Bush and Lincoln???

Thomas Bray wrote a column for this morning's Detroit News in which he argued that there were some significant paralells between President Abraham Lincoln's handling of the Civil War and President George W. Bush's prosecution of the War in Iraq. You can read his column here.

I wrote the following response to Mr. Bray:

Dear Mr. Bray:

I read your piece in this morning’s Detroit News in which you compared President George W. Bush’s experience in Iraq with President Abraham Lincoln’s prosecution of the Civil War. Your argument was, in my opinion, one of the stupidest pieces of commentary in the entire history of the English language.

You simply ignored one of the most fundamental differences between Lincoln in the Civil War and Bush in Iraq. Lincoln had a fairly well-defined reason for going to war in the first place. Yes, he originally stated that he wanted to keep slavery from spreading only to emancipate all slaves two years later as you pointed out in your column. It was still, however, all about slavery – a consistent casus bellum.

Bush, in contrast, began case for war with the argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which were an imminent threat to the United States and her allies. He also inferred that Iraq and/or Saddam Hussein had some type of involvement with 9/11. Both of those claims have since proved to be false.

Rather than admit that he made a mistake, Bush and his minions began offering a third rationale for going to war in Iraq – that it would spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

Of course, everyone in the Bush administration ignores the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis want to see the U.S. withdraw her troops. They also ignore calls from the elected leadership in Iraq for a time-table on U.S. withdrawal.

Precisely how, I wonder, does ignoring the will of the Iraqi people and their elected leaders benefit the cause of democracy in the Middle East?

To summarize, Lincoln had one, simple consistent reason for taking America into the Civil War. Bush has already gone through three of them and his reason for war today is essentially, “We’re at war in Iraq so I don’t have to admit having made a mistake.”

It’s also noteworthy that the Civil War only lasted four years (1861-1865). The war in Iraq is already in its fourth year and has no sign of ending any time soon. This, of course, means that conservative pundits such as you will undoubtedly have to resort to even more tortured logic and even more blatant attempts at revisionist history as the years go on.

All of this means that the 2008 presidential and congressional races should an extremely interesting set of contests.

Sincerely,
Frank P. Nemecek
Detroit, Michigan

If Mr. Bray ever responds to my rebuttal, I'll be sure to post it here. Until then, a copy of the book that he referred to in his piece is available at Amazon.com.