Hey, there's a monument right on Montgomery & Market in San Francisco celebrating California's achieving statehood in 1850. It reads: "The Unity of Our Empire Hangs on the Decision of This Day".
And here's a graphic from 1898 which proudly shows the US eagle dominating an entire side of the globe, from the Philippines to Puerto Rico.
I know you mentioned the Phillipines and Puerto Rico already, but what's striking is that you somehow think it doesn't count as a real empire. But there's no inherent reason why the USA should have such a large sphere of influence, other than it can. There's not even any inherent reason why it had to dominate all the land west of the original colonies, wresting it not only from native Americans but other colonial powers.
For most of its history the USA was proud to say it was building an empire and dominating other nations (for their own good, of course!). I'm not sure when this propaganda effort started that there is no American empire -- perhaps the US wanted to assert it was more pro-local-sovereignty than other competing empires, like the USSR.
Along with that adventure in Hawaii, the Spanish-American War was our one shot at European-style imperialism. Rudyard Kipling even wrote us a poem about it at the time. But it didn't work out and we gave the Philippines back to its own people by 1946. (Puerto Rico isn't independent because they don't really want to be, same as Hawaii.)
The continental US west of the original colonies was an interesting case. We only got the bulk of it because Napoleon put the entire Louisiana Territory on fire sale--he wanted to cut his losses in America after losing Haiti and needed the money to try and conquer Europe. We only really wanted the Mississippi River delta to begin with. We did kind of pick a fight with Mexico, but we didn't conquer the whole country, and even paid for the parts we took. Oregon was a disputed claim and we split it down the middle with the British. And Alaska we paid for fair and square. As for the American Indians, you have a point there but frankly smallpox had already depopulated the continent and it was practically empty. If it wasn't, I don't think anyone would have been able to conquer America from the American Indians--nor would any colonial power.
When people call the US an empire, they usually aren't thinking about the Spanish-American War. They're thinking about all the countries we station troops in (most of them asked us to), or all the Coca-Cola we sell (which the world voluntarily buys). We have a big sphere of influence because not too long ago, the world needed us to. We were the only democratic allied power left largely untouched by WWII, and our "imperialism" at the time consisted largely of a Marshall Plan designed to rebuild a continent that destroyed itself twice over, both times somehow roping us into the action.
Can you honestly think of a country the US has dominated against its will since the Philippines? You might be able to make a case for South Vietnam, and you could name maybe a dozen countries we covertly subverted, but outright domination? We didn't hold a candle to the Soviets.
Behind the scenes, sure. That's not dominating a country against its will, it's manipulation. That's why we propped up dictators in the first place--in most cases, a non-communist dictator was the only feasible alternative to a communist dictator. When we did dominate a country outright, we taught them baseball and democracy, e.g. Japan (which doesn't count because first, they started a war against us and lost, and second, we let them go as soon as we feasibly could).
You realize that's pretty much how the Soviets would describe their own interventions in other countries?
Oh yeah, we helped set up a leader friendly to the cause of righteousness, supplied him with advisors, gave him weapons or gave him access to buy them, ensured that he was friendly to exporting the mineral/oil/food wealth of his country via our companies and institutions, shared intelligence about his adversaries, installed a military base and ensured we had the right to conduct our wars using his territory.... but it's not like we took over the country! We are the friends of the common people!
And here's a graphic from 1898 which proudly shows the US eagle dominating an entire side of the globe, from the Philippines to Puerto Rico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:10kMiles.JPG
I know you mentioned the Phillipines and Puerto Rico already, but what's striking is that you somehow think it doesn't count as a real empire. But there's no inherent reason why the USA should have such a large sphere of influence, other than it can. There's not even any inherent reason why it had to dominate all the land west of the original colonies, wresting it not only from native Americans but other colonial powers.
For most of its history the USA was proud to say it was building an empire and dominating other nations (for their own good, of course!). I'm not sure when this propaganda effort started that there is no American empire -- perhaps the US wanted to assert it was more pro-local-sovereignty than other competing empires, like the USSR.