blogWhen will this President finally explain the war fully and candidly?
No, not Bush, and not the war in Iraq — rather, our war in Mexico in 1848. This is what Congressman Abraham Lincoln demanded in a remarkable speech on the floor of the House on January 12th, 1848, concerning the U.S. invasion of Mexico.
President Polk, Lincoln said, must explain his war once and for all, “fully, fairly, and candidly.
“Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments….And if he can show that the soil was ours, where the first blood of the war was shed— that it was not within an inhabited country, then I am with him for his justification.
“But if he can not, or will not do this, then I shall be fully convinced that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong…that originally having some strong motive to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory…he plunged into it, and has swept, on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where.”
Awesome, no? And that’s a war that we were about to win, after less than two years of fighting.