April 6, 2022
TEXAS-MEXICAN WAR AMONG AMERICA'S 'UKRAINE' MOMENTS

Did you know that America had many presidents with a similar philosophy like Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that this brutal dictator is in a league of his own?
Their philosophy was much like that of Roman general Julius Caesar, who proclaimed "Veni, vidi, vici" or "I came. I saw. I conquered" after his conquest of Asia Minor (now being the majority of Turkey) in 47 B.C.

Unfortunately those presidents, which include James Polk, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, were good at arriving and seeing, like Putin, but only Polk and McKinley excelled at conquering.

That's according to historical information from several almanacs, as you will soon find out.

Neither Johnson nor Truman outright won the wars they oversaw. For the others the subsequent "peace" was short-lived and created enduring problems.

Johnson actually "lost" the Vietnam War in 1968 when he refused to escalate, as did Truman in Korea. Wilson's WWI win precipitated WWII, and the WWII win over Japan and Germany created the ironic situation in which we destroyed our then-enemies, who were the enemies of our current enemies, meaning China and Russia (formerly the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR). And Operation Desert Storm and the Iraq War resolved nothing in the Middle East.

But America has also had a couple of Volodymyr Zelenskyy-type presidents, who repelled foreign incursions onto U.S. soil. They were James Madison and Franklin Roosevelt. It took a while, but they exacted revenge for the British invasion of 1812 at the Battle of New Orleans, and for Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR: Mexico was an advanced Mayan and Toltec Indian agrarian culture conquered by the Aztecs in 1325 AD, who founded Tenochtilan (now Mexico City). The Spanish conquistadors, led by Hernan Cortes, conquered the Aztecs in 1519-21. Until 1810 Mexico was a Spanish colony. Miguel Hildago y Costilla led the 1821 revolution, with a republic declared in 1823.

Most of the Indian/Spanish population was in the Yucatan peninsula and in Mexico City, but the country extended northward into what is now the American Southwest. By 1830 White settlers there numbered over 20,000 and the revolution of 1835-36 created an independent nation.

Texas statehood (1845) and the Mexican-American War were not supposed to happen. The Democrats supported "manifest destiny," the concept that America should expand ever westward. The Whigs opposed it. Henry Clay (W) and ex-president Martin Van Buren (D) made a deal to keep Texas out of the 1844 election: Both opposed statehood and a certain war. But Polk, a Tennessee Democrat, won the nomination on a pro-Texas platform and beat Clay. Polk served one term from 1845-48 but ranks as a master of cost/benefit. Wars have a cost, measured in blood and treasure and Polk's presidency was a treasure trove.

Polk's signal accomplishment was the annexation by military might of 843,856 square miles of territory, including 261,232 in Texas plus New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, and then California to the Oregon border. He launched the Mexican-American War in 1845 that lasted 2 years and culminated in the defeat and surrender of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at Huamantia. U.S. troops advanced as far as Mexico City.

Nevertheless, instead of celebrating "grab-and-keep," Polk was reviled by the Eastern press as a warmonger who was upsetting the world order.

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR: Colonialism never got much traction in America. After all, the U.S. was big enough and had abundant resources, so it did not need to subjugate and pillage a foreign nation - like European countries did for centuries. But that mindset changed in the 1890s. Under pressure from the Eastern media, McKinley launched a war against the Spanish Empire. It ended quickly and the U.S. annexed Puerto Rico and the Philippines as territories. McKinley won easy re-election in 1900.

WORLD WAR I: Wilson (D) was elected in 1912 with 42 percent of the vote because the Taft/Roosevelt split. He was a college professor and thought himself as being "enlightened" as opposed to isolationist or America-First.

With the European War raging since 1914, the inter-related royal families (German, British, Russian and off-shoots) were going at it. The Kaiser was pounding the Czar. The Kaiser was battling the British King in the trenches of western France and gas-warfare was being utilized. Why should America get involved? What was our self-interest?

Wilson was in a tight 1916 re-election race against Charles Evans Hughes (R) and he repeatedly promised American mothers that he "would not send their sons" into war. He was re-elected that November because he won California. Six months later in April 1917, using the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania as a pretext, America joined WWI. About 20 million men died in that war, including 117,000 Americans.

There were two staggering WWI consequences. First, with America's entry the Kaiser knew he could not fight a two-front war, so his agents conspired with Vladimir Lenin and his communist cadre to overthrow the Czar, which happened in 1917, the quid pro quo being a peace treaty. So the Germans created the 50-year regime of tyranny, torture and repression - all because of Wilson's duplicity.

And second, Wilson took his grandiose vision to Versailles to craft a post-War Europe so that WWI would "be the war to end all wars." The assembled worthies imposed draconian sanctions and reparations on Germany, so destroying the economy that an obscure rabble-rouser named Adolph Hitler seized power, and thereafter followed fascism, the conquest of most of Europe, the Holocaust and 70-85 million deaths in WWII. Good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.

KOREAN WAR: The result of WWII brought paranoia, not peace. The Stalin-built USSR lost 22 million people. And America had "The Bomb." Fear of the U.S. and domestic terror kept Stalin in power. But the West was also fearful. Communist parties were gaining in democracies, Europe was a shambles, and East Germany and the East were under Stalin's control.

And then Mao, who had collaborated with Chaing Kai-shek in WWII to defeat the Japanese occupiers with U.S. aid, launched a communist insurgency against Chaing with Russian weapons, culminating in a mainland takeover in 1949 and Chaing's exile to Taiwan. Conservatives at home were apoplectic, accusing Truman of "losing China" and bewailing a "domino effect" in Southeast Asia. If the communists won one country (like Korea), the rest would fall and the Red Menace would soon be at the Golden Gate Bridge.

General Douglas MacArthur warned against a U.S. land war in Asia, but he commanded U.S. forces against North Korean and Red China forces in the peninsula, and was itching to fight to the China border. But Truman, fearful of escalation to WWIII, canned him and a cease-fire split the country in half.

The next domino was Vietnam.

VIETNAM WAR: The Viet were a central China tribe who migrated to the Mekong River Delta during the period (111BC-939AD) when China ruled, but they defeated Kublai Khan in 1288. It was independent until conquered by the French in 1884, and became a colony. Japan occupied Vietnam from 1940 onward, and communist Ho Chi Minh led the resistance. The French returned post-War and fought Ho's guerilla army 1945-54, finally losing at Dien Bien Phu. The armistice provided for a Vietnam split at the 17th parallel, with Ho ruling the North and democracy in the South.

Armed with weapons and aircraft from China and USSR, Ho's Viet Cong began an insurgency in the South. With France's departure and an unstable government, the U.S. stepped-in to provide ARVN (the South army) with "advisers" plus weapons and training. The 1965 Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized U.S. ground and air military action in Vietnam, with troops as combatants; their number reached 543,400, a month after the VC's Tet Offensive.

The generals told Johnson that to" win" required 500,000 more soldiers (most draftees) and immediate bombing of Hanoi and the rice-paddies and dikes (which Johnson had refused to do as "escalatory"), LBJ tried to negotiate, quitting as president. He was replaced by Nixon, a hardliner who increased bombing but began a "Vietnamization" plan to have ARVN do the fighting with a rapid drawdown of US troop strength. By 1973 it was over. ARVN disappeared, much like those loyal and trained Afghan troops when America left in 2021.

There is a lesson here for Putin. Vietnam contains 127,246 square miles, and over 500,000 troops couldn't conquer and pacify half that. Ukraine is 233,100 square miles, and Putin has190,000 troops there.

UKRAINE WAR: The Trypilians, the country's ancestors, established settlements along the Dnieper River during 6000-1000BC and by the 9th Century a royal dynasty ruled, with Saint Vladimir the Great converting to Christianity in 988. The Asian hordes obliterated Ukraine in the 13th Century. Ukraine was reconstituted as a nation in 1918. Russia and Poland divided it again in 1921, and Stalin's man-made famine starved into submission and killed 7-10 million Ukrainians in the 1920s. It was reborn in 1991 and is proving it will not be re-conquered easily.