But when it comes to the escapades of arrogant gringos, no sampling of tales would
be complete without the somewhat unique but revealing story of William Walker,
a filibusterer who made himself president of Nicaragua, carrying south the expansion
that predecessors like Daniel Boone had carried west. Walker is not secret CIA
history. The CIA had yet to exist. During the 1850s Walker may have received
more attention in US newspapers than any US president. On four different days,
the New York Times devoted its entire front page to his antics. That
most people in Central America know his name and virtually nobody in the United
States does is a choice made by the respective educational systems. (...)

Walker got himself the command of a North American force supposedly aiding
one of two warring parties in Nicaragua, but actually doing what Walker chose,
which included capturing the city of Granada, effectively taking charge of the
country, and eventually holding a phony election of himself. Walker got to work
transferring land ownership to gringos, instituting slavery, and making English
an official language. Newspapers in the southern US wrote about Nicaragua as
a future US state. But Walker managed to make an enemy of Vanderbilt, and to
unite Central America as never before, across political divisions and national
borders, against him. Only the US government professed "neutrality."
Defeated, Walker was welcomed back to the United States as a conquering hero.
He tried again in Honduras in 1860 and ended up captured by the British, turned
over to Honduras, and shot by a firing squad. His soldiers were sent back to
the United States where they mostly joined the Confederate Army.

Walker had preached the gospel of war. "They are but drivellers,"
he said, "who speak of establishing fixed relations between the pure white
American race, as it exists in the United States, and the mixed, Hispano-Indian
race, as it exists in Mexico and Central America, without the employment of
force." Walker’s vision was adored and celebrated by US media, not to mention
a Broadway show.

US students are rarely taught how much US imperialism to the South up through
the 1860s was about expanding slavery, or how much it was impeded by the US
racism that did not want non-"white," non-English-speaking people
joining the United States.

José Martí wrote in a Buenos Aires newspaper denouncing the Monroe Doctrine
as hypocrisy and accusing the United States of invoking "freedom
. . . for purposes of depriving other nations of it.. (...)

China could be at war with the United States two years from now, a top Air Force general predicted in a bombastic and unusual memo to troops under his command, asserting a significantly shorter timeline before potential conflict than any other senior U.S. defense official to date.