I’m not offended!

[David Lockmiller]

The PBS Newshour reported yesterday, July 3, 2019, that after two weeks of testimony Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was found not guilty of murdering an ISIS prisoner in Iraq. The decorated Navy Seal had been accused of stabbing to death the wounded teenage captive back in 2017.

What made me sick to my stomach was the statement made at the end of this report in a screenshot: “77 % of Americans believe U.S. service members should not be prosecuted for war crimes committed overseas.”

I remind readers and participants of the Lincoln Discussion Symposium of a discussion that President Abraham Lincoln had with Frederick Douglass at the White House during the American Civil War. Mr. Douglass was in the process of recruiting colored troops to fight in the Civil War and he made four demands of President Lincoln in this regard.

The forth demand (with slight editing for obvious reason) reads as follows: “In case any colored soldiers are taken prisoners and murdered in cold blood, you should retaliate in kind.”

Frederick Douglass wrote:

As to the exchange and general treatment of colored soldiers when taken prisoners of war, he should insist to their being entitled to all privileges of such prisoners. Mr. Lincoln admitted the justice of my demand for the promotion of colored soldiers for good conduct in the field, but on the matter of retaliation he differed from me entirely. I shall never forget the benignant expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye and the quiver in his voice, when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures.

“Once begun,” said he, “I do not know where such a measure would stop.”

He said he could not take men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill the innocent for the guilty.

(Source: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, pages 187 – 189.)