Deja vu all over again??

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us." --- Congressman Abraham Lincoln

This argument was made by Abraham Lincoln before the Mexican - American War in 1846. It was thought that President Polk had instigated a war against Mexico without provocation and under false pretenses. President Polk declared war against Mexico under the understanding that the United States was protecting it's borders in Texas after a small band of Mexican army men attacked a United States military patrol on U.S. soil. (Shades of Vietnam??) Opposition to the war felt that the war was declared to take land from Mexico that the U.S. felt should be theirs and in doing so open the area up to slavery.

President Polk thought it would be a quick and easy engagement. (Sound familiar??) The war ended up lasting one year and nine months and costing 13,000 American lives and over $100,000. A lot of money in those days.

After the war, Ulysses S. Grant was quoted as saying, "I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring it. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion."

Why does history continue to repeat itself? Here we are again invading a weaker country, under false pretenses, to gain what is not rightfully ours; oil. And the costs will be staggering, not only in the loss of lives, but also monetarily and loss of global respect. It's Deja vu all over again.

Sources:

Resistance and Revolution
By David Swanson
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/

Mexican American War
http://www.wikipedia.com

U.S.:Mexican War
http://www.pbs.org/