It is perhaps instructive to plagiarize Wills:

[Hollis wrote:] “An election was held in October. But its results, being favorable to General Huerta, were, Wilson decided, not a genuine expression of the will of the people… In his complaint that the elections were “irregularly conducted” he was right, but it only showed his ignorance of Mexico that he would have troubled to make such a complaint. The electoral machinery was treated by both sides as a tired and flagging joke and was kept in existence only out of a puzzled good nature because, for some reason quite incomprehensible, it seemed to give pleasure to the President of the United States.”

But Wilson was not sufficently pleased with such elections; backing various opponents of Huerta, he was drawn into two military raids on the country: “We have gone into Mexico to serve mankind…” In a series of moves, threats, blunders, Wilson found himself first supporting Villa, then attacking him, calling for elections, then challenging them. Soon he was mobilizing for all-out war on the country. As John Morton Blum says,  ”Confused as he was by his own uninformed intentions, while he championed peace and justice in Mexico, he seemed, like the jingoes, ready ‘to blow up the whole place.’” Wilson had arrived at that fatal recurring moment in our country’s diplomatic benefactions, the moment when it makes sense to start shooting people philanthropically. He was as ready to do Mexicans this service as we have proved, year after discouraging year, with Vietnamese, preaching democracy with well-meant napalm, instructing (as we obliterate) children with our bombs. We believe we can literally “kill them with kindness,” moving our guns forward in a seizure of demented charity. It is when America is in her most altruistic mood that other nations better get behind their bunkers.

- Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes