The Brilliance of Abraham Lincoln
This diary is being written as a response to quaoar in this comment:
http://www.swordscrossed.org/node/1230#comment-51857
In formulating a response I was searching for a particular quote by Abraham Lincoln which I was aware of from the Time-Life series on the Civil War. I was not able to find the quote I was looking for, but I did come upon this letter:
Letter to Erastus Corning and Others, Abraham Lincoln , June 12, 1863
It is an excellent read, in my opinion, and very much worth everyone's time. It is obvious to me, based on this letter, that Bush 43 is doing his best to follow in the footsteps of Lincoln with respect to the GWOT. I know that most here will disagree and object to the comparison, but this is my opinion. I need not justify it to any of you. The parallels between the philosophies and the rationales are striking to me, however, and they indicate a clear intent on the part of the President to follow historical precedent as he sees it (i.e. as defined by Lincoln and as they are applied to our present situation).
I offer the following perspective to merely explain my personal beliefs in this matter, as an aid for those who care to understand them. I do not intend to debate these points as I am resolute in my position, and thus there would be nothing to be gained in any such debate. We must all make up our own minds in these matters, and I respect your right to form a different opinion.
To understand my perspective on the GWOT and my support for things such as the Patriot Act (with sunset clauses), read the above referenced letter with the following in mind:
- I maintain that our enemy is already amongst us, and clandestinely so. In this respect I consider the so-called sleeper cells to be a de facto invasion of our country which must be dealt with in no uncertain terms.
- In so far as the stated intent of these sleeper cells is to do harm to the American public for the purpose of creating and maintaining terror amongst the population, I assert that the issue of Public Safety is obvious.
- You will see mention of the constitutional provision, "The privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it." Based on the above, it is my opinion that the term Invasion is applicable to our current circumstances.
- As you read this letter if you mentally replace Lincoln with Bush as the author (differences in literary styles aside), and references to Rebellion with Invasion, you will be presented with a brilliantly written discussion of our present situation not only of my personal opinion, but I believe that of President Bush as well.
Feel free to provide your own personal reactions and perspectives below.
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Comments :
Here is another opinion on Habeas
The event you chose as an analogy was ruled illegal.
That course case has since been reaffirmed.
(strangely, I'm in most agreement with Scalia on this one)
So now the GWASM is back to being like the civil war, a period in which slightly more people died per week than died on 9/11.
GWASM?
What the heck is GWASM?
Strangely, I am in disagreement with Scalia on this one.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
In Lincoln's time
we were not holding innocent foreign nationals indefinitely without charge. In this case we seem to be. This
, and this 
and this 
, all of them involving a failure to respect the human rights, and not just the habeas corpus rights, of detainees, will be a black mark against us for decades to come.
If only...
..Lincoln had let us get rid of the south when we had the chance.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
:-) I appreciate your current political reference
and meaning.
That having been said, I would like to take this as a opportunity to discuss/illustrate how even the simplest of comments can be twisted.
My purpose, here is not to malign Tlaloc but merely to use his comment as a point of illustration on how, IMHO, the left frequently takes points such as this completely out of context and uses them to provide seemingly anecdotal evidence of the racism of the right.
I view the mischaracterization of Tlaloc's comment which I will present below as being more or less equivalent to the mischaracterization of Trent Lott's now famous comment to Strom Thurmond at his birthday party.
<Begin Fabrication>
If only Lincoln had let us get rid of the south when we had the chance? What kind of racist crap is that? If Katrina has shown us anything it is that there are thousands (millions?) of blacks still in the south today.
Why did George Bush allow Katrina to kill all of those blacks? Racism. Why has he prevented any aid from reaching them? Racism.
So now you want them all to have been left in slavery and at the mercy, or rather the complete lack thereof, of the plantation owners? You, sir, are a racist of the first order.
<End Fabrication>
Thoughts? (open question to the entire community)
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Stretch n/t
Bah, I wrote a whole response
earlier and posted it just as the server went out. Lost it all. I should know better by now. :)
Here's the gist of what I said:
I don't think the issue is whether alleged sleeper cells can be legitimately interpreted as "invasion", but whether the pose the kind of invasive threat that the law has in mind to justify stripping the population of one of its most important protections against the government. Because that's what habeas corpus is: not a "right", but a defense against an instrusive government. As such, it's one of the single most important aspects of our law. We make a rare exception in cases of extreme necessity, and I'm not sure that you've made a solid enough case that a few sleeper cells constitutes that kind of extreme situation.
If it were, we can just as easily make the same case for the lone wolf
network, which of course has given the FBI migrains over their legal inability to prosecute in the same way we prosecute most terrorism. Stripping habeas corpus would resolve that, but no one has seriously argued for that route. Simple reason why: stripping habeas corpus is an extreme necessity in the case of an infrastructure breakdown, which is why it was limited to only those cases in which the Founders could conceive the infrastructure breaking down, from within or from without.
Even if we can loosely define sleeper cells as "invasion", it's certainly not the breakdown of infrastructure that merits measures this extreme.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
I can agree that the extent to which we have been ...
"invaded" at this point is legitimately open to debate. In that sense I have not made a conclusive case in support of my position.
On the reverse side of this "you haven't made your case" coin, however, I don't believe that you have made any sort of a case to suggest that the stated temporary suspension of Habeas Corpus in times of need have caused the nation any great harm (as noted within my reference), and especially within the context of our current situation.
While it would definitely suck to be one of the people on the wrong end of this, we are talking less than a handful of people here weighed against the lives of thousands or milliions.
Two or three cases is hardly evidence of a widespread systemic abuse of the relaxed checks and balances, especially when it remains unclear as to whether these people have, in fact, been wronged. As I have argued elsewhere on SC, I, at least, do not believe that these relaxed checks and balances should be permanent. Neither did Lincoln.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
on causing harm:
I would love to use that argument if I'm ever pulled in front of a Judge. "Your honor, I may have broken the law, but it's my opinion that you haven't shown any evidence that I harmed anyone in the process." Case dismissed?
The fact is, we keep habeas corpus intact for such extreme circumstances because we don't want to live in a situation where suspension of it is a typical government response. Remember that our Founders were suspicious of nothing so much as government power, which is why they did all they could to spread it out and check itself.
To digress a moment, this is exactly why the "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" argument has irked me, specifically when it's used to defend unchecked executive power. The President might not be reading my emails (he'd be bored stiff if he were), but he can, because somehow he rationalized that giving himself that power was a key weapon in the war on terror. That bothers me. It would bother me considerably less to know that there's another branch of government double-checking to make sure the system isn't abused. But apparently that deprives us of this weapon? Huh?
The reason for the digression is that it's further explanation why people on the Left are so quick to distrust the motives of a President who's giving himself unchecked power, using arguments that might make sense when chaos has descended on the country, but not so much right now. Even the potential for chaos isn't all that evident, given the threat we're facing, which is much better at blowing up the occasional building than making any real threat to our infrastructure. If they see a threat coming, they can make a localized call, but to put us in a permanent state of "threat" with no end in sight - in fact, as many of us have argued, with no end possible - means that we've rewritten the Constitution to be something that it is not. Bush would argue that's a necessity in this post-9/11 world. I'd argue he should have paid more attention in History class.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Responses.
I am not trying to be flippant or equate these two cases, this is just the simplest example that comes to mind...
Have you ever gotten out of a speeding ticket with just a warning? Know anyone who has? Does this not amount to essentially the same thing? How about plea bargains which avoid jail time? The current system is not as black and white as you make it out to be.
Either way, you are the one who brought up the issue of "infrastructure" (which I take to mean "systemic") as being a significant feature here. Well, I am just observing that the systemic argument runs both ways.
We don't disagree on the principle, just on whether our current circumstances warrant the exception. As I already stated, this point is legitimately debatable.
This is a fair concern, and one that we should all be cognizant of. Under "ordinary circumstances" I would be on your side of this argument, but I believe that our current circumstances warrant granting the government some additional latitude, on a time-limited termporary basis, with respect to investigating terrorist threats ... especially when we are not observing any widespread abuses of that latitude.
IMHO, we have not seen what I would term "widespread abuses." There have been a couple of examples, both of which are still open to debate as to whether they actually ARE abuses. By all means we should continue to monitor the situation and keep the spotlight of public scrutiny on the situation, and then trust the American populace to determine when enough is enough in terms of removing the granted latitude.
I disagree on this last part. Anything which has been done can also be undone. Bush is not a King. He is not going to declare martial law to extend his time in office or anything like that because he couldn't make it stick even if he wanted to (not that I think that he even has any such designs, BTW). He will be gone on the prescribed timescale for for his departure and the next administration will have their turn at the wheel, so to speak.
I truly don't believe that we are in a constitutional crisis situation here, or I would be complaining just as loudly as you are.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree