We’ve heard Trump’s threats to Mexico — from levying 100% tariffs on Mexican cars to pledging that he’ll “immediately launch the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” And that’s not all: “Trump proposed launching missiles into Mexico to ‘Destroy the Drug Labs,’” said the New York Times.

What? Invade the US’s closest southern neighbor? The thing is, we know it’s happened before. Howard Zinn expertly traces America’s history of aggression toward Mexico.

President Polk “trumped” up a war in 1845 in order to seize Mexican territory.  Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a career army officer and commander of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, kept a diary.

Fort Jessup, La., June 30, 1845. Orders came last evening … directing General Taylor to move without any delay … to the extreme western border of Texas and take up a position … near the Rio Grande, and … expel any armed force of Mexicans who may cross that river …

Hitchcock was not happy about General Taylor’s military maneuvers.

He seems to have lost all respect for Mexican rights and is willing to be an instrument of Mr. Polk for pushing our boundary as far west as possible.

Later, he wrote again:

I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors. ... We have not one particle of right to be here. ... It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses, for, whatever becomes of this army, there is no doubt of a war between the United States and Mexico.

The Mexican War was controversial in the US, and many actively opposed it, but without success. Zinn ends his account this way:

Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that "we take nothing by conquest ... Thank God."

Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.