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    Robert W. Merry

    James K. Polk and the Lessons of War We Never Seem to Learn

    Posted:
    11/10/09
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    In January 1846, President James K. Polk issued a military order designed to generate a war with his country's southern neighbor, Mexico. He sent Gen. Zachary Taylor, with some 3,500 troops, to the east bank of the Rio Grande River, into territory that was in dispute between the two countries. Further, he did so without even hinting to anyone beyond his most intimate inner circle that his underlying motivation was to generate a war.

    When elements of Taylor's army inevitably clashed with Mexican troops, Polk promptly sent to Congress a message declaring that Mexico had "spilled American blood upon the American soil.'' He asked for a congressional resolution acknowledging that a state of war had emerged between the United States and Mexico. Again, he did so without telling Congress about his underlying aim -- to acquire from Mexico a vast expanse of territory between the newly annexed Texas and the rich region along the Pacific Ocean.
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    One lesson for historians in this tale is that deceit almost inevitably accompanies any nation's route to war. We see that in our own history. Many Americans are well aware of the presidential deception that accompanied Lyndon Johnson's reaction to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, used by the president to get congressional authorization for a war policy in Vietnam. Equally stark in our minds is George W. Bush's weapons-of-mass-destruction allegation prior to invading Iraq.

    Less well known are the actions of Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned for reelection on a peace platform even as he made plans for entry into World War I, or Franklin Roosevelt, who maneuvered his nation into World War II through initiatives that not only were stealthy but probably illegal. FDR gave Britain U.S. destroyers in direct violation of the 1935 Neutrality Act, and he neglected to mention to the American people that his Far East policy was designed to force Japan into a corner from which it could escape only by attacking America.

    The lesson for presidents is that they can get away with such deceptions if the resulting war is short and successful, as in the Spanish-American War, or if the nation maintains a powerful consensus on the glory of the cause, as in World War II. But if the war drags on with ambiguity of result and purpose, the American people inevitably turn against it. That's what happened to Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.

    That also happened to Polk. A war he thought would last a few months ultimately dragged on for two years, sapping his country's zest for the conflict and his own political standing. His problem was compounded by the manner in which he had forced the early war debate into his own framework.

    When hostilities broke out along the Rio Grande, Taylor immediately found himself in danger, facing a far larger Mexican army. Thus, Congress would vote reinforcements with hardly a naysayer in either chamber. But Polk's congressional allies appended language blaming Mexico for the skirmish and declaring a state of war between the two countries.

    Opposition forces pleaded for a separation of the two sections, so they could vote for reinforcements while delaying debate on whether a war actually existed. John C. Calhoun -- like Polk, a Democrat, but a congenital maverick -- rose in the Senate to attack the president's approach "There may be invasion without war,'' he declared, "and the president is authorized to repel invasion without war. But it is our sacred duty to make war, and it for us to determine whether war shall be declared or not. If we have declared war, a state of war exists, and not till then.''

    Calhoun and his allies lost the fight, and the two sections were fused into one war resolution requiring members to vote for Polk's version of events along with the resources to protect Taylor's army.

    "As the facts now stand,'' Calhoun argued, "there is no hostility -- no conflict but that between two armies on the Rio del Norte [Rio Grande]; and yet you affirm . . . that mere local conflict, not authorized by either government, is a state of war! That every American is an enemy of every Mexican! . . . The doctrine is monstrous.''

    But with the spilling of American blood (whether on U.S. or disputed soil), the American people became riled up, and few in Congress could resist the waves of patriotic sentiment that ensued. In the House, only 14 members voted against the war resolution; in the Senate, just two. (Calhoun refused to respond to the roll call.)

    So Polk had his war. But it soon slipped beyond his control, just as Johnson's and Bush's wars did. And when it became clear that Polk had wrapped a large territorial objective into his war policy without telling the American people, the opposition quickly exploited that to attack him further.

    What's more, Polk hadn't calculated that the territorial question would quickly transform the war debate into a slavery issue, with the nation's two mutually hostile regions grappling with whether the new lands would be slave or free. That further complicated Polk's effort to maintain his political standing as he struggled with a war he couldn't easily end.

    The ultimate lesson for all presidents is that wars inevitably follow their own grim logic of events, not the logic devised by officials heady with their own analytical brilliance before the shooting starts. Polk ultimately won his war and achieved nearly all his territorial aims. But the price was much higher than he had anticipated when he forced that resolution down the throats of the country's legislators.

    This is a worthy lesson for President Obama as he grapples with how to proceed in the Afghan war -- characterized by himself as "a war of necessity.'' Whatever he decides, and however brilliant his policy might be, the plan almost inevitably will be overtaken by events. And it remains a war of necessity only so long as it is being waged successfully. If the president should lose control of events, it will become a war of folly.

    Robert W. Merry is a former Washington correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Congressional Quarterly. His latest book, "A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent," was published this month by Simon & Schuster.


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