Inside Story - How militarised is US foreign policy?

[rwsanders]

3. Read a great book on how this happened in the 1800's that led to WW2 in the pacific...

Can't recommend the book "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradeley (Flags of Our Fathers) enough. It is one of the worst books I have read, not badly written, but just horrible to comprehend. The only other books that had that kind of impact on my were "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and "A World Undone: A History of the Great War".
He draws many parallels to our current foreign policy in Iraq and Afganistan. The fundamental message was that our leaders sell us the very ethnocentric (and racist) idea that we need to lead these primitive people to democracy for their own good, even if we have to kill them to do it.