War Provocation Quotes
The Polk Administration wanted War with Mexico but felt it would not have public support if the Unites States was the aggressor. So the Army was sent to the border to provoke the Mexicans to attack first. The strategy worked and President Polk had much more support since he claimed that Mexico had attacked American Soldiers and retaliation was necessary. In the aftermath of the Mexican War, the United States obtained much new territory including the Southwestern States and Mexico was destabilized.
A false flag operation is one where a country’s covert operatives attack some asset of the nation and blame it on a foreign enemy—often to consolidate political power or gain public support for a war. For example, the Nazi’s secretly burned down the German parliament and blamed it on the Russian communists.
The Germans had comitted some terrible war crimes in Belgium at the begiining of WWI. They had torpedoed passanger ships with some Americans getting killed, Public opinion was such that Wilson worried that some atrocity by any small german detachment could pressure his administration to enter WWI to satisf American public opinion.
