General Pervez Musharraf suspended the Pakistan constitution, fired the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and dispensed police officers to enforce martial law in Pakistan. All this to “save the nation”. He also closed down the country’s privately owned television stations.

The Supreme Court justices were ordered to take an oath to abide by the “provisional constitutional order” that Musharraf has temporally implemented to replace the country’s existing Constitution. Any Supreme Court justice who refused to take a new oath to uphold the new “provisional constitutional order” would be fired. Seven of the eleven justices refused to take the oath and were fired by Musharraf, including the Chief Justice Chaudhry who who was replaced by Abdul Hamid Doger–a sympathizer of Musharraf.

Interestingly, Musharraf played the Lincoln card by stating, “Abraham Lincoln usurped rights to preserve the union, and Pakistan comes first. Whatever I do is for Pakistan, and whatever anyone else thinks is secondary.”

Musharraf’s new Supreme Court has dismissed all legal challenges to his rule and the suspension of the country’s constitution. The newly anointed Supreme Court Chief Justice, Abdul Hamid Doger, dismissed all challenges to Musharraf’s win in last month’s presidential elections on a technicality. The newly restructured Supreme Court is acting just as Musharraf has mandated– nothing more, nothing less.

Immediately after Musharraf’s re-coup d’état of Pakistan, the U.S. started in with condemnation of Musharraf even though their fingerprints are all over him and his administration. Musharraf has been given 10 billion dollars from the U.S. for the promise of helping eradicate Al Qaeda, with a wink and a nod, to become a good democrat someday–even though he achieved power via a 1999 coup d’état and has suspended the constitution twice.

Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice wants a “quick return to constitutional law.” The White House called his action “very disappointing”.

Was Musharraf that far off when he used the Lincoln card? Yes and No. He has acted as Lincoln did but he also used some of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s malicious tactics to circumvent his country’s constitution.

Perhaps Musharraf has a better grasp of American history than he is given credit for. Not the white washed, politically correct counterfactual history taught in public schools and left leaning universities–the dirty, grimy, truthful history that does not pass the political correctness test. The history that does not side with intelligentsia’s view of how they wish the historical facts should have been rather than how they were.

To better understand what Musharraf meant by invoking Lincoln in his defense, a brief view of Lincoln and Roosevelt’s assault on the U.S. Constitution and total disregard for the Supreme Court ruling on a law’s constitutionality are in order.

Concerning Lincoln: With Congress not in session, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland. He had previously suspended civil law where he thought it would be detrimental to the North. When the criticism of the suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland grew, he fought back by suspending habeas corpus throughout the entire nation. He had his critics arrested. Lincoln threatened that anyone who used “disloyal practices” would be subjected to martial law. He also closed down all opposition news papers. If there had been television and radio, Lincoln would have closed down all opposing stations just as Musharraf did.

He carried out his threat of martial law and had 13,000 people arrested. When Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney issued a writ of habeas corpus for some of the people arrested under martial law, the military refused to follow the writ. When the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for Lincoln to suspend habeas corpus, Lincoln imprudently ignored the ruling. He subsequently had an arrest warrant issued for Chief Justice Taney.

Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham’s house was invaded by armed soldiers in the middle of the night and he was arrested under martial law. He was incarcerated in a military prison. He was never charged or brought before a judge. He was tried for making disloyal speeches against the government. This was done with the authority of Lincoln.

He was denied a writ of habeas corpus and was convicted by a military tribunal for “uttering disloyal sentiments” and sentenced to two years in a military prison.

Lincoln then wrote the infamous Birchard Letter. It was a public letter, bordering on black mail, addressed to M. Birchard and eighteen other Ohio Democrats defending the arrest, conviction and treatment of Vallandigham and others of his ilk. He offered to release Vallandigham if the addressees of the letter would support “certain policies” of the Administration concerning the Civil War.

No one president, or the accumulation of past president’s acts, had transgressed the parameters of the Constitution to the degree that Lincoln did in a few short years.

Concerning FDR: Our liberal leaning educational system wants you to believe that FDR and his policies saved the United States from the Great Depression. That is a lie.

The fable taught in grade school, middle school, high school and most college textbooks approved by self serving politicians masquerading as educators, is that the New Deal was the salvation of this country during the Great Depression. Most people are under the impression that Roosevelt had the authority to enact the policies of the New Deal. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Most history books, text books and educators fail to mention the fact that what Roosevelt did was the single most concentrated assault on our Constitution by any one president with the ramifications still felt today. Lincoln’s transgressions on the Constitution ended with his assassination then the Congress took up where Lincoln left off. The New Deal was an economic and foreign policy disaster. The New Deal only served to perpetuate the Great Depression well beyond its natural life and cause, so far, irrevocable damage to the Constitution.

It is imperative that any constitution remain neutral from politics to be able to produce a valid rule on the constitutionality of law. If not neutral from politics, then any law that is enacted is judged exclusively by its creator .

Down every road, Roosevelt’s programs under the New Deal kept running into road blocks of unconstitutionality. Almost on a daily basis, a Federal Court or while in session, the Supreme Court, ruled that the various programs of the New Deal were unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court was created in 1789 and between 1789 and the Lincoln administration, almost a century later, the Supreme Court ruled on law enacted by Congress only twice as to its constitutionality. During the span between Lincoln and FDR there were only six rulings concerning the constitutionality of a law. After FDR was elected and the New Deal came into existence, there was a chronic battle between FDR and the Supreme Court in regard to the New Deal’s programs violating the Constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled against the New Deal with three separate rulings in a single day in 1935. FDR deprecated the Supreme Court in the press and in public then orchestrated a show down with the court. FDR proposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937—the infamous court packing bill. The bill, if approved by the Congress, would have allowed the president to appoint additional justices to the court for every sitting justice over the age of 70 ½. FDR was going to get the Supreme Court to agree to his New Deal whether it was constitutional or not-even if it meant turning the court into a puppet regime. There was vehement opposition to the Reorganization Bill. With the court on the verge of being legislated into submission by FDR’s tyrannical politics coupled with the retirement of Justice Van Devanter, a strong opponent of the New Deal, FDR, with his new appointments to the court, had his puppet regime of a Supreme Court and started his unbridled assault on the Constitution. Same result as Musharraf just forced to use a different approach.

Considering that our Constitution and Bill of Rights emerged from turmoil, I challenge anyone to pick a more turbulent, pandemonic and challenging time in our country’s history than when the Declaration of Independence was drafted until the final passage of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that would justify circumventing the Constitution in the name of a national emergency or crisis when contrasted circa 1776, is nothing less than treasonous, for any president or country– including the current U.S. administration.

For the left to wring their hands and believe Bush’s disregard of the Constitution and the trampling of civil rights as never before seen as unheralded and without precedent, in their unintelligent view, when Bush pails miserably in comparison to what Lincoln and FDR accomplished, is an intellectual lie .

Perhaps Musharraf did take pages from the Lincoln and FDR play book to address Pakistan’s predicament since Lincoln and FDR were, at their best, dictators manqué. When you consider that Lincoln circumvented the Constitution and completely disregarded Supreme Court rulings that ran counter to his ideas or FDR, not being able to ignore the Supreme Court rulings against his New Deal’s programs, choosing to change the face of the court to further his agenda, they both operated with the three branches of government out of balance and unchecked. Musharraf has done nothing any more alarming than Lincoln or FDR did during their tenures as presidents.

Do not address the issues in Pakistan by casting stones unless…