Naturally, the totalitarian/neocon case for imprisoning or executing the Bush administration’s political opponents is based on precedents established by Abraham Lincoln. "Lincoln’s policy was to have treasonous federal lawmakers arrested and tried before military tribunals, and exiled or hanged if convicted," Waller announces. He quotes Lincoln as saying that "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs who should be arrested, exiled or hanged." Lincoln "spoke forcefully of the need to arrest, convict and, if necessary, execute congressmen who by word or deed undermined the war effort."
Of course, Lincoln defined a "saboteur" as virtually anyone who disagreed with his politics and policies and subsequently ordered the military to arrest literally tens of thousands of Northern political opponents, including dozens of opposition newspaper editors.
Both "Lincoln scholars" and neocon political activists typically take Lincoln at his word and seek no other definitions of treason or sabotage. To Lincoln, criticizing him or his administration amounted to "warring upon the military." And according to Waller, these words "apply to some lawmakers today," even though these lawmakers insist that they are opposing the Bush war policy "to support the troops."
Exhibit A in the neocon case for imprisoning political opponents is Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, who was forcefully taken from his Dayton, Ohio home in the middle of the night by 67 armed federal soldiers, thrown into a military prison without due process, convicted by a military tribunal, and deported. One place to read about Vallandigham is in Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads of the North, by historian Frank L. Klement. On the back cover James McPherson says that "Klement’s essays on the Democratic opposition to the Lincoln administration offers a vigorous defense of the legitimacy and value of that opposition." Interesting: Since when does political opposition in America require "legitimizing"?
lewrockwell.com |
