Before writing his new book, The War Lovers, Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek magazine, spent three years researching an event a century removed from his day job: the 1898 Spanish-American War. But he did so, he says, because of similarities he perceived between the way America entered that conflict and the way it approached the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Thomas says part of what drove him to consider America’s war with Spain was his own feeling that “it was a good idea to invade Iraq.” Later, second-guessing that conviction, he looked to history for parallels.
“Spain owned Cuba at the time, and the Cubans had been off-and-on rebelling for years, and we just finally decided to help them out,” Thomas tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “So there was a legitimate reason for going to war. We did liberate Cuba. but I don’t think that was the main reason for doing it.”
So in The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the Rush to Empire, 1898, Thomas explores the reasons that drove a few influential Americans to zealously support the cause of war.
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