Posted on 05/11/2007 8:57:05 PM PDT by bnelson44
When we clicked yesterday morning on the Drudge Report's headline "Republican Congressmen Take It To Bush," it took us to a story in the New York Times about how Republican moderates had gone to warn President Bush that their support for the war was faltering. The Times quoted Congressman LaHood of Illinois as saying, "It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war."
At that, we reached for Lloyd Wendt's history of the Chicago Tribune, which begins with a chapter about what could have been called the Civil War Surge. It tells of an encounter, in 1865, between the young editor of the Tribune, Joseph Medill, and President Lincoln, the Illinois lawyer the Tribune had, to oversimplify the story a bit, essentially assigned to go down to Washington to run the country. "Some observers went even further," Mr. Wendt writes, "asserting that the Tribune had started the war, a compliment the proprietors were disinclined to accept."
The encounter Mr. Wendt describes between Medill and Lincoln started when a delegation comprising Medill and two other Chicagoans had gone to the war department to try to get Secretary Stanton to back off from drafting more men from Cook County. An angry Stanton rebuffed them, and they'd gone over his head, to the White House, and met with Lincoln in his office. Lincoln wouldn't back off, either; a dozen states were trying to get out of draft calls. But Lincoln agreed to walk back over to Stanton's office and "hear the argument on both sides."
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Read it all
BumP
No man seeks to send others to war. Those who support a cause and then seek to abandon it as the cost mounts had best be aware of their own failings in not heading off a conflict that once engaged can not just be ignored or withdrawn from when one feels like doing so.
Absolutely history repeating itself!!!!
excellent editorial
Mr. Chairman: January 12, 1848
Some, if not all the gentlemen on, the other side of the House, who have addressed the committee within the last two days, have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago, declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President[James K Polk]. I admit that such a vote should not be given, in mere party wantonness, and that the one given, is justly censurable, if it have no other, or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case. How I got this impression, and how it may possibly be removed, I will now try to show. When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended.
*Continues*
I take it this guy wasn’t from Texas
I don’t blame Pres. Bush for not being able to change our present-day cowards’ minds; they haven’t a shred of honor left while those at Lincoln’s meeting apparently did.
ping
I really don’t see how this compares to our situation. The RINOs who are turning on Bush probably weren’t big Iraq hawks in the 90’s.
Was there a single Republican who opposed the war? Maybe these ten or eleven noodle-spines weren’t in the Congress then (I’ll wager they were) but that is no excuse for going limp now. Sometimes principal has to trump the polls. There are a few people who can say they have opposed the war from the beginning. None of them are in this group of schmucks.
I do. He'll fight for whats right, but refuses to stand up and dress down these bastards that undermind him at every turn. He is a gutless in this respect!
Thank you. This article brings the historical gravity of this time. What happens now will define this century. I hope we make the right choices as a society.
You might notice in the historical account that Lincoln does not dress down the men in public. I have no idea what Pres. Bush says to our present-day cowards in private. I also have no doubt that the MSM would not trumpet any well-deserved resounding rebukes if it made the president look good.
This GOP group are not concerned about the “cost of war” they are concerned about their careers.
The disgust me!
Another thing!! I’m sick and tired of being grouped with the ‘American people want’ and ‘60+ of the people want the war on terror over’ and ‘ it has taken too long’ and ‘we were not prepared’.
Our dumber than dumb expect a one hour thursday night tv program.
If the blank blank dems would have stuck with President Bush so the terrorist could be faced with a united front we would be alot closer to coming home!!!!!
Instead, it is all about elections!
Big difference.
A Sheridan sitrep to Grant: “I am ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!”
Memorable....
“Bush isn’t fighting a real war in Iraq. Lincoln had real Generals such as Sherman and Grant; even more importantly he allowed them to wage total warfare against the Confederacy. Big difference.”
Not exactly. We probably have our own ‘real generals,’ but who would know, given the rules of engagement set from the top down? A Publius essay a while back noted that America has been in Vietnam mode from the start, fighting a limited war with limited involvement on the home front. That kind of war is the kind of war America hasn’t ever won in a military sense, and the President made a conscious decision to fight that kind of war. Reagan knew better. Even Colin Powell, curse his moderate eyes, knew better. The American people have never been able to stomach a long conflict without a clear end in sight.
If we wanted to end this war quickly, or at least bring it to a head-to-head we can win, we’d have bombed Mecca instead of Afghanistan, and let loose India, Israel, and Australia to fight the war that now seems inevitable. Instead it seems certain that Bush will ‘not leave the war in the next President’s lap,’ which means a weak Iraqi democracy, quickly destroyed by Saudi and Iranian funded infighting. America will embarrassed on the global stage again as a weak ally, unable to commit to all-out war again.
Someone made the remark that George W. Bush is the George B. McClellan of our era. He will always do just enough to prevent our side from losing, but in the end he will never do enough to actually win the war. The neocons in his cabinet thought they could basically transform Iraq into a second Turkey, - but without the benefit of an Iraqi Ataturk in the equation. What the hell were they thinking...??
Agreed see my tag line!
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