Nice to see people kept right on being stupid during my vacation…

1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars — and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones — have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.

From this bit of trivia about US war history a reasonable person would see coincidence.  Krauthammer apparently doesn’t.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus — trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole troublesome business done by 1865, and the Supreme Court stayed away (emphasis mine).

If anyone ever asks you “what is it with those paleo- types & Lincoln?”, point them to some of these type of articles.  Neos are always invoking Lincoln as example of “what to do” during any kind of conflict, no matter how complex.

Here’s the kicker:

Had the current war on terrorism followed course and ended in 2005, the sensational, just-decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case concerning military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have either been rendered moot or drawn a yawn. […] What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say to the president: Time’s up. We gave you the customary half-decade of emergency powers, but that’s as far as we go. From now on the emergency is over, at least judicially, and you’re going to have to operate by peacetime rules.

First of all, the “war on terror” is about as much an actual war as the “war on drugs” — which is to say, not at all.  You cannot declare war on a tactic or concept.  Second, what we actually did was wage war in Afghanistan as retaliation for 9/11 only to be pulled away in favor of invading an uninvolved party.  Since Afghanistan is hovering back towards the same conditions, one would think that people like Krauthammer would be too busy screaming about failing there to complain about “judicial activism” (modern “conservative” speak for any decision they do not like).  Oh well…
Funny thing is, if you assume that this “pattern” has some sort of meaning, then the Supreme Court is following precedent by their action.  So either Krauthammer just likes the idea of unchecked executive power, or… screw it, he just likes unchecked executive power.  Seek help, Chuck.