Similarities Between the Iraq War and the Mexican War

If You like the U.S. War Against Iraq, Then You Would Love the U.S. War Against Mexico

Although I cannot remember ever hearing any reference to the "Mexican War" in any history class, it is a major point in the history of the United States, providing as it does a model for carrying out and naming later wars and also a model for resistance to those wars not on the basis of politics (such as resistance to the War of 1812) but on the basis of faith and morals.

I don't want to go into the historical background of this war, which you can track down at any number of websites or in any number of books, except to point out that the battle at the Alamo was not part of this war. The martyrs who died at the great Texas shrine to freedom, however, emphasize one of the themes of the U.S. War Against Mexico. Those martyrs died for one freedom, the freedom to own slaves, and that dubious freedom was a major factor in the Mexican War.
I am uncomfortable, however, doing so. I would rather call it the "War of Northern Aggression," as Mexicans call it, but on this side of the Rio Bravo (as Mexicans call it; here it is the Rio Grande) that name is reserved for the "Civil War." This war provided the template for naming the U.S.'s wars of invasion, conquest and occupation after the target country, as if in some way it were to blame for the decisions of the United States.

By the time of the Mexican War, slavery had divided the United States even more than do the red/blue issues of today, but slavery would not end for another generation. Since Mexico never allowed the slavery of Africans (although it has a terrible record of oppression, to the present day, of its indigenous peoples), slavery and the expansion of slave states were themes in the Mexican War. Another theme of this war was the U.S.'s sense of "Manifest Destiny," to seize as much land as it could, including, in this war, California, Nevada, and Utah. Critics of the war argued that it was an act of aggression and arrogance with no justification.