Alex, may I have "Bad Analogies" for $100?

Enough with the historical analogies, please. We have fascism and totalitarianism tossed around by people who either don't know or don't care what those terms mean, and now Condi compares leaving Iraq with leaving slavery intact in the South. What's next, is GWB a 21st-century Alexander Nevsky fighting off the Teutonic Knights at the Battle on the Ice to save Novgorod? Maybe somewhere in this mess is an apt reference to the War of Jenkins' Ear, who knows?

Condi said that "I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold." Rice added that "I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'"

Yes, there were many pacifists who wanted to let the "erring sisters" depart in peace. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the Union states, including one Abraham Lincoln, would have been quite satisfied to " take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves" through mid-1862, if that "peace" included restoration of the union. Emancipation was not a war objective at the outset, Lincoln very clearly stated that his only goal was to preserve and maintain the union. Lincoln, who had strong personal feelings on the matter, seized on emancipation as federal policy as a war measure intended to weaken the southern states in a variety of ways.

This experience is hardly comparable to occupying a sovereign country invaded on pretense while propping up a puppet "government" with no claim to legitimacy or sovereignty. But look on the bright side, at least she mentioned "civil war!"