Abraham Lincoln and the War on Terror

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Reading last month’s letters was disappointing and ultimately, very sad.

I’m reminded of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Everyone knows the, “Four score and seven years ago,” part, but few can recall the next and most important sentence:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

This wasn’t a rhetorical question from a confident leader - ready to answer with a quirky sound bite. It was heart-wrenching query from an embattled president. It was an admission of doubt from a beleaguered man who sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths in what was, at the time, a losing effort to preserve a fledging democracy.

Why did he do it? Did Lincoln own a crystal ball? Did he know that if he sacrificed 700,000 lives that the United States would someday become a superpower? Of course not. America in 1863 was a weak, unstable, backwater nation. 

He did it because we were, “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” That was all Lincoln needed to know. Democracy was worth the cost, so that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

We are staring in the maw of a dangerous enemy - an enemy that hates us not for what we’ve done, but for who we are. Only some people don’t believe that. Some talk of “globalization” and the inherent peacefulness of the human race, blithely wishing we could all just get along. Or they point fingers at those who defend democracy, resorting to name-calling and political pandering to further their narrow aims.

Don’t get me wrong. Like most people, I’m gravely disappointed by recent events. Like every conflict, ours has been fraught with mistakes. And it would be simply marvelous if everyone on the planet lived in peace and harmony. But eons of history proves we can’t. The world is full of people who will kill and steal what others have. Ditto for nations. If the 20th Century proved anything, it proved the human race is even more bloodthirsty than we’ve ever been before. To think otherwise is foolish.

Was Lincoln wrong? Is it right to fight for democracy? Or should we wallow in self-incrimination and doubt, crucifying the shepherd who (at least) tries to defend his flock?

The wolves are watching.

- Dave Belton