Comparing the War of 1812 to the Mexican American War

faithful_servant · Jul 25, 2017

Yes_Minister said:
I wonder if that was a key difference, that the Texans wanted to join America during the Mexican American War, while in the War of 1812, the Canadian colonists stayed loyal to the British Crown.

The US might have done better in 1812, if they somehow bribed Quebec to turn against the British, but that might involved too many compromises.

Texas was far from united in wanting to join the US. There were a lot of folks who were fighting just to get rid of Santa Anna. There was also a substantial contingent of Mexicans fighting with the Texians and not against them.

Also, had it not been for the Mexican gov't's arrest and mistreatment of Austin, we may have never gone to war with Mexico. Austin was working for a peaceful resolution when he went to Mexico City and when he was arrested and imprisoned for two years, it made him bitter and resentful. He returned as a voice demanding freedom, instead of one seeking peace. Sadly, he never saw Texas become free from Mexico, but his was the voice that truly spurred to action the Texians and eventually got the support of the US.

Tigerace117 · Jul 25, 2017

Yes_Minister said:
The US fought two wars against its neighbors, the War of 1812 against British North America and the Mexican American War against Mexico.

How do you think these wars compare to each other? Why do you think the US did better in the Mexican American War then the War of 1812?

So much difference between the two you can't even really compare the two. In 1812 America had just barely gotten off the ground. Our navy was good but our land forces were still largely militia, who didn't really cover themselves with glory against the British in round two. Or, honestly, with some exceptions, in round one.

In spite of that we did manage to burn the Canadian capital.

In contrast, the Mexican Army were a second rate force compared to the British Empire, even at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. The Mexicans also had far more territory to try to defend, filled with subjects who didn't really want to be Mexicans in the first place.

Yes_Minister · Jul 25, 2017

faithful_servant said:
Texas was far from united in wanting to join the US. There were a lot of folks who were fighting just to get rid of Santa Anna. There was also a substantial contingent of Mexicans fighting with the Texians and not against them.

Also, had it not been for the Mexican gov't's arrest and mistreatment of Austin, we may have never gone to war with Mexico. Austin was working for a peaceful resolution when he went to Mexico City and when he was arrested and imprisoned for two years, it made him bitter and resentful. He returned as a voice demanding freedom, instead of one seeking peace. Sadly, he never saw Texas become free from Mexico, but his was the voice that truly spurred to action the Texians and eventually got the support of the US.

I am saying that is a big difference between the Mexican American War and the War of 1812, Texas wanted to join the US, almost no one in British North America wanted to the join the US, being filled with Tory Loyalists and the Quebecois who thought Britain gave them a better deal then the Americans would.

Tigerace117 · Jul 25, 2017

Nickyjo said:
So our existence is dependent on genocidal policies? The existence of the US in its current form is not a requirement for humanity.

We felt needed lebensraum, room to expand, and the unworthy Slavs, er, Indians were in the way. Explain the moral difference. Somehow had we kept faith with all the treaties we still would have been a country, more honorable even.

Seeing as disease killed far more than settlers did.....I'd say the "genocide" was done with longe before there was an America.

Nothing Americans did was any different than what the various tribes did to each other. I'm not convinced that being wiped out by whites is somehow worse than being wiped out by, say, Lakota, despite what some seem to think.

Nickyjo · Jul 25, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
Seeing as disease killed far more than settlers did.....I'd say the "genocide" was done with longe before there was an America.

Nothing Americans did was any different than what the various tribes did to each other. I'm not convinced that being wiped out by whites is somehow worse than being wiped out by, say, Lakota, despite what some seem to think.

We expanded our borders in violation of treaties, in order to create living space for our people. We moved those inconveniently occupying the space out and let our people in, killing resisters and putting survivors into camps. That is not functionally different than Hitler's plan for Slavic nations, to settle Germans in territory he occupied through force. And yes, Slavic peoples had fought among themselves as did the Indians. But our existence as a nation that you mentioned depended on eliminating the existence of other nations. That our germs may have killed more than our cavalry is irrelevant. It was destruction of a "gens", Latin for tribe or people. None of this was on the scale of what Germans, did, or hoped to eventually do but it was just as cruel. Think of the trail of tears, Sand Creek, or the (then) famous phrase "nits make lice," used by one cavalry commander to explain why he killed Indian children.

It's all blood under the bridge, but it is good we now teach more of the truth about it than we used to.

Tigerace117 · Jul 25, 2017

Nickyjo said:
We expanded our borders in violation of treaties, in order to create living space for our people. We moved those inconveniently occupying the space out and let our people in, killing resisters and putting survivors into camps. That is not functionally different than Hitler's plan for Slavic nations, to settle Germans in territory he occupied through force. And yes, Slavic peoples had fought among themselves as did the Indians. But our existence as a nation that you mentioned depended on eliminating the existence of other nations. That our germs may have killed more than our cavalry is irrelevant. It was destruction of a "gens", Latin for tribe or people. None of this was on the scale of what Germans, did, or hoped to eventually do but it was just as cruel. Think of the trail of tears, Sand Creek, or the (then) famous phrase "nits make lice," used by one cavalry commander to explain why he killed Indian children.

It's all blood under the bridge, but it is good we now teach more of the truth about it than we used to.

And how is that, as I said earlier, any worse than being wiped out and enslaved by a bigger, stronger native tribe? It's the nature of the world and of history, and even though you don't like it you shouldn't pretend like it was something only Europeans did, or something unprecedented.

And yes, our nation continued to exist because it could defend the various warring tribes. That's also typical. People who didn't subdue their neighbors ended up subdued themselves in those less enlightened times.

Sand Creek wasn't out of the ordinary when it came to tribal warfare, and if you look at modern day examples of such fighting in Africa you'll see that it's common to target children, sadly enough.

We spend more time flagellating ourselves over something our "victims" routinely did to the weaker among them

Nickyjo · Jul 25, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
And how is that, as I said earlier, any worse than being wiped out and enslaved by a bigger, stronger native tribe? It's the nature of the world and of history, and even though you don't like it you shouldn't pretend like it was something only Europeans did, or something unprecedented.

And yes, our nation continued to exist because it could defend the various warring tribes. That's also typical. People who didn't subdue their neighbors ended up subdued themselves in those less enlightened times.

Sand Creek wasn't out of the ordinary when it came to tribal warfare, and if you look at modern day examples of such fighting in Africa you'll see that it's common to target children, sadly enough.

We spend more time flagellating ourselves over something our "victims" routinely did to the weaker among them

My comments reflect everything from concern to disgust at the notion of "American exceptionalism." In short, we don't flagellate ourselves enough, if that's what telling the truth is, as we are often largely ignorant of our history. Look at the flack that Obama got for his "apology", when he simply admitted what the rest of the world knew, and raised our stature in the world in doing so.

I have heard people say that the US is not an imperialist nation, when we started out hugging the east coast and wound up in Manila, doing exactly what France, Spain and Britain did and what Italy and Germany tried to do, only our victims were Native Americans rather than Africans and people from the Middle East. In our own hemisphere, we betrayed our principles many times, overthrowing elected governments and making people in this hemisphere suffer as much as those in Soviet satellites did, and in many instances more and for longer periods of time. This wasn't done back in "less enlightened times," but within my lengthy lifetime. It continued more recently in the absurd notions surrounding our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no reason then to require us to subdue our Native American neighbors, any more than Grenada now, as I don't think either were planning to subdue us.

Our strengths are our constitution, courts and our people, who have at times have helped us change course or lessened the numbers of our victims. But the fact that someone like Trump could get elected despite bragging that he would torture, kill families of terrorists, steal oil from other countries, etc. troubles me, even in these "enlightened times."

Tigerace117 · Jul 25, 2017

Nickyjo said:
My comments reflect everything from concern to disgust at the notion of "American exceptionalism." In short, we don't flagellate ourselves enough, if that's what telling the truth is, as we are often largely ignorant of our history. Look at the flack that Obama got for his "apology", when he simply admitted what the rest of the world knew, and raised our stature in the world in doing so.

I have heard people say that the US is not an imperialist nation, when we started out hugging the east coast and wound up in Manila, doing exactly what France, Spain and Britain did and what Italy and Germany tried to do, only our victims were Native Americans rather than Africans and people from the Middle East. In our own hemisphere, we betrayed our principles many times, overthrowing elected governments and making people in this hemisphere suffer as much as those in Soviet satellites did, and in many instances more and for longer periods of time. This wasn't done back in "less enlightened times," but within my lengthy lifetime. It continued more recently in the absurd notions surrounding our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no reason then to require us to subdue our Native American neighbors, any more than Grenada now, as I don't think either were planning to subdue us.

Our strengths are our constitution, courts and our people, who have at times have helped us change course or lessened the numbers of our victims. But the fact that someone like Trump could get elected despite bragging that he would torture, kill families of terrorists, steal oil from other countries, etc. troubles me, even in these "enlightened times."

Considering we are one of the very few countries in the world which has never once fallen prey to dictatorship or tolitarian rule, I'd say that's pretty exceptional. Telling a version of the truth which fails to actually take the facts into account is literally no better than not telling the truth at all.

Yep, the rest of the world loves hearing other people admit they are wrong. They don't like it as much when they have to admit they are wrong. Look at Turkey and the Armenian Genocide, or Japan and the Rape of Nanking.

You can ask the Filipinos whether being under Japanese rule was so much better than "US imperialism" because that's where they would have ended up had the Spanish American War never happened(hint--- it was a hell of a lot worse). Oh, and the "victims" did the exact same thing you are complaining about Europeans doing.

Yep, we should have let guerillas and terrorists enslave various countries in Central and South America. That would have been soooo much better. You can ask anybody from Eastern Europe how great communist rule is. :roll:

And no, they did not "suffer as much as Soviet satellites did". Arguing that implies a certain....romanticization of what life in the East Bloc was like.

"Absurd notions"? Oh, you mean going after Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and kicking a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people in Iraq? I wasn't aware that was "absurd".

Hate to say it, but nobody on Grenada wanted the Cubans there. That was a case of a radical left wing regime overthrowing a more moderate regime.

Nickyjo · Jul 27, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
Considering we are one of the very few countries in the world which has never once fallen prey to dictatorship or tolitarian rule, I'd say that's pretty exceptional. Telling a version of the truth which fails to actually take the facts into account is literally no better than not telling the truth at all.

-- will try to respond to each para. First, tho not quite the same as totalitarian rule, the South under slavery and segregation came close if you were black. Bad analogy, but best I could do.

Yep, the rest of the world loves hearing other people admit they are wrong. They don't like it as much when they have to admit they are wrong. Look at Turkey and the Armenian Genocide, or Japan and the Rape of Nanking.

-- Nothing to argue with here.

You can ask the Filipinos whether being under Japanese rule was so much better than "US imperialism" because that's where they would have ended up had the Spanish American War never happened(hint--- it was a hell of a lot worse). Oh, and the "victims" did the exact same thing you are complaining about Europeans doing.

-- Knew a guy some years ago from the Philippines. His version of history was that they were fighting Spain, then the US fought Spain, and when the dust settled, the Philippines belonged to the US... Then Filipinos started fighting us. Your suggestion was that they were fortunate to be a US colony so Japan wouldn't take them over. But Japan did,. They could have predicted that and been grateful for our colonization with 40 years of foresight? We came to our senses and set them free... Then years later gave support to Marcos til he was gone.

Yep, we should have let guerillas and terrorists enslave various countries in Central and South America. That would have been soooo much better. You can ask anybody from Eastern Europe how great communist rule is. :roll:

--- "The only terrorist is the government," as I saw scrawled on a wall in Central America in the 80s. If you were poor on one of those countries and you saw the bodies of labor leaders, priests, nuns, journalists, lawyers, health professionals who worked with the poor, etc, appearing daily on streets as they did in El Salvador and Guatemala, victims of soldiers and priests disguised as "death squads," if you saw Somoza's Nicaraguan army kill all the young men in a village, if you saw the use of the tactic of "disappearance" to terrorize, a tactic designed by a guy named Keitel in the Third Reich to deal with dissidents in occupied territories, might pick up a book on Marxism in order to fight the monstrosity. You might admire Che.

And no, they did not "suffer as much as Soviet satellites did".

--- Here are a few examples:
In Argentina, when the govt kidnapped a leftist woman, if she was pregnant, they waited til she gave birth, gave her kid to a military family, then killed her. Imagine her thoughts in labor, that childbirth=death... Rec "The Official Story" film. Reagan gave one of the Argentine butchers a medal.
In Guatemala, est 200k killed while Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. One president, Rios Montt, had secret trials that would have made Stalin proud, death sentence phoned in. He admitted his killings, said he would accept justice as long as you put Reagan up against the same wall. Reagan said he had gotten a "bum rap." Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison when Guiatemala recovered.

--- You can check out the history of El Salvador, where the Archbishop was killed the day after he reminded the military of
the commandment "thou shalt not kill."

" Absurd notions"? Oh, you mean going after Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and kicking a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people in Iraq?

--- The absurdities were overthrowing the Afghani government, not the invasion itself and then overthrowing the Iraqi government. Iran, our principle adversary in the region, had an Afghani problem to the east and an Iraqi problem west. We solved both their problems by deposing both governments. Our intervention was based on the absurd theory that a democratic Iraq would lead to democracy in the region. Didn't work and helped create ISIS.

Hate to say it, but nobody on Grenada wanted the Cubans there. That was a case of a radical left wing regime overthrowing a more moderate regime.

--- Partly true, but I bet Cuban doctors were welcome. Grenada was wonderful: invade a small country, quick win, forgetfrom Lebanon.

My thesis: Soviet empire matched by ours, country for country: Guatemala/Hungary, Dominican Republic/Czechoslovakia, Chile/Poland, plus viciousness of regimes in our hemisphere went way beyond the Soviet bloc, leaving aside Russian mass murders. Cold War kids schooled in the oppression in Eastern Europe, woefully ignorant of facts closer to home. The victims of tyranny on both sides see more clearly than its apologists.

Tigerace117 · Jul 28, 2017

Nickyjo said:
--- Partly true, but I bet Cuban doctors were welcome. Grenada was wonderful: invade a small country, quick win, forgetfrom Lebanon.

My thesis: Soviet empire matched by ours, country for country: Guatemala/Hungary, Dominican Republic/Czechoslovakia, Chile/Poland, plus viciousness of regimes in our hemisphere went way beyond the Soviet bloc, leaving aside Russian mass murders. Cold War kids schooled in the oppression in Eastern Europe, woefully ignorant of facts closer to home. The victims of tyranny on both sides see more clearly than its apologists.

The Cuban commissars were rather not, and the two were a package deal.

Only problem is that Salvador Allende was working with the KGB. The old story that he was trying to forge some kind of independent path is completely false, as the Mitrokhin Archive revealed. Whacking Trujillo in the Dominican Republic was completely justified--- the man was an atrocious leader.

Blatantly false. Every single Soviet puppet state committed mass murders. There wasn't a single one without thousands of deaths on its hands.

Nickyjo · Jul 28, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
The Cuban commissars were rather not, and the two were a package deal.

Only problem is that Salvador Allende was working with the KGB. The old story that he was trying to forge some kind of independent path is completely false, as the Mitrokhin Archive revealed. Whacking Trujillo in the Dominican Republic was completely justified--- the man was an atrocious leader.

Allende was elected as was a guy named Trump who also worked with the Russians... Didn't know we whacked Trujillo... I was referring to the '65 invasion... Not much different than the Soviet Czech adventure in '68. Nicaragua abolished the death penalty and didn't institute death squads, even in the face of the Contras, who did.

Blatantly false. Every single Soviet puppet state committed mass murders. There wasn't a single one without thousands of deaths on its hands.

See above. Stats on the murders as I gave you, please

Tigerace117 · Jul 28, 2017

Nickyjo said:
See above. Stats on the murders as I gave you, please

Your post is badly messed up.

The KGB payed off politicians not to run against Allende, as detailed in the Mitrokhin Archive, so he wasn't exactly elected in a "free and fair" election.

The Russians bribed presidential candidates not to run against Trump? When did that happen?

The Domincian Republic was trying to mildly alter its political stance to be more free after years of brutal oppression? Gee, ya don't say.

The Sandinistas committed mass executions and oppressed the indigenous people of Nicaraugua. Which, as I recall, you were very on top of complaining about US "oppression" of Native Americans.

You didn't give me any "stats on murders"?

Nickyjo · Jul 30, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
Your post is badly messed up.

The KGB payed off politicians not to run against Allende, as detailed in the Mitrokhin Archive, so he wasn't exactly elected in a "free and fair" election.

-- if true,doubt it was much different than US meddling in elections.

The Russians bribed presidential candidates not to run against Trump? When did that happen?

The Domincian Republic was trying to mildly alter its political stance to be more free after years of brutal oppression? Gee, ya don't say.

-- the reason given for the Dominican 1965 adventure was the number of leftists in the government. There was no other pretext.

The Sandinistas committed mass executions and oppressed the indigenous people of Nicaraugua. Which, as I recall, you were very on top of complaining about US "oppression" of Native Americans.

You didn't give me any "stats on murders"?

I worked for years with Amnesty International at the time. It is a cautious organization, so it did not act without solide evidence. Though there were concerns about the indigenous folks in Nicaragua, saw no evidence of mass executions. Other groups estimated 15k murdered in Argentina in a few years, tho estimates went as high as 40k, 200k in Guatemala from 1954 til the coming of democracy, 30-40k in El Salvador in the late 70s early 80s. Though they were hardly a day at the beach for dissidents, nothing like that in Cuba or Nicaragua.

My larger point is that oppression by power takes many forms, that the right can do as badly as the left, that empires like ours and the Soviets sought to control countries in their orbit, through any means necessary, even supporting monstrosities. "They create desolation and call it peace," as someone said of the Romans' foreign policy. Name your poison.

Tigerace117 · Jul 30, 2017

Nickyjo said:
I worked for years with Amnesty International at the time. It is a cautious organization, so it did not act without solide evidence. Though there were concerns about the indigenous folks in Nicaragua, saw no evidence of mass executions. Other groups estimated 15k murdered in Argentina in a few years, tho estimates went as high as 40k, 200k in Guatemala from 1954 til the coming of democracy, 30-40k in El Salvador in the late 70s early 80s. Though they were hardly a day at the beach for dissidents, nothing like that in Cuba or Nicaragua.

My larger point is that oppression by power takes many forms, that the right can do as badly as the left, that empires like ours and the Soviets sought to control countries in their orbit, through any means necessary, even supporting monstrosities. "They create desolation and call it peace," as someone said of the Romans' foreign policy. Name your poison.

Over 200,000 people died in communist Romania alone buliding the Danube Black Sea canal. If you are trying to compare the death tolls of capitalist and communist countries, even the worse capitalist countries have fewer deaths on their record. Both Cuba and Nicaraugua had "dissidents" whacked, sometimes en masse.

Nickyjo · Jul 30, 2017

Tigerace117 said:
Over 200,000 people died in communist Romania alone buliding the Danube Black Sea canal. If you are trying to compare the death tolls of capitalist and communist countries, even the worse capitalist countries have fewer deaths on their record. Both Cuba and Nicaraugua had "dissidents" whacked, sometimes en masse.

Don't know about Cuba, but I never saw evidence of Nicaragua whacking dissidents en masse. I cant imagine that the Reagan administration would have overlooked it. You seem to be right about Romania, seems to have resembled the 3rd Reich by some reports, but haven't seen anything elsewhere in Eastern Europe that matches what was done in Guatemala or Argentina.

Your post seems to suggest that the best leftist countries (Nicaragua was not communist) are categorically worse than the worst right wing ones. Hitler might have troubled that analysis, which is (was) a nice academic exercise,but useless to address suffering people.