"We have met the enemy..."

Earlier today Michelle posted on the frustration of U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan recently blocked from mounting a Predator drone-mounted missle strike on well over 100 Taliban honchos gathered in a cemetery in Afghanistan because of rules of engagement prohibiting the targeting cemeteries. [After reading her post I heard judge Napolitano point-out on FoxNews that it appeared to be out of "sensitivity" to Afghani regard for the sanctity of burial grounds -- not because of any US or international law.] Michelle quotes British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee as observing "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder" -- inferring, of course, that there's danger in adherence to overly-restrictive rules-of-combat.

But do you know who else made the same observation? 51 years before Toynbee was born -- and long before being elected as POTUS -- Abraham Lincoln spoke at the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838. He said, in part:

We find ourselves under.... a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us... a legacy bequeathed us, by a... lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves... a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these… to the latest generation... How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? ...Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth... in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? ...it must spring up amongst us... If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I desperately want Pogo to be proven wrong.