Shame on Abe

I realize that I rag on the Rebs far more than the Dims. There are two good reasons for that: 1) the Rebs are in power and the party in power is always on the receiving end of much more criticism than the so-called “loyal opposition”; and 2) the Dims don’t say or do anything worth commenting on, which is worthy of criticism in its own right but how many times can that comment be repeated.

The Dims can’t reach consensus on anything. For example: the war in Iraq. Half of them are trying too hard to act like the exact opposite of President Bush, which fires up and polarizes the hardcore base in both parties but doesn’t produce anything, while the other half are trying to act like they’re just more nuanced and reasonable versions of W, which disgusts the Dim base and amuses the Reb base and still doesn’t produce anything. At one point early this year I didn’t think the Dims could find a way to lose the next election; now I wonder if they can find anyway to win it. It’s amazing to watch them. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson must be doing the proverbial bone-yard rollover, while Presidents Carter and Clinton salve their party wounds by leaving town to fight election fraud and AIDS in foreign countries.

But, I digress. Let me get back to those whacky Rebs.

Recently, the Reb faithful who stand staunchly behind the Bushwhacky policy that has produced the current state of the war in Iraq and the somewhat apparitional war on terrorism have apparently grown fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln. You just can’t go wrong if you quote Honest Abe on a regular basis – provided, of course, that you’re being honest when you do so. Unfortunately, honesty has become an expendable virtue in American politics. Honesty is for wimps, and for presidents who had never heard of a sound bite.

The Lincoln quote du jour goes like this: members of Congress who do anything to damage military morale in wartime "are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged." Whoa, who knew that the lanky gentleman from Illinois had such a serrated edge? He should be called Hang-‘Em-High Abe.

For example, Diana Irey, the Republican candidate running against Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, used the "quote" recently in an appearance before the National Press Club in Washington. FactCheck.org reports that their research shows more than 18,000 internet references to this “quote”, in addition to it being used in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and in Republican speeches. Politicians and pundits who are fond of accusing war critics of disloyalty or treason have fallen in love with this little chip of log-cabin wisdom.

There’s just one tiny problem – Lincoln never said it. The flurry of false attribution springs from conservative author, J. Michael Waller, in his article entitled “Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason”, as published in the December 23, 2003 issue of Insight magazine where he said:

"’Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged,’ that's what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States.” This is the quote used by Irey and others.

Waller has publicly admitted that the words are his, but claims he never meant to put them in quotes. He blames an editor for the mistake. The editor says, “Nice try, buddy, they were there from the get go.” (Okay, okay, I admit that those are my words not the editor’s. I didn’t intend to put them in quotes; Microsoft Word did it.) In Waller’s case, I’m not sure the quote-mark defense matters because if you remove the quote marks you still get precisely the same false attribution. (In my case, I have no defense, other than being a registered Republican.)

It’s one thing to accuse John Murtha, a 30-year Marine vet with a chest full of combat decorations, of being an unpatriotic saboteur who provides “aid and comfort to our enemy,” as Irey did. But it’s another thing to claim to have the support of Abraham Lincoln in leveling that ridiculous charge and to suggest that hanging is an appropriate response for a member of Congress who dares to oppose a presidential policy on war. That kind of conduct is worse than unpatriotic.

Politicians like Irey are more likely to sabotage our constitutional form of government than many of the foreign threats that we’re fighting and guarding against. Dishonest rhetoric like that employed by Irey and any number of the 18,000 references mentioned above is a form of political terrorism that undermines our national security by breaking down our political process and turning congressional debate into a pile of partisan flotsam and jetsam.

You can quote me on that.