The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

* During the period 1894-98, the United States also stage-managed a coup d’état against Queen Lili’oukalani of Hawaii and annexed her islands, and in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt, by then president, fomented a revolution in the isthmus of Panama in order to separate it from Colombia and acquire the territory needed for the Panama Canal, a strategic centerpiece of imperial planning. A century later, such techniques had become a standard part of the American repertoire, only now executed under the rubric of CIA and Pentagon-administered “covert actions.”