Abraham Lincoln on war and peace

"I have been told that most of our politicians do not read. Most, I suspect, probably have read nothing of Lincoln. I thought to myself, if I mention Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to those political morons, who compare themselves to Mandela, they might want to know if that is where Lincoln had lived! But caught up as we are in an armed insurrection of our own, I thought perhaps some of our youth may find inspiration in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which I here reproduce beginning with the second paragraph"
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by Nalin Swaris

(February 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Freidrich Nietszche wrote: "The Goal of Humanity cannot lie in the End [of History] but only in its highest specimens". Abraham Lincoln’s life exemplifies the truth of this aphorism. The abysmal depths to which public life in this country has descended must surely be contemplated by all right thinking persons with dismay and despair. What collective karmic curse has visited upon us the type of politicians who have been elected to shape this nation’s destiny?

These people’s representatives seem oblivious of the fact that the country is in a tenuous ceasefire situation. Trapped in their sectarian political ambitions. they are hell bent on devouring each other to death. Can these men and women with their irresponsible jabber, violent rhetoric and violent deeds bring peace to this country and win a moral victory over one of the most ruthless terrorist organizations in the world?

The JHU still nursing a pain in the groin, has given priority to stopping unethical conversions and forged an alliance with the unethically elected ITAK to save parliamentary democracy. The ‘democratically appointed’ ITAK, however, is coyly indulging the flirtations of the UPFA and the UNF and ‘saadhu-fying’ the JHU to promote ISGA totalitarianism. The JHU venerables seem to have decided to cut their losses and resigned themselves to keeping at least the non-Eelam part of the island bountifully Buddhist. Tunnel-vision politicians are escalating non-antagonistic contradictions into antagonistic ones, instead of addressing the principal contradiction between the need for national unity and the rising threat of national disintegration. "A nation," Lincoln wrote, "may be said to consist of its territory, its people and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability".

Meanwhile. ten ‘civil society’ stalwarts were summoned for consultation (strategy discussion?) with the Special Envoy at the Norwegian Embassy. If you had any doubts, prepare to shed them now. There are in fact, FOUR players in the fray: the two protagonists, the facilitator and the ‘outsourced diplomats’. Not surprisingly, a blue and red back-grounded poster campaign in Sinhala, (obviously targeting the UPFA government), has been launched. It is demanding: "Stop Political Obstruction! Immediately Start Peace Talks on the basis of the ISGA!". ‘Outsourced diplomacy’ pressurising on cue, unconditional acceptance of the LTTE agenda. How about a foreign-funded poster campaign in LTTE territory with some slogans like ‘Immediately Dismantle Suicide Squads!’ ‘Immediately Stop Child Abductions!’ etc. ?

Today there is no credible moral authority, even among the country’s religious leaders, to demand that this country’s two major political alliances end their mutual hostility and be reconciled with each other so that the task of achieving a durable peace for this nation can be truly addressed. The leaders of these two parties seem to be in a state of pre-puberal psychological retardation, victims of entrenched behavioral reflexes that make it impossible for them to break the shackles of their vengeful resentments and join hands for the greater common good.

Peace is not the juridico-technocratic fix of the ‘Lobby’. It is a moral good. How can amoral Machiavellian politicians and kept ideologists further this end? The physical integrity of a nation cannot be saved if that nation’s leaders lack moral integrity. When During the war, one of his general’s told Lincoln: "I hope God is on our side." Lincoln replied, "It is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation are on God’s side". A politico-military formation that kills its own people without compunction; that abducts its own peoples’ children and conditions them to become socio-pathic killers has lost the moral credentials to call itself a liberation organization.

War cannot be waged, or peace won, honourably if both undertakings lack a sound moral basis. This, Abraham Lincoln understood well. That is why even as the civil war began he issued his Proclamation of Emancipation in 1863, to end the moral abomination of slavery. It was also an enlightened move to ‘win hearts and minds’ and weaken the foe. Battles won by all-Black battalions played a decisive role in saving the Union. It would take another two hundred years before Martin Luther King’s non-violent struggle brought to completion that grant of liberty, with full equality before the law for the black people of the United States.

As a young lad in my early teens I used to regularly take the ten-cent bus ride after class, from Kotahena to the USIS library in the Fort. The fine gentlemen and role models who taught us at St. Benedict’s had each in his own way, impressed on us that the friends whose company we keep and the books we read, will largely influence the type of person we shall become. They urged us to read biographies of great men and women reminding us of the poets words: "The lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime". (But what models do our youth have today? Can one blame ministerial brats? The Dutch have a saying: "The apple does not fall far from the tree").

From the USIS library, I borrowed and read among other books, a fine biography of Abraham Lincoln. I was inspired by Lincoln’s courageous stand on behalf of the black slaves. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts and the life of Lincoln sparked my pubescent idealism. Decades later, I stood with moistened eyes before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, remembering Longfellow’s poem learnt at school, about the dying slave which began with the lines: "Beside the ungathered rice he lay a sickle in his hand...". I was too young to comprehend how racist hatred could descend to such inhuman depths. But beginning with those early impressionable days, I abhorred racism, counter racism or the crypto-racism of some peace-cynics who gloss over killings by ‘our’ side and the enforced induction of Tamil children into the LTTE army.

There are no ‘Ends’, no ‘historical’ purposes that may justify a-priori, such intrinsically evil acts. Those killed during the war and during the ceasefire are not statistics in a war-peace, cost-benefit analyses flogged by conflict resolution game theorists: around hundred killings during more than two years of the ceasefire, over and against sixty thousand killed during twenty years of war is a peace dividend! Those killed without compunction, like Neelan Thiruchelvam was, five years ago this month, and numerous other nameless victims, are not abstract individuals but persons who were part of a web of affection; their loss is irretrievable and the grief of their loved ones, rich or poor, equally inconsolable. That is why refusing to condemn LTTE killings lest it should disturb the ‘peace process’ is despicable immoralism. The apartheid system collapsed not because of the force of arms but because, in the final analysis, of the righteous stand taken by the ANC leadership for the creation of a non-racialist, democratic, South Africa. It exposed the moral bankruptcy of the White supremacists. Not all the piety and wit of the peaceniks and their foreign funders can transform a Velupillai Prabhakaran into a Nelson Mandela or a Anton Balasingham, the British VIP, into a Walter Sisulu in exile.

Looking out from the Lincoln Memorial I imagined the hundreds of thousands of men women and children, black and white, who gathered there listening to Martin Luther King deliver his soul-stirring "I have a Dream..." speech. The white Lincoln and the black Luther King were true peacemakers.

I have been told that most of our politicians do not read. Most, I suspect, probably have read nothing of Lincoln. I thought to myself, if I mention Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to those political morons, who compare themselves to Mandela, they might want to know if that is where Lincoln had lived! But caught up as we are in an armed insurrection of our own, I thought perhaps some of our youth may find inspiration in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which I here reproduce beginning with the second paragraph. On the verge of victory in the American Civil War (1861-1865), Lincoln emphasized the need for reconciliation between the North and the South. Weeks after this address was delivered Lincoln was assassinated by a supporter of the separatist cause. Secretary of State, Edward Stanton declared: "Now he belongs to the ages". Indeed, and to people everywhere irrespective of race or colour. Perhaps a few younger idealists embroiled in our murky politics might yet find some inspiration from the noble sentiments of this great statesman. Lincoln was resolute in war and magnanimous in victory.

(The article first time published on 2004)