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| A terrific article. |
ETWolverine |
08/04/06 |
Jonathan Zimmerman: What would Lincoln do? -- Trading our liberties for security
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, July 29, 2006
NEW YORK
LIKE MOST of my friends and colleagues, I'm outraged by President Bush's assault on basic civil liberties in the so-called War on Terror. We invoke Thomas Jefferson on the rights of man, James Madison on checks and balances, and, most of all, Benjamin Franklin on the dangers of compromising these values: "Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
But here are two words that you'll never hear us say: Abraham Lincoln.
That's because Lincoln's wartime decisions raise the really tough issue that most Democrats continue to evade: When should we give up some liberties in the name of security? And unless we can frame an answer, we don't deserve to win Congress in November or the White House in 2008.
Consider Lincoln's predicament in April 1861, at the outset of the Civil War. Eleven slaveholding states had seceded; four "border states" -- Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware -- remained in the Union but all still practiced slavery.
To win the war, Lincoln had to make sure that these states did not also secede. Together, they would have added 45 percent to the white population of the Confederate States of America. Even more important, they would have nearly doubled the Confederacy's capacity to make guns, ammunition, and the other tools of war.
The most critical state was Maryland, of course, because it bounded the District of Columbia on three sides. On the fourth side lay Virginia, which had already left the Union. If Maryland seceded too, Lincoln would find his national capital surrounded by the enemy.
And he couldn't have that. There were clear pockets of secessionist sentiment in Maryland's biggest city, Baltimore, where many houses flew Confederate flags after the war began. So rather than risk losing the city -- and, quite possibly, the war -- Lincoln sent Army officials into Baltimore to arrest alleged secessionists and jail them at Fort McHenry. (The prisoners included a grandson of Francis Scott Key, who had written "The Star Spangled Banner" while the fort was under British fire, in 1814.)
A few months later, as the Maryland legislature was preparing to vote on secession, Lincoln had 31 of the lawmakers imprisoned on suspicion of Confederate sympathies. They stayed in jail until the next state election, to ensure that pro-Union candidates won.
No charges. No evidence. No trial.
Sound familiar?
Then, as now, the president's enemies mounted constitutional challenges to his actions. One of the people imprisoned in Baltimore, John Merryman, sued for his freedom in federal circuit court. The senior judge was none other than Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Marylander and author of the infamous Dred Scott decision. Taney ruled that Lincoln had no right to jail Merryman without cause, because the Constitution gave Congress -- not the president -- exclusive power to suspend basic liberties in times of war.
Lincoln's response? Go to hell. His primary job, he said, was to win the war, and he needed every possible weapon to do so. He refused to obey Taney's opinion, which would have freed hundreds of Confederate partisans. Who knows what they would have done if they'd been let loose?
That should sound familiar, too. Indeed, almost everything President Bush has done in the "War on Terror" echoes Lincoln's actions during the War Between the States. In the name of national security, the Bush administration has jailed suspected terrorists without showing cause. It has denied them the right to counsel and other basic liberties. It has conducted warrantless eavesdrops on phone calls and e-mails. And it has insisted that the White House -- not Congress -- has the right to do all of this, on its own.
As in the Civil War, meanwhile, the Supreme Court has sought to rein in the president. Most recently, it ruled that the White House could not establish secret military commissions without congressional authority. It's still not clear how the president -- or Congress -- will respond.
But here's what is clear: Benjamin Franklin was wrong. And Abraham Lincoln was right.
There are times when dangers are so immediate -- and so terrifying -- that we do need to sacrifice some freedoms to stop them. And the Civil War was one of those times.
Is the "War on Terror" another? Not yet. Whatever the threat of Islamic terrorism, it doesn't come close to the peril that the Confederates posed to the Union in 1861. Until President Bush can explain exactly why we need his extra-legal measures, we should all stand in opposition to them.
At the same time, though, liberals like myself need to start thinking -- and talking -- about when we, too, would give up some liberties to save the Union. A rash of suicide bombers' striking several American cities at the same time? A "dirty bomb" or nuclear attack? A smallpox or anthrax attack?
You might reply that our liberties define our nation: If we abandon them, we give up on America itself. But Abraham Lincoln said otherwise, and lucky for us. By sacrificing a bit of freedom for suspected Confederate sympathizers, he helped win freedom for nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans.
I think it was worth it. And I bet you do, too.
Until we Democrats can specify when and how we'd take the same harsh measures that Lincoln did, we don't deserve to sit under his mantle. Or to run the country.
Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history and education at New York University, is the author of Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century, to be published this fall by Harvard University Press.
Source: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060729_29zimm.1596f33.html
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What do you think? Comments, please.
Elliot |
Clarification/Follow-up by MicroGlyphics on 08/07/06 11:14 am:
tomder55,
You ask what other rights I have lost besides having to take my shoes off at the aeroport. How about peaceful assembly? Why don't you ask those people in Gitmo what rights they feel they have lost? Why don't you look at the rights abridged by the so-called Patriot Act?
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 08/07/06 12:07 pm:
Elliot
Over the past 30 years, the USA and its interests have been the target of multiple successful terrorist attacks. We have averaged roughly 3 attacks per year since the 90s, and roughly 1 per year since the 80s. So the fact that we have gone 1791 days without an attack is actually the abberation.
agreed however since they occured on foreign soil prior to 9-11 (except the 1993 WTC attack)the disconnect I speak of still applies .
..................................
MicroGlyphics
I am not aware of any loss of the right of peaceful assembly . The Gitmo detainees are foreign terrorists captured on the battle field and are not entitled to the same rights as a free American . Tha Patriot Act was passed by a bi-partisan Congress and has passed all Constitutional challenges in the courts .
Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 08/07/06 12:09 pm:
>>>How about peaceful assembly? <<<
Since when has peacefull assembly been abridged? I see protests against Bush almost every day in the press. I see Cindy Sheehan and her loony-lefty followers in the press protesting at least once a week. Nobody is preventing peaceful assembly or peaceful protest.
>>>Why don't you ask those people in Gitmo what rights they feel they have lost?<<<
Really? POWs have never been treated as well or with as much religious deference as the Gitmo POWs have been. Please remember that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those who violate the rules of war, yet the US Supreme Court has seen fit to grant them such protections anyweay. The rights of the POWs at Gitmo haven't been abridged, their rights have been expanded when compared to the historical rights of POWs.
>>>Why don't you look at the rights abridged by the so-called Patriot Act? <<<
First, please name a single right that is abridged by the Patriot Act. Second, please name a single innocent person who such an abridgement has directly affected. I will bet you $100 that you can't name one... because it hasn't happened.
Elliot Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 08/07/06 12:14 pm:
>>>however since they occured on foreign soil prior to 9-11 (except the 1993 WTC attack)the disconnect I speak of still applies .<<<
Actually, Tom, quite a few of them were on US soil.
1980 July 22- Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an Iranian exile and critic of Ayatollah Khomeni, was shot in his Bethesda, Maryland home. Dawud Salahuddin, an American Muslim convert, was apparently paid by Iranians to kill Tabatabai.
1982 January 28- Kemal Arikan, the Turkish Consul-General in Los Angeles, is killed by members of the Justice Commandos against Armenian Genocide.
1982 May 4- Turkish Honorary Consul Orhan Gunduz was assassinated in his car in Somerville, Massachusetts by the JCAG.
1983 November 7- U.S. Senate bombing. The Armed Resistance Unit, a militant leftist group, bombs the U.S. Capitol in response to the U.S. invasion of Grenada.
1985 October 11- Alex Odeh, a prominent Arab-American, was killed by a bomb in his office in Santa Ana, California. The case is unsolved.
1993 February 26- First World Trade Center bombing killed six and injured 1,000.
1995 April 19- Oklahoma City bombing: A truck bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people-including children playing in the building's day care center. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols launched the attack in protest of the US government.
1996 July 27- Centennial Olympic Park bombing occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Atlanta Olympics. One person was killed and 111 injured.
1997, February 24: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
1999, December 14: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
So there have been quite a few attacks on our soil prior to 9-11.
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