I watched a couple of specials on the history channel this weekend.

The first was on the Mexican war of 1847-49. In the viewpoint of the producers (and who am I to doubt them), the war was completely a war of conquest cooked up by Polk to force the Mexicans to sell us the Northern territories. We were far more powerful than Mexico and it is probably a fair comparison to the Iraq war.

Polk promised the American public that the war would be over fast and casualties would be low. Our casualties were not high by the standards of that time but the Mexicans held out for two years and forced us to conquer them outright where we had hoped for an early capitulation.

The reaction of the public was almost axiomatic in the way that we become war weary when our own land and fortunes are at risk. After a year there were screams for an end to the fighting. I have opined before that one year is about our limit for a land war when we are the aggressor but I thought that war spoils would have made a difference, not so it seems. There was even complaint about Mexican civilian casualties. The fact is we couldn't have cared less about collateral damage in those days. We are paragons of compassion now compared to then.

With the Mexicans totally defeated there was some pressure to annex the entire country but even Polk felt that the destruction of another sovereign state would not play well in future relations with the ROW.

The other show was about Truman's (and Roosevelt's) Japanese invasion plan and out plans to use chemical weapons that were expected to kill up to ten million Jap civilians, in order to destroy their ability to resist and their will to fight. I haven't seen it all yet but the gist of it is our government was not concerned with Japanese lives and the American public preferred starving and fire bombing them over an invasion that might cost any more American casualties.

Folks, they say that the foot soldier still carries the same 60 or so pounds of equipment today that he did in the Roman empire, and when it comes to war, this is not the only thing that is pretty much the same.

The point being that those who seem to think that Bush set a new benchmark for evil American leadership are wrong. When it comes down to war, then now or in the future, it is ugly business and whether or not it is a liberal or a conservative calling the shots it will always be ugly.