"So, let me challenge you to think on this:
Our democracy was undoubtedly achieved through undemocratic means—through conquest and colonization. Mexicans were just some of the victims, and, today, in the American Southwest, tens of millions of U.S. citizens reside, in point of fact, upon occupied territory."
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Surprised to see an active-duty Army historian argue that American politicians and soldiers manufactured a war with Mexico, sold it to the public and then proceeded to conquer their southern neighbor. More than 150 years later it sure sounds like we have learned nothing from looking back at history.
Perhaps this 21st Centurt moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins.
When, exactly, were we “great”?
In this era of Manifest Destiny back in the mid-19th Century in The New World western Hemisphere north of centuries-old Mexico, author Major Danny Sjursen says we were motivated by dreams of cheap farmland, California ports and the expansion of the cotton economy along with its peculiar partner, the institution of slavery. Our forebears succeeded, and they won an empire. Only in the process they may have lost something far more valuable in the moral realm.
This is the 15th installment of the “American History for Truthdiggers” series, a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The author of the series, Danny Sjursen, an active-duty major in the U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the nation’s checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor of history at West Point. His war experiences, his scholarship, his skill as a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.
American History for Truthdiggers:
The Fraudulent Mexican-American War (1846-48)
". . . Many readers will dispute this interpretation. Conquest is the natural order of the world, the inevitable outgrowth of clashing civilizations, they will insist. Perhaps. But if true, where does the conquest end, and how can the U.S. proudly celebrate its defense of Europe against the invasions by Germany and/or the Soviet Union? This line of militaristic reasoning—one held by many senior conservative policymakers even today—rests on the slipperiest of slopes. . .
(Mis)Remember the Alamo!: Texas and the Road to War
“The Fall of the Alamo” or “Crockett’s Last Stand,” by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk.
This 1903 painting, on display in the Texas governor’s mansion, shows the famed frontiersman, at center wielding a rifle, battling to the death.
Mexican accounts hold that Davy Crockett surrendered and later was executed. (Wikimedia Commons)
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". . . We all know the comforting tale. It has been depicted in countless Hollywood films starring the likes of John Wayne, Alec Baldwin and Billy Bob Thornton. “Remember the Alamo!” It remains a potent battle cry, especially in Texas, but also across the American continent. . . There is no room in the legend for critical thinking or fresh analysis. But since the independence and acquisition of Texas caused the Mexican-American War, we must dig deeper and reveal the messy truth. . . It was what we now call a proxy war for land waged between the U.S. and the Mexican Republic. . . "Go ahead and dig all you want >>> https://www.truthdig.com
