A good article on Lincoln and Obama

Obama is trying to follow Lincoln's footsteps for his inaugeration. In this article on Bloomburg, author Hans Nichols explores the comparisons. In it, Obama says this:

“I’m a practical-minded guy,” he said. “And you know one of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln.”

There are few things that Obama could have said that would annoy me as much as that quote.

I'm a big Lincoln fan. I own a book of his personal writings that I've read a couple of times. I'm fascinated by the history of a man who saw hundreds of thousands of US soldiers die at his own hands, due to the very tough choice that he had to make.

Lincoln made that choice for two reasons:
Firstly, to preserve the union of the US.
Secondly, to eliminate the horror of slavery.

Both are pretty good reasons. Right? And no president in modern time has had to make those types of choices. Right?
But wait... that's not true.

When Iraq voided its treaty of surrender - by continuing to deny UN inspectors access to weapons sites - Bush made the case to enforce the UN resolution. In addition, he made the case that we needed to free Iraq from a brutal dictator.

He knew that US troops would die. When American papers cried for us to get out of Iraq, he stayed in. When protesters pulled body bags out onto the streets to remind the public of those deaths, Bush remained steadfast.
Because of our involvement in Iraq, that country now has its first ever democratically elected government.

Remember those people who were dancing in the streets holding their purple fingers in the air despite threats of death to anyone who voted?
That's the power of democracy.
That's what we bought to Iraq.

Remember what Barack said about Iraq?
He wanted us out. More then a year ago. He opposed the surge. He said that we lost the war. He would have pulled out of Iraq and left those people to die. Even worse, he would have left them under the rule of a dictator, and ignored the violations of the surrender treaty that Iraq signed. He would have capitulated to a dictator for the simple reason that he didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done.

If Obama were in charge of the civil war, he would have stopped the war after the first 2,000 deaths. He would have asked for a timetable for the pullout of the confederate territories. He certainly would have opposed Sherman's march, which was the brutality that ended the war.

Obama not only would have lost the Civil war. He never would have fought it.
Which makes the comparison to Lincoln all the more absurd.