So I'm relaxing on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and one of the local channels is showing the 1988 miniseries
Gore Vidal's Lincoln, with Sam Waterston as Abraham Lincoln and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln. Now, I won't comment on the relative quality of the miniseries, but Waterston is a heck of an actor, and I feel, from what I've read, he gets Lincoln pretty good.
One of the more powerful scenes is on the night of the 1864 election, as Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and others (including, in what must be one of the strangest casting choices ever, Richard Mulligan as William H. Seward) wait for the returns from New York. When it becomes obvious that Lincoln has won, Seward says it was the soldier vote. Lincoln remarks that, while the live soldiers may have voted for him, the dead soldiers would not have voted for him...."not in this or any other life."
As Waterston played it, Lincoln agonized over the fact that his actions were resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans - on both sides. This sense of responsibility was considered to be a major cause of Lincoln's melancholia.
Now, compare this to Iraq 2003/4. We see George W. Bush showing virtually no emotion at all over the deaths of American soldiers - he hasn't even attended a single funeral, and the closest he's come to seeing an actual war zone was the Turkee Run to Baghdad. I don't think he has the intellectual/spiritual capability, nor the moral development, to even recognize that, as Commander-in-Chief, he's asking American men and women to lay down their lives.
As Get Your War On so deftly put it, "Remember Abraham Lincoln? This guy has the same job." We would all do well to remember the example of Lincoln.
WF