America enters the Great War

Next Thursday, April 6, will mark the centennial of U.S. entry into what is now called World War I, a conflict that might have been avoided by better diplomacy and less rigid war plans. But given the circumstances of April, 1917, should the United States have gone to war?

I've been reading a somewhat revisionist book on American policy before and during the war by G. C. Meyer that finds plenty to blame Woodrow Wilson for, and shows some sympathy for the opponents of the declaration of war. I'm still undecided. The Germans were not as bad as British propaganda depicted them.  U.S. policy was willing to let Germans starve but not the British or French. Tsarist Russia was hardly fighting for democracy.

I agree with Meyer and others, however, that once into the war, Wilson behaved badly, with overpowering censorship and suppression of civil liberties. And he failed to get anything good out of the Versailles Treaty because of his self-centered rigidity when dealing with the Senate. So bad marks there.

Bot on the bigger question, unsure.