Why Imperialism Sucks-Part Whatever

Without any legitimate provocation, we saw Spain off from the Caribbean and Far East in the late Nineteenth Century.  What did we get out of it?

Not much.  Our attempt at a Cuban protectorate took kinda for a while, but is long gone.  The 

Philippines, we fought the Spanish, then the people and then the Japanese.  Now gone.  A few islands in the Pacific are still ours.  What a waste.

The reductio ad absurdum is Puerto Rico.  Puerto Ricans can be charming and upstanding people.  It is as unfair to stereotype a people as all good as all bad.  Suffice it to say, the Puerto Rican experiment has not been an unmitigated success.  Maybe not even a mitigated triumph.

Now we have a CNBC headline, 

Worsening Debt Crisis Threatens Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has as much debt per person as Detroit and we've had Detroit about twice as long.

And who does PR want to bail them out?

Thank God we didn't land troops in Libya.  A successful invasion would have meant a headline like the one above  hundred years hence.

Time to give into the Puerto Rican Independence movements, sans severance package.  Heck, time to start a Detroit independence movement.

,