occupying other nations without their consent, an act that was fully reminiscent of the struggles Americans had endured fighting British rule.
At its core, the American Anti-Imperialism League understands the inhumanity and injustice of American occupation in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands which were fueled by the American expansionism. In addition to this, this source argues against the use of “Spanish methods” in the subjugation of the aforementioned nations, which by nature contradicts the Declaration of Independence and the values upon which American society was built. In this sense, this league opposed the American occupation of these nations because the citizens of said nations were actively pursuing and fighting for their own freedom and based on the cruelty of methods used by the US, and not necessarily because American expansionism was wrong.
The authors of this source make it abundantly clear that the “subjugation of the weak by the strong” based entirely on leveraging international law is wrong, and the fact that America was once subjected to this same unjust principle should preclude it from exercising the same injustice on other nations. As a paragon of virtue, an advocate of individual so...