What were the U.S justifications for the Spanish American war...

What were the U.S justifications for the Spanish American war? I've heard differing opinions but I was taught in school that the Spanish were oppressing the Cubans, and that the U.S went to "liberate" them. Is this true? Were there other reasons?

>Were there other reasons?
Do the USA really need other reason?

Spanish colonial empire was dying for good, the US didn't want other European powers snatching up colonies so close to home so they took them for themselves.

Americans want to control dat profitable sugar economy just next to their national shores.
So they claimed that the Spaniards had destroyed one of their ships.

USA hadnt high diplomacy with European monarchies before (even ambassadors werent full-value). That was war for prestige.

The Casus Belli was the Maine, but the reality is that the U.S. had wanted Cuba for a very long time and there were other powers barking up that tree *cough* Germany *cough*. Puerto Rico and the Philippines were just a bonus. The former was meant as a safeguard for Cuba and the latter as a coaling station between Hawaii and China.

I mean, the ship WAS destroyed. It was just destroyed by a drunken sailor on accident and not a Spanish mine.

Pure colonial opportunism, really. A kind of "It's our backyard" mentality (Monroe doctrine and all). Spain was a weak and feeble "empire" by the time, so Cuba was easy pickings. Sugar was still profitable, and it was by then obvious that other tropical crops (bananas, citrus, cocoa, rubber, tobacco) had great potential. Cuba is literally a stone's throw, so why not grab it?

Puerto Rico and Philippines were bonus, too.

>Frederic Remington, an artist hired by Hearst to provide illustrations to accompany a series of articles on the Cuban Revolution, soon became bored with seemingly peaceful Cuba and wired Hearst in January 1897:

"Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return." To which Hearst's alleged reply was: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."

Absolutely this. Also, the american press (Pulitzer and Hearst) really influenced the public opinion towards a war against Spain.

sounds familiar

Was it ever confirmed that Spain did blow up the Maine?
Was it the 9/11 of it's day?
IIRC American officials never straight up blamed Spain, always said that the cause of explosion was unknown, but the media hyped it up.

Spain had nothing to do with it. It was a pretext, m8.

American history textbooks tend to heavily imply that the war was simply a case of imperialism. America simply wanted to show that it could take land away from a European country and get away with it, thus establishing itself as an emerging power in the western hemisphere. It was basically America's way of saying "You know that scrappy little country that you guys used to push around? Yeah, that's gone forever. We rule the waves now."

Murrica wanted our clay, their oligarchs wanted the sugar, and they took pretext and advantage of dumb rebellious cubans and pinoys to grab it and have them as puppets. One of their ships exploded in La Habana and their mass-media agitated for war.

US had their sight on Cuba since the 1810s
Cuba was highly profitable to Spain as a sugar and tobacco factory

Later investigations stated that it was probably a boiler explosion or some idiot smoking in the magazine.

They also liberated us. sort of.

We wanted clay and we wanted Yuropoors out of the Western Hemisphere, and damn if we weren't gonna lie swindle and cheat to get what we wanted
Also even though our reasons were garbage 9/11-tier, it's one of the few American wars where we actually made things better, namely through giving Filipinos a path to independence and objectively making Cuba a better place.

Idk man, Charles Foster Kane just wanted the war.

>Is this true?

Sounds almost like a recent event involving koolaid

We did?

>through giving Filipinos a path to independence

What?