Yes, so I’m reading Zinn now

Posted on July 3, 2008 by David

So said a lanky junior Illinois congressman about the war not started on his watch:

The declaration that we have always opposed the war, is true or false accordingly as one may understand the term ” opposing the war.” If to say ” the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President,” be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. Whenever they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they have said it on what has appeared good reason to them: The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other property to destruction, to you may appear a per¬fectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us. So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly. But if, when the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was support of the war, then it is not true that we have always opposed the war. With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies. And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and the lives of our political brethren in every trial, and on every field.

And if Obama be our Lincoln, and the Mexican-American War be our Iraq, then where is our Frederick Douglass?

The determination of our [...] President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wrining from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident frorm the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party… by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.

Slightly related note: I dreamt that Obama chose Bob Kerrey as his running mate. Ummm, TGIT?

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