WTF!! 1900?! William McKinley killing browns? You're a smart guy; what kind of crack pipe are you smoking! We helped browns get their independence from white oppressors; if anything, we began affirmative action that year! 
This is where views are supposed to respectfully diverge.
However, I see that they haven't and that you are viewing those with different views than you as being on the crackpipe.
True fact: the US was hardly better at ruling places like the Philippines than the Spanish were. To quote William J. Bryan: "All we did was replace an oppressive Spanish regime with an oppressive American regime."
If McKinley government so cared about the Philippines, they would've granted them independence instead of viciously putting down a rebellion.
So much for getting rid of evil "white oppressors".
Stability. If they had been granted independence the Spaniards could've come back in right away all over again, (or some other empire) and they wouldn't ever get their independence.
Which gives us the right to Empire and to police the world?
Your logic sounds very much like the people who got us into Vietnam and into Iraq.
I'm playing devils advocate, as I can't find any neocons to do it for me. At any rate, they were
our islands. We
won them according to the treaty both nations signed. And the Phillipinos were very happy with Taft's governing. It may have taken us a little too long to return them, but hey, they
did get their independence. Something that would
never have happened if they stayed under Spanish rule, or we're swallowed up by Britain or France or Germany. In fact, I would've been a hard-core imperialist until World War II.
