[Peace-discuss] Letter to Editor

Wed May 31 08:51:10 CDT 2006

If Mr. Seiter thinks it was morally outrageous to say "No slave that
ever lived was worth the life of one American soldier," then he is
misguided to lionize President Lincoln, who in 1861 was essentially
saying that, struggling as he was to convince potential draftees in
the North that fighting a war to end slavery was the last thing on his
mind.

The key thing, though, it seems to me, is that the goal of war
supporters in framing the argument this way ("is it worth it?") is to
get people to accept without question the assumption behind the
argument: that the goal and the effect of US policy is to "liberate"
Iraqis. If the goal and the effect is not to liberate Iraqis -- which,
as we all know, it isn't -- then the argument is irrelevant. The
priority, then, is to attack that assumption... If the lives (not to
mention opinions) of Iraqis are worth something, then we should Get
Out Now.

On 5/31/06, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hey folks-
>
> Carl is right, of course.  But the most interesting
> part of this exchange, to me, is the way even the
> pro-war folks can claim to be the defenders of the
> value of human life:
>
> "No slave that ever lived was worth the life of one
> American soldier," Seiter says the antiwar folks say
> -- and actually if I recall, some did say something
> similar.  It's a nasty strain of opposition to war
> that - I think I mentioned recently - was a major part
> of the anti-imperialists' opposition to the Spanish
> American War and persists in antiwar movements to this
> day (to a much lesser extent).
>
> In a way it's an extension of Carl's point, that we
> should never think of history as white hats and black
> hats (so to speak).  Some of the antiwar sentiment
> during World War II was pro- or proto-Nazi, and there
> are a lot of Americans today who oppose the current
> wars because they value the "safety of American
> soldiers" over "a bunch of radical
> Arabs."  I don't think they are the majority, and
> certainly aren't the majority of activists/organizers,
> but they are there.
>
> And there are other kinds of racists, too, like, if
> folks recall him, Mr. "Hippy Joe", who warned us not
> to trust "the Jews in AWARE".  And it's true that in
> Europe some of the outcry against war in Iraq is
> motivated by lingering hatred of Jews, still very much
> alive in France, Germany, Austria, etc.
>
> So what's my point?  I guess I have a couple.  (1) I
> think it's worth trying to understand where the other
> side is coming from.  Seiter may be disingenuous, I
> don't know, but I remember knowing very sincere but
> misguided people who thought the opposition to NAFTA
> was racist (don't let the damn Mexicans take our
> jobs!) - and some of it was.  But NAFTA was still
> wrong, and it was still right to oppose it, because it
> was bad for all North Americans - US, Mexicans,
> Canadians - except of course some big capitalists and
> their lapdog politicos :-)
>
> So that's the other point: (2) I think an important
> response to Seiter would be, to reiterate, to directly
> challenge - again - and keep challenging, as we have
> been - the idea that the war/occupation is an American
> sacrifice to help the poor little brown people of the
> world who couldn't possibly manage their own affairs
> without us.  Like NAFTA, the war and occupation are
> bad for Americans AND bad for Iraqis.
>
> Not news to any of us, really, just a little thinking
> out loud.  I can't write letters to the editor from
> here, but maybe I'll write up something for the IMC
> ...
>
> Ricky
>
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> > Although Seiter thinks he's presenting a reductio ad
> > absurdum,
> > I think he might be right.
> >
> > It may be as much a mistake to make Lincoln a hero,
> > just
> > because slavery was wrong, as it is to make Bush Jr.
> > a hero
> > because Saddam was a tyrant.  It's certainly a
> > mistake to see
> > both (Lincoln v. slavery, Bush v. Saddam) as
> > either-ors that
> > exhaust the possibilities.
> >
> > The radical Republicans ca. 1860 would have said
> > (probably
> > did) "You're either with us or with the slavers" --
> > that's
> > what Lincoln's rhetorical genius allowed him to say
> > in the
> > Gettysburg speech -- and there's no more reason to
> > believe
> > that than there is to believe its modern analogue.
> >
> > See the anti-establishment portrait of Lincoln in
> > Gore
> > Vidal's novel of the same name, perhaps more
> > accurate than
> > the historical consensus.  A recent scholarly study,
> > Ethan S.
> > Rafuse's "McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation
> > in the
> > Struggle for the Union," presents the politics of
> > those who
> > were opposed to the slave-holding aristocracy as
> > well as to
> > the radical Republicans.  William Appleman Williams,
> > the major
> > revisionist (and anti-Vietnam war) historian of a
> > generation
> > ago, pointed out that those Republicans represented
> > the
> > interests of, e.g, wealthy Midwestern landowners.
> >
> > In fact the Civil War called upon poor people to die
> > in a
> > contest between two elites who disagreed on how to
> > exploit
> > labor -- slavery or the wage contract.  In some ways
> > wage-laborers in the North were treated worse than
> > slaves.
> > (E.g., to drain the pestilential swamps around New
> > Orleans,
> > Louisiana slave-owners imported Irish laborers from
> > the North:
> > a dead slave was a major loss, but you could always
> > rent
> > another Irishman.)  Marx wrote to Lincoln to
> > congratulate him
> > on the defeat of slavery, but only because he
> > believed it
> > clarified the class struggle.
> >
> > I can imagine being a member of an anti-war movement
> > in the US
> > a century and a half ago.  It's not too much of a
> > stretch to
> > see those who arranged Lincoln's nomination as the
> > neocons of
> > the time, mutatis mutandis.  Like the neocons, they
> > represented one end of the elite policy spectrum;
> > one might
> > even argue that they divided the Whigs as the
> > neocons have
> > divided the Republicans.
> >
> > As Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself --
> > but it
> > does rhyme. --CGE
> >
> >
> > ---- Original message ----
> >
> > On 30 May 2006 Brian Dolinar
> > <briandolinar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Don't miss this...
> > >
> > >Anti-war critics could take aim at Lincoln
> > >Tuesday May 30, 2006
> > >
> > >Carl Estabrook (May 8 letter) predictably
> > demagogued my
> > letter. My
> > >comment directed toward Estabrook referenced his
> > hypocrisy in not
> > >generating a ballot referendum calling for the
> > impeachment of
> > >President Clinton.
> > >
> > >I am not impressed by whatever lip service
> > Estabrook may have
> > paid to
> > >purported Clinton war crimes either on his radio
> > show or
> > through his
> > >letters to the editor. It is action, not words,
> > that counts.
> > >
> > >If anti-war ideologues were consistent in their
> > moral views,
> > there was
> > >no greater warmonger worthy of impeachment than
> > Illinois' own
> > Abraham
> > >Lincoln.
> > >
> > >President Lincoln "illegally and immorally" invaded
> > other
> > sovereign
> > >states of the South using South Carolina's
> > bloodless bombing
> > of Fort
> > >Sumter as a pretense for war. No war for cotton,
> > Mr. Lincoln!
> > >
> > >President Lincoln spied on Americans, he lied about
> > not going
> > to war
> > >over slavery, and he suspended the Writ of Habeas
> > Corpus. If
> > he had
> > >simply trusted in the Anaconda plan, war could have
> > been averted.
> > >
> > >These so-called facts prove Lincoln was the worst
> > president
> > of all
> > >time who sent 618,000 American soldiers and untold
> > tens of
> > thousands
> > >of civilians to their ignoble deaths. And for what?
> > For the
> > good of
> > >America? To free the slaves? Bah, humbug.
> > >
> > >No slave that ever lived was worth the life of one
> > American
> > soldier.
> > >Not in our name.
> > >
> > >I'll be accused by some of comparing apples to
> > oranges, and
> > maybe they
> > >are right. Given the anti-war left's own purported
> > concern
> > for the
> > >safety of American soldiers fighting "a bunch of
> > radical
> > Arabs," how
> > >much more grievous was Lincoln's "evil" when it was
> > Americans
> > fighting
> > >Americans? Lincoln lied, and Americans died!
> > >
> > >HENRY SEITER Jr.
> > >
> > >Urbana
> > _______________________________________________
> > Peace-discuss mailing list
> > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> >
>
>
>
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-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org