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Yeah, the remark about Lincoln being a man of peace almost floored me. Also, if Obama is elected he’s going to be tested immediately in the worst way. Chances are we’re more likely to get into a war if he’s elected than McCain.
OBAMA: Well, I think that this administration has not been very good at what’s been called the exercise of “soft power.” ...
KEYES: See, I think the great problem is that you cannot give a soft response to a hard threat. It would be kind of like trying to meet a bayonet with a spaghetti noodle. And it’s not going to help the people of this country to survive.
After 9-11, we were faced with a hard threat. We had lost thousands of people, and we had to move aggressively. The belief that Afghanistan was enough is a belief based on a failure to understand the global infrastructure of terror—so that you deal with the threat that has hit you instead of with the threats that will hit you later if you neglect to preemptively move against their bases of support.
It is precisely in order to create a situation in which maybe people who would be otherwise supportive of this bloodthirsty threat will respond a little better to your overtures that you move with decision against regimes like the Iraqi regime that had shown itself disposed to support terror, to fund terror, to be part gleefully of the global infrastructure of terror—and to act against them before they have the opportunity to act against you.
http://archives.alankeyes.com/transcript.php?id=367
As the Civil War started, in the very beginning of Lincoln's presidential term, a group of "Peace Democrats" proposed a peaceful resolution to the developing Civil War by offering a truce with the South, and forming a constitutional convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect States' rights. The proposal was ignored by the Unionists of the North and not taken seriously by the South. However, the Peace Democrats, also called copperheads by their enemies, publicly criticized Lincoln's belief that violating the U.S. Constitution was required to save it as a whole.With Congress not in session until July, Lincoln assumed all powers not delegated in the Constitution, including the power to suspend habeas corpus. In 1861, Lincoln had already suspended civil law in territories where resistance to the North's military power would be dangerous. In 1862, when copperhead democrats began criticizing Lincoln's violation of the Constitution, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus throughout the nation and had many copperhead democrats arrested under military authority because he felt that the State Courts in the north west would not convict war protesters such as the copperheads. He proclaimed that all persons who discouraged enlistments or engaged in disloyal practices would come under Martial Law.
Among the 13,000 people arrested under martial law was a Maryland Secessionist, John Merryman. Immediately, Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding the military to bring Merryman before him. The military refused to follow the writ. Justice Taney, in Ex-parte Merryman, then ruled the suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional because the writ could not be suspended without an Act of Congress. President Lincoln and the military ignored Justice Taney's ruling.
Finally, in 1866, after the war, the Supreme Court officially restored habeas corpus in Ex-parte Milligan, ruling that military trials in areas where the civil courts were capable of functioning were illegal.
WHERE and WHEN does the moron who wrote this article propose to defend ourselves against our publicly sworn enemy?
AFTER they take HIS head?
Fools who think that surrender to tyrants is the path to peace, deserve neither peace nor a voice in the matter.