The Iraq War and Similarities With an Earlier Conflict

The president stood accused of fabricating an excuse to get into the war.  He stubbornly insisted that his reasons were valid, but members of the opposition party were skeptical.  The army was sent to liberate the country from an irresponsible government.  It achieved rapid battlefield victories, but had to surmount unforeseen obstacles.  American soldiers found that the people they came to liberate distrusted them because of a radically different culture and religion.  And as the war dragged on, the president faced growing criticism. 

Sound like the war in Iraq?  It’s not.  The president was James K. Polk and the war was with Mexico.  In 1846 when Polk, a Democrat, asked Congress for a declaration of war, he cited a Mexican invasion across the Rio Grande that resulted in American blood shed on American soil.  Skeptics from the opposition Whig party suspected that Polk’s story was invented to hide ulterior motives for instigating a war.  However, the president’s majority party limited debate and succeeded in passing the war bill.

Although the administration promoted a war policy, it sent an insufficient number of troops to Mexico.  It went to war with little strategic planning because it expected a quick conquest that would result in the transfer of land from Mexico to the United States.  By the second year of the war, the cost had risen and so had the demand for soldiers.  Troop strength became so low in 1847 that General Winfield Scott had to halt his army’s march to Mexico City until a troop surge augmented his numbers to a level that made ground operations feasible again.

The leading generals in Mexico had to contend with discipline issues, which constitutes a common problem among soldiers in a foreign land.  Scott was more successful than others in controlling his men because he took the unprecedented step of declaring martial law and exacted severe punishment for breaches in discipline.  Stern punishment has the double benefit of limiting bad behavior and assuring the indigenous population of their safety.  What Scott understood was that success in occupying a foreign country depends on winning hearts and minds, and the fastest way to lose that battle is to tolerate bad behavior.

Just as in Iraq today, the most delicate issues in Mexico had to do with cultural and religious differences.  The Catholic Church was the dominant religion in Mexico, and it was a key instigator of guerrilla activity.  Priests were often the ones who led insurgencies against the Americans, and to rally opposition they portrayed the invaders as “heretics” who sided with the devil against the Catholic Church.  Also, as in the current conflict, it was after the capture of the enemy capital, when most people thought “mission accomplished,” that prolonged guerrilla activity slowed the peace process.

Over time the opposition became more vocal.  The center of the antiwar movement consisted of abolitionists who knew that the acquisition of land would mean the expansion of slavery.  Writers such as Henry David Thoreau became outspoken opponents of the war, and even politicians got into the act.  Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln grew so skeptical of Polk’s reason for going to war that he demanded, through his famous Spot Resolution, that the president verify the facts in his earlier war message.  Ohio Senator Thomas Corwin astonishingly said that he hoped the Mexicans would welcome the American soldiers to “hospitable graves.”  Such defiance naturally resulted in the charge of unpatriotic conduct and even treason.  Even so the Whigs took control of the House of Representatives in the next election.

Other factors in Mexico bear a resemblance with the current struggle.  Local civilians were punished by other Mexicans for assisting the Americans.  Internal factions in Mexico fueled the growing indigenous insurgency.  The Americans tried to avoid damaging houses of worship so they would not be accused of making war on Mexico’s religion.  And, most striking, faulty intelligence resulted in a senseless battle at a place called Molino del Rey where it was erroneously thought that the Mexicans were making cannon–a weapon of mass destruction. 

Commentators have frequently compared the Iraq War to Vietnam, but few have cited the numerous similarities with the Mexican-American War.  In fact, few Americans know anything about the earlier conflict even though it was our first foreign war, and as a percentage of the total who served, it was the deadliest conflict in our history.  Even though Americans know little about this war, many would recognize names like Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant who were among the many future Civil War generals who learned their first lessons of war in Mexico.  It is unfortunate that we know so little about this war despite ongoing demographic changes that seemingly demand a better understanding of our relations with our southern neighbor.  Imagine how a better knowledge of history could influence policy decisions in the twenty-first century.