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Battle hymn of the Iraqi republic Hey, I'm a little late on this, but I cannot let it stand: Ex-Bush speechwriter David Frum, op-edding in Sunday's New York Times, compared Bush's war on Iraq with Lincoln's war on the Confederacy. Yes, that's right. This is the key passage:
It sometimes seemed to me, as I watched the debate between the administration's hawks and doves from the inside, that I was witnessing a reprise of the great strategic debates of the Civil War. Back then, official Washington was divided between the realists, who wanted to fight the smallest possible war in order (as they said) to save the Union as it was, and the idealists, who sought the biggest possible victory, even if it meant smashing the old order in the South forever. Today's realists, like their 19th-century counterparts, are more frightened of change than they are of defeat. At every step, President Bush has opted for the course that offers the hope of a bigger victory [~] even at the price of a wider war.
It does no good to pretend that this is not an imperialist venture at heart, or to try to mask it with absurd historical comparisons to the Civil War and Lincoln's gradual embrace of emancipation. Maybe, with the Republican Party just coming off its Trent Lott debacle, Frum is simply doing his best to wrap his team in the old "Party of Lincoln" colors. It won't wash. The very same issue of the Times that featured Frum's desperate rhetorical ploy also boasted a lengthy magazine cover story by Michael Ignatieff headlined "The American Empire: Get used to it." [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]
9:08:45 AM 
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