Why was the Mexican-American War characterized as “Mr. Polks War”?
But like President Bush, Polk’s deception about his reasons for going to war and his facile assumptions about an easy U.S. victory contributed to a massive public disillusion that precipitated a breakdown in American politics in the 1850s. Despite its victorious conclusion, the Mexican War was a fiasco that helped set the stage for the Civil War. It started as a “war of choice,” when Polk ignored evidence that American forces had crossed into what was legally Mexican territory before being attacked by Mexican troops. As with Bush’s claim that the United States invaded Iraq to rid the country of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Polk’s obfuscation about the location of the ambushed American troops laid the foundation for charges that the administration had lied to the public and concealed the real reasons for going to war. Polk sanctioned war to annex California and the Southwest, believing American exceptionalism would make this grab for territory morally different from Europea
