Here is a letter to the editor I am working on. It is my attempt to answer the question.
Seven score and 4 years ago our nation was engaged in a great civil war, testing our national will. Much like today, a war of words was also waged between those who declared the war lost and demanded an immediate peace and those grimly determined to persevere in order to achieve victory for freedom.
The rhetoric of the 1864 Democratic platform, sounds at bit more elevated than "impeach Bush" and "bring the troops home now" but the sentiment is same.
Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.
The rest of the 1864 platform (
http://tinyurl.com/2t86ey ) could be nicely summarized as " support our troops but no more blood for blacks"
Sadly George W Bush is not Abraham Lincoln. However, if one looks at the catastrophic military blunders made by the North in the beginning of the Civil War and the vicious attacks on Lincoln by his opponents and the media they don't look so different.. Now some may protest that comparing the Iraq war to the Civil war is unfair. Still the US has 100+ year history of military intervention in other countries civil wars including in Russia, China, Latin America, the Middle East, and of course most recently, in Korea, Vietnam, and the Balkans. Unfortunately, we are not always successful in our intervention. However, when we fail (as in Vietnam) or fail to intervene (as in Darfur), the consequence are bad for America and catastrophic for the other country.
Our fathers and grandfathers war in Korea is good example of our intervention in a civil war. Korea, like Iraq was a war of choice, the stated reasons we went to war was prevent the spread of communism, but keeping the fledging South Korean democracy from being replaced by tyrannical regime was also important. Now with perfect hindsight Communism (like WMD) were probably not as big of threat to our security as we were lead to believe. So on one level the chant (pick your President) lied and people died is correct. However, what war protester of the American civil war, Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq war turn a blind eye is that regimes we were/are fighting against are truly horrific. Slavery in the south, Vietnamese reeducation camps, Pol Pot's killing fields, Milosevic's ethnic cleansing, the Taliban's stonings in the soccer stadium, Saddam's raping and gassing, Kim Jong Il and his dad's concentration camps and state famine are all examples of the evil we are really fighting.. These victims are not counting by the thousands like our war dead but by the millions and tens of millions. Our success in unpopular wars, has prevented millions of more victims, our failures (and failures to act) have emboldens the regimes to commit unimaginable atrocities. One only has to look at the prosperity of South Korea, and the hellish conditions of North Korea, to get an idea of the good America can do in a civil war, and the consequence when we aren't totally victorious.
President Kennedy said "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty." JFK, was wrong we will not pay any price for other people's liberty. For instance, In the cold war, we would not risk a full scale war with Russia or China to help a country they invaded. But just because we will not pay "ANY" price doesn't mean we should be willing to pay SOME price. The table below shows a couple examples of the burden America has being willing to bear for "liberty".
Total Deaths Deaths Per Millions Freed People Liberated
Million Americans per American Death
Civil War (Union) 350,000 15,975 3.9 11
Korean War 33,651 224 20.3 603
Iraq War 3384 11 26.8 7920
I am guessing few Civil War moms were willing to sacrifice their son's lives to free eleven slaves (Especially because few white people felt Negroes were capable of handling freedom and democracy' sound familiar?). However, looking back aren't we glad they did? Almost all American's understand that removing Saddam regime was a great victory for liberty, when Saddam was executed he took with the infamous title,of "World #1 living killer". We also know that Iraq in anarchy, or controlled by clerics close to Iran, or by Al-Qaeda are all bad for the US and even worse for the long suffering people of Iraq . Those who declare this war un-winnable are ignoring the long and generally successful role that the US and our British allies have had in gradually bring stability to unstable situations. Iraq is not a football game and we are not in the fourth quarter. It is more like climbing a mountain, after discovering our first trail has been closed due to a rock slide. We have the best mountain climbers in world in our armed services and a new and very capable guide. The generations before us have climbed higher mountains, and under far worse conditions, we need to keep going.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
