Mid 1800s Samoan warrior with his machete sword         Long before Graham Greene wrote his classic novel "The Ugly American," Americans were already doing an outstanding job of being ugly, condescending, and threatening destruction if their demands were not met.      From the early 1820s on through the rest of the 1800s, growing numbers of European missionaries and settlers in the South Pacific increasingly demanded protection from their respective navies.  This was very similar to the pattern of settlers in the American West asking the US Army for protection against Native Americans.       The United States was a participant in at least a half dozen punitive expeditions against various island tribes before the American Civil War not counting the ad hoc bullying  by an American naval officer recounted below.      Today, Apia and its harbor are part of the Samoa,  under Commonwealth protecti...