Bush = Lincoln? Sure. Like Dan Brown = Walt Whitman

In case you’re not yet convinced, Arthur Schlesinger explains why Bush ain’t Lincoln, and for the helluva it tosses in good reasons why Bush ain’t Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy either. Also, notice how Schlesinger cleverly disses Bush by pointing out that these three were war veterans, not drunken, promiscuous fratboys who used their fathers’ good name to avoid military service:

The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’; but he will say to you, ‘Be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’ “

This is precisely how George W. Bush sees his presidential prerogative: Be silent; I see it, if you don’t . However, both Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, veterans of the First World War, explicitly ruled out preventive war against Joseph Stalin’s attempt to dominate Europe. And in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, President Kennedy, himself a hero of the Second World War, rejected the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union in Cuba.

It was lucky that JFK was determined to get the missiles out peacefully, because only decades later did we discover that the Soviet forces in Cuba had tactical nuclear weapons and orders to use them to repel a U.S. invasion. This would have meant a nuclear exchange. Instead, JFK used his own thousand days to give the American University speech, a powerful plea to Americans as well as to Russians to reexamine “our own attitude — as individuals and as a nation — for our attitude is as essential as theirs.” This was followed by the limited test ban treaty. It was compatible with the George Kennan formula — containment plus deterrence — that worked effectively to avoid a nuclear clash.

The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to destroy the planet. Had there been exponents of preventive war in the White House, there probably would have been nuclear war.