Amidst all this nonsense about Democrats being indecisive about the war in Iraq and John Kerry advocating 'cutting and running,' I thought it might be instructive to go back in time to find a similar situation in American history.
The Mexican War from 1846 to 1848 was also a controversial war and caused a great deal of political grandstanding and viciousness in Congress and divided the country just as now. Abraham Lincoln was then a young member of the House from the Whig Party (now the Republican Party) who strongly disagreed with President Polk's trumped up, pre-emptive war against Mexico. He famously introduced a resolution calling for Polk to tell the Congress on what exact "spot of soil" was "the blood of our citizens was so shed." Carl Sandberg in his great history of Lincoln writes that his resolution,” directly implied that the President had ordered American troops into land not established as American soil."
Lincoln wrote to his close friend William Herndon, who supported the war, that we should be wary of giving the President too much power:
"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. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day 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."
John Kerry has been repeatedly accused of flip flopping on his vote for, and then against, the authorization for funding of the war, and so was Lincoln. He wrote to Herndon that:
"This vote
, has nothing to do, in determining my votes on the questions of supplies. I have always intended to, and still intend, to vote supplies; perhaps not in the precise form recommended by the President, but in a better form for all purposes, except locofoco party purposes. . . The locos are untiring in their effort to make the impression that all who vote for supplies, or take part in the war, do, of necessity, approve the President's conduct in the beginning of it; but the whigs have, from the beginning, made and kept the distinction between the two."
It is also interesting to note that all the hubbub about the "Six Generals" calling for the resignation of Rummy and how they should keep their mouths shut because the military shouldn't get into politics, is nothing new either. Lincoln in the same letter goes on:
"As to Whig men who have participated in the war, so far as they have spoken to my hearing, they do not hesitate to denounce, as unjust, the President's conduct in the beginning of the war. There are two such whigs on this floor, Col. Haskell, and Maj. Gaines. The former, fought as a Col. by the side of Col. Baker at Cerro Gordo, and stands side by side with me, in the vote that you seem to be so dissatisfied with."
Sandberg writes that Lincoln, like Kerry now, got much criticism from all sides for his position, too. He writes that:
"Lincoln voted for all supplies and aid to soldiers in the field, and for every measure laying blame on Polk and the administration. He hoped the folks back home would understand his conduct. But many folks back home couldn’t see it...The Belleville Advocate of March 2 reported a meeting in Clark County of 'patriotic Whigs and Democrats' which resolved 'That Abe Lincoln, the author of the 'spotty' resolutions in Congress against his own country, may the he long be remembered by his constituents, but may they cease to remember him, except to rebuke him.' The Illinois Register told of newspapers and public meetings that declared Lincoln a 'second Benedict Arnold.'"
So you see, there's nothing new under the sun. Lincoln, the President who basically created the Republican Party, suffered all the same slings and arrows that Kerry is experiencing now for his opposition to another unjust war. 
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