The U.S. and WWI

Just got into a discussion of politics in a CWI thread, and in order to not let that thread get too far into the weeds, I elected to start a new thread over here. One area of history that I've reflected upon in the past is why the U.S. elected to fight in WWI. I know Wilson used the excuse of the sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats and the death of 180 Americans. However, we know that the British were running munitions on these passenger liners, which made them legitimate targets for warfare. Truman WANTED the U.S. in WWI. One of my biggest opinions on the war that it was NOT a war over democracy. Just because the British and the French had representative gov'ts while the Germans and Austrians had monarchies, it is disingenuous to talk about the Germans potentially "wiping democracy off the face of the earth". Let's call a spade a spade: WWI was in reality a European war that was over colonies. The Germans were rising in power and influence in Europe since it recently unified as a country, and it was very late to the game for colonies. That plus a whole bunch of double dealing, triple dealing and quadruple dealing?!?!?!?! when it came to the myriad of treaties between all of the European powers and that is what caused the war. Anyways, I've always wondered what others thought of WWI. It's the war that gets overshadowed by WWII, and it is the war that set a chain of events into motion that had major affects on history down the road.

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