About 3:30 in the afternoon, General Sam’s inferior force caught Santa Ana’s Mexican army napping.  In an 18-minute battle, the Mexican army was routed and the Generalissimo was captured.  General Sam’s victory at the Battle of San Jacinto ended the Texican struggle for civil rights and established the Republic of Texas.

  Photograph of the San Jacinto Monument

In spite of the vicious cruelty of his foe, General Sam was merciful to the vanquished Generalissimo.  His objective was independence for Texas not revenge upon Santa Ana’s person.  Instead of executing Santa Anna for war crimes, Houston allowed the disgraced Generalissimo to return to Mexico.

Twenty-first Century Relevance

Ten years ago, President George Bush Sr. failed to kill his counterpart in the 1991 Gulf War.  He ended the Gulf War prematurely and permitted Iraq’s despotic dictator, Saddam Hussein, to remain as its President.  It was a geopolitical mistake.  Now, the current Bush Administration uses this fact as the excuse for a new war with Iraq.  We must kill the devil of Baghdad.

Was it compassion for their enemies that Sam Houston and George Bush Sr. let their respective nemeses escape the hangman’s noose?  Perhaps.  Nonetheless, it seems odd given the wretched human beings they were able to defeat.  However, a sinister motive is unavailing and it will not be leveled.  Let it be said that both men gave the following generation an excuse to start another war for economic not national security reasons.

In 1846, Mexico was no threat to the national security of the United States.  However, the United States had a national economic interest in the land owned by Mexico on the North American continent.

To endear the manifest destiny of Americans to bridge the continent from sea to shining sea, the land held by Mexico had to be appropriated.  President James Polk staged an imperialistic war to grab the land from an arguably weak, corrupt, and brutal government.  It certainly helped Polk to have Santa Ana rattling around the presidential palace in Mexico City.  A new war, against a damnable despot that a ragtag army of rebels had once defeated, was palatable to a pliable Congress and the American people.

The American expeditionary force successively routed vastly superior Mexican forces in a two-year campaign. A peace accord was reached in 1848 and from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas to the Rio Grande River boundary, as well as portions of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado were transferred to the United States. The economy of the United States was outstandingly served by Mexican-American War.  The discovery of gold in California in January 1848 broke open the American West.  Today, the economic engine that is California is the fifth largest in the world.

America's 21st century need is oil, and Iraq has the second greatest oil reserves in the world.  There is no doubt that a new Iraqi war is about economy.  It is not because of an eminent threat of an attack on United States soil.

Lest We Forget - The Domestic Economic Impact

Present Bush Jr. argues that "Saddam must disarm before he hurts a single American." What about a $200 billion war?  How many Americans at home will suffer?  Medicare and domestic programs for the life, safety and welfare of Americans are all ready being slashed.  The Bush Administration has offered no cost benefit analysis to justify the war, and none will be presented, for the war is not justifiable, unless, the United States plans to nationalize Iraqi oil.  Oil is the national security interest of the United States.  Any disruption of oil supplies affects the world’s economies, particularly the economy of the United States.

Congressional War Cowards

Congressional war cowards will allow this war to proceed for they are wary of challenging President Bush in the aftermath of September 11.  They wantonly compromise their constitutional responsibility to ensure their incumbent right to reelection.  The US Congress has neither the backbone nor the integrity to engage in a meaningful debate of the costs and sacrifices that a war will impose on the America public.  Instead, it is easier for both democrats and republicans to show to doting television cameras their fists, bruised from pounding on the animal skins of their office war drums, than to expose the pasty, cowardly skins they hide under pinstripe suits. ^1/

The Yellow Journalism of Cable News

Cable news, particularly CNN and Fox News, would have you believe that mainstream American is utterly preoccupied with the destruction of Iraq.  They have intentionally stifled a fair and balanced presentation of the issues for but one purpose: their insufferable corporate economy.  A war brings good fortune to AOL-Time Warner and the Fox Broadcasting Corporation.  Horrifically, the American public is left to suffer the anxiety that their dastardly reporting causes to the psyche. ^3/

Bona fide American patriots are crushed under the stinging blows of their commentators.  Let us examine the case of the entertainer, Harry Belafonte.  In a cogent and heartfelt critique of Bush Administration policy, Belafonte took to task Secretary of State Colin Powell for his abandonment of principle. The chief warmonger of Fox News, commentator, Bill O’Reilly, berated Belafonte for his misguided analysis and his reproach of Colin Powell.  It is O’Reilly who is wrong, not Belafonte.  O’Reilly has no record of public service to match Belafonte, merely a louder voice.

O’Reilly claims his television program is a "no spin zone."  Nonsense.  O’Reilly has an agenda.  A person who stands in the way of revenge for the destruction of the Twin Towers is an anathema to him.  You had better take notice, before he aids the transport of your son to the Middle East.

Footnotes:

1/ The war is about oil, make no mistake about.  For example, Congress refuses to do anything about the miserable fuel economy of light trucks and sport utility vehicles.

2/  The Bush Administration got the Senate to approve a resolution as loose as the one Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson after the North Vietnamese attacked US forces off Vietnam in 1964.  That resolution, called the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, gave Johnson -- in his infinite wisdom and with the conspiratorial cooperation of Defense Secretary McNamara and General William Westmoreland -- the authority to commit US forces, covertly, secretly, and illegally, to a ever expanding war, one that would ultimately cost over 50,000 American lives. These three men were not American patriots, but shameless liars and murderers of American youth.  President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Powell risk the same judgment of history if they fail to depose Saddam Hussein and stabilize the country.

3/ The video graphics of the cablecasters, particularly CNN, are outrageously foul, offensive  and despicable.  They seek to scare and intimidate their own viewers.  Unreal.  So-called "breaking news," or window frames that rotate marquee style with words like "SHOWDOWN WITH IRAQ" or "SNIPER"  are without any public interest benefit.  The video producers of these programs act as if they are high on drugs, driven by some met amphetamine rush to produce the sort of graphics that some Ecstasy laced teenagers would demand at a rave event.   Heaven help us all.