The First Cakewalk

Many times history repeats itself, either in a positive or a negative way. Some may remember that when the Bush administration was beating the drum for war in 2002, it was claimed that Iraq would be a “cakewalk” and all we had to do was march in and the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms as their great liberators.
What is most striking, and almost startling, is the “hawks” and the “doves” have made the same arguments over two centuries of our nation’s existence. This comes out in the new book We Who Dared to Say No to War by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods Jr. The book contains a speech by Congressman Samuel Taggart of Massachusetts in opposition to James Madison’s intention to go to war with Canada. Protesting a closed-door debate in the House, Taggart refused to give this speech on the House floor and instead published it in the Alexandria Gazette on June 24th, 1812. What Taggart says in this speech makes for an interesting, and I believe, sad historical parallel. He states: “The conquest of Canada has been represented to be so easy as to be little more than a party of pleasure. We have, it has been said, nothing to do but to march an army into the country and display the standard of the United States, and the Canadians will immediately flock to it and place themselves under our protection. They have been represented as ripe for revolt, panting for emancipation from a tyrannical Government, and longing to enjoy the sweets of liberty under the fostering hand of the United States.”[1] Does it sound like you’ve heard this argument before? Well, if you were listening during the build up for the Iraq War you likely have!
What is perhaps more tragic than war itself is the fact that lessons of the past have not often been learned. James Madison’s conquest of Canada ended in a failure, and so has just about every other similar military adventure our nation has been involved in. What do both the Iraqi invasion and the attempted conquest of Canada have in common? Both were represented as “cakewalks.”
One important revelation that comes from reading Taggart’s speech in 1812 is that there are war-hawks in every generation who expect the public to put on their rose-colored glasses and act as if they hadn’t heard the false promise of quick victory before.
[1] Polner, Murray, Woods, Thomas E. We Who Dared To Say No To War, Basic Books 2008; pg. 15