Say Anything Blog

(This post was not made by Marty. I somehow inherited it)

On September 29, the History Channel premiered a two-hour documentary on the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, which will air again on Friday, October 13.  Perhaps some of you have seen this episode.  I have not [I may be the only person on the planet that doesn’t have cable TV] but William R. Hawkins writing for FrontPageMagazine has and his review indicates the usual liberal ‘blame America for everything but don’t question my patriotism’ attitude amoung the historians providing expertise for this documentary.

The show featured “interviews with both Mexican and American historians to ensure accuracy from both nations’ points of view” but was not hosted by a scholar. 

The two Mexican professors, Jesus Velasco Marquez and Joselina Zoralda Vasquez, defend Mexico’s honor at every turn. The three American scholars, Associate Professor Brian Delay of the University of Colorado, Assoc. Prof. Sam W. Haynes of the Univ. of Texas-Arlington, and author Bruce Winders, were generally critical of U.S. policy. According to the show’s producer, Jim Lindsay, Haynes’ brief book James Polk and the Expansionist Impulse was the principle source for the documentary. Lindsey is also quoted as saying:

There are parallels between the war that’s going on today and the war in Mexico. There was certainly in the 1840s a rush to war, and afterwards a great deal of second-guessing on the part of Congress as to whether or not this was the right policy for the United States

To that, Hawkins has this to say

Not the right policy? Victory in the Mexican War gained for the United States all of Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Union victory in the Civil War, the Mexican War was the most important conflict endowing the United States with, as Prof. Delay noted, “the wealth and security we enjoy today.” Yet, it is not much remembered because, according to Delay, “we want to believe we are a virtuous people who would not fight a war in this way” even though “we are happy with the results.”

Of course, from the Mexican perspective

Mexican textbooks claim that the American southwest was “stolen” and will someday be regained. Radical elements in the movement championing an “open border” between the U.S. and Mexico, and not just amnesty for the millions of illegal immigrants who have crossed the existing border, hope to someday fulfill this irredentist ambition.

In truth, the area ceded by the Mexicans to the United States was populated mostly by Americans because the Mexicans considered the environment too harsh for their tastes.

This is ironic because it was the influx of American settlers into California and Texas that lost these territories to Mexico in the first place. The History Channel program does not mention that from 1824 to 1830, promises of cheap land and tax breaks attracted Americans to settle in Texas on the condition they become Roman Catholic and swear allegiance to Mexico. But the number of American colonists alarmed the Mexican government, which prohibited future immigration and tried to coax its own people to move north in 1830. But American farmers, ranchers and merchants kept coming. In response to the repressive dictatorship of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Texicans revolted in 1835. They declared their independence a year later and established it on the battlefield.

In December 1845, President Jose Herrera told his state governors that regaining Texas would be useless because not enough Mexicans could be persuaded to move there to hold it. The same could be said for California and the rest of the Northern Territory. As Prof. Vasquez notes, Mexico was ‘unpopulated in the north because conditions there were so difficult.”

The eventual war over the area was instigated by a border incursion that kill a number of Americans.

The Mexican-American War began when a U.S. patrol was ambushed north of the Rio Grande on April 25, 1846. Eleven U.S. soldiers were killed. (The attack is reenacted by the History Channel.) President Polk asked Congress to declare war on May 11, the day after word of the battle reached Washington. The House vote was 174-14, but the Senate passed the war proclamation by only one vote.

The History Channel does mention that the war was popular, noting that in Tennessee, 30,000 volunteers showed up wanting to enlist.

The program’s focus, however, is on the antiwar movement. Many Whigs were against expansion, and some Democrats were concerned about presidential power. The documentary opened by mentioning Congressman Abraham Lincoln had called the war unconstitutional. The Whigs were willing to accept Mexico’s claims to the border and denounced Polk, a Democrat, for sending U.S. troops into harm’s way to contest the issue.

In the conclusion of the History Channel documentary, Haynes again tries to indoctrinate the audience with left-wing morality. 

Polk does more than any other Chief Executive to make the United States a hemispheric power. That in and of itself is a remarkable accomplishment. But it is the means by which that was accomplished that has made many American historians rather uneasy. He does bully a weaker nation...This was a war of conquest.

In conclusion, Hawkins adds these comments

Haynes represents the liberal-left preference for placing abstract values above such concrete principles as American livelihood, let alone liberty. He says the war presented the U.S. with a “moral dilemma”: would America be a “good nation or a great nation?” To be “good” means to put the “self-determination of neighbors” ahead of “our own self-interest,” he asserts.

Which is why it is so dangerous to the “wealth and security” of the country to ever allow the Left to gain power. Going into the fall elections, the Democrats are making White House competence in Iraq and Afghanistan an issue. But history and ideology make it clear that the objective of left-wing policy is not to be more effective, but simply to promote a leftist agenda. Leftist criticism of the Mexican-American War shows just how far this self-defeating ideology can go. The History Channel inadvertently performed a valuable service: it showed how left-wing sentiments can imperil the United States during a war fought along its own borders, not to mention conflicts overseas.

Read the whole thing and watch the documentary Friday night.