Obama Is Removing McKinley's Legacy From Hawaii, Not Just An Alaskan Mountain

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

There's been no Hawaiian nation since 1898, when President McKinley abolished the monarchy and annexed the islands as a U.S. territory. That may soon change, however, thanks to the Hawaiian sitting in the Oval Office.

 

As our first anti-colonialist president, Barack Obama is no fan of McKinley, who practically overnight turned America into a "colonial power." Winning the Spanish-American War, the Republican leader took control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and effectively Cuba, which became a U.S. protectorate.

 

While none of these acquisitions sits well with Obama, he views McKinley's war-time overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom as unforgivable.

 

"As American soldiers and settlers moved steadily west and southwest, successive administrations described the annexation of territory in terms of 'manifest destiny' — the conviction that such expansion was preordained, part of God's plan," Obama wrote in his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

 

"Of course," he added, "manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest — of Native American tribes forcibly removed from their lands. It was a conquest that, like slavery ... tended to be justified in explicitly racist terms."