More likely, the cup of forbearance was not exhausted but rather tipped over by a greedy Congress and President with visions of manifest destiny dancing in their head. To enforce a claim by sending generals in place of diplomats seems to beckon armed conflict. Even so, to have sustained a guerilla attack may not always be a cause for war, or at least under these circumstances where one could argue that our soldiers were on Mexican soil, it could be questioned whether this was a cause of war.

I like the historical touches but here they are omitted, the ones address that the crux of the question in any war, ie, whether it was justly entered and justly fought.

It was bizarre to read that Pat’s disdain for empire begins, I don’t know, when boats are involved? Is that where it is, Cuba, Spanish-American War? We’ve got to find that exact point where It All Went Wrong and the Golden Age ended to precisely chart how to fix the world by turning back the clock, don’t we?

Jack, for me the issue around the South here is the clinical to pathological dissonance that results when ‘Christians’ find reasons to retain that appellation while explicitly NOT loving their neighbors as themselves. And the issue around patriotism, to a great extent, is the lack of humility that comes when people seem to simply ignore that there was an apartheid culture here into the 1960′s. Comparatively better is not good.

Really guys, it is possible to love something and make fun of it, and to accept all of the associated facts about it, without the need to distort any of them with emotionally loaded rally-round jingoism that is more appropriate for a band of primates. That extra brain tissue for self awareness is supposed to be used, not to just get all hot and happy about how we have one more fig tree than the next bunch of chimps.

2. Abraham Lincoln disagreed with the Mexican War, too, and introduce the “Spot Resolution” in the House demanding that Polk identify the spot at which the Mexicans supposedly attacked Americans on American territory.

In fairness, it should be admitted that US troops were brutal in many cases toward the Mexican populace. The Irish Catholic troopers more or less fresh from the docks of New York and Boston were in a very difficult position. Ordinary Mexicans tend to be friendly, welcoming people. With their tenuous connection to the US, it’s easy to imagine their quandary. Unfortunately, like Col. Hasan, they chose to turn on the party to whom they swore an oath, rather than just run away.

Americans used the language of empire to describe their westward expansion, but to confuse this with the desire for a colonial empire is historically obtuse. We as a people inherited a vast frontier at our birth as a nation. Any land we did not occupy would be occupied by another power. These powers did seek to constrain and frustrate our growth. Examples are many such as Britain in the Ohio Valley and Spain in Kentucky. Indian populations were relative to territory, small. They tended to be , migratory and difficult to deal with. So it was wise to expand as we did and the fact that Mexicans today prefer to live in our country rather than their own should register something, even in the minds of the anti-American scolds on this site.

Jack Tracy, I wonder how successful slavery would have been in the Southwest? Slave-based agriculture didn’t catch on in West Texas as it did in the coastal areas. The failure of slavery to turn a profit in the Southwest would not have been enough to vanquish slavery as an institution or stop the civil war but it might have had some effect on the margins of Southern thought.

DDanicic, there is a hard corps of self flagellating “conservatives” commenting here who seem to believe that it is possible to be conservative sans any love of country. I wonder what they are trying to conserve?

Pat, you collect a lot of leftys and then try to step out of the labels they use to box you in, and you’ll see this general anger emerge.

But for anybody with the patience to take a deep breath, and appreciate the work done by yourself, and Mr Merry, while we may never make the time to read his work, we enjoyed your summary of it.

Hopping up and down, and expressing our snark, won’t change history, nor will it help us understand it in most cases.

How strange that those sympathetic to a muslim’s mandate to bring the advantages of a knowledge of Allah to all the world, will at the same time scream bile and hatred at our ancestors who had the same mandate to bring “civilization” to the world.

So now let some hypocrite with a cel phone and a computer, make some snarky comment about whether there is any advantage to “civilization”.

That same person would observe a church hospital with 50 workers caring for the sick and poor, living in poverty themselves, and one fat/rich/corrupt Bishop, and come to the conclusion that the “Church” (Catholic, Christian) is NOTHING BUT corruption.

If your (the people who would fling anger and snark at the US) thesis has a shred of credibility, then we would expect to find no mexican nationals north of the Nueces River.

For those open to reality, if you find a mexican national north of the Nueces River, he is chasing the dream given to it’s citizens by the US, inherited from those responsible for giving that same gift to Texas and the SouthWest.

Look, the benefits of the war with Mexico are obvious and California was a far bigger prize than Texas for the US in the long run. But I don’t think we should be celebrating Polk. Polk had severe flaws and he basically put American interests at risk for political reasons-namely stripping Taylor of forces and leaving what was left of Taylor’s command in the North vulnerable. Polk also used the war to dole out patronage-which helps explain why he did as much to cut Taylor and Scott out while pushing such inept Democratic politicians made generals as John Quitman, Gideon Pillow and even Franklin Pierce to the fore-not to mention the whole bizarre attempt to make Thomas Hart Benton a general. It was an awful precedent-as men serving under Ben Butler, Nathaniel Banks, John McClernand and a host of other inept political generals could testify in less than 20 years.

Mr Panfile,
Haven’t heard from you in a while. Still afraid the Confederacy will rise again and come storming into the Hudson River Valley? We do have a lot of guns.