Abraham Lincoln died 150 years ago today, April 15 - A Man for the Ages.

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The most beloved and popular president in the history of America, Abraham Lincoln, died 150 years ago today after being gunned down in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.

His legacy will live forever as the President who reunited the union after the only Civil War in our history, against all odds, and in a nation nearly bankrupt from the Revolutionary war.

In the process he became the greatest emancipator in the world when he freed the slaves.

If only all presidents could live by the code of ethics, sense of justice, and fierce loyalty of our 16th president.
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How to lose a war - Iraq again in flames 11 years after US Invasion

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This is not Obama's year for foreign policy successes nor is it the legacy former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted as the top Obama official when policy decisions were made to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet today, with lightning speed, the Sunni Al-Qaeda's uprising as it sweeps across Iraq and recaptures the very areas lost in the war presents the dark dilemma that everything America did from spending $2 trillion over 11 years and having almost 4,400 Americans die in Iraq and over 32,000 wounded, was for naught.

Two and one half years after American troops left, the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the Shia Muslim faction, wants the Americans to come back as his country crumbles around him.

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

What can we expect if Iraq falls to the Sunni Al-Qaeda uprising?  Mass murders, even genocide as the Sunni take revenge from the Shia.  A return to strict human rights violations as women will be stripped of all rights and children will be raised to be terrorists if the past is any indication.

The radical Sunni and Al-Qaeda coalition will be forming the largest geographic Sunni controlled area in the Mideast to include Syria, Iran and Iraq, and will be a direct threat to destroy the remaining American allies in the Middle East.  The Sunni can also be expected to wage war on the Christians remaining in the region and to threaten to obliterate Israel.

Newspaper headlines from around the world say it all.

U.S. aid 'spawning new breed of jihadists'

Fighting in North Iraq to Delay Return of Region Oil Exports

Timeline - How al-Qaeda regained its hold in Iraq

A spent force five years ago, the Sunni militant group is now stronger than ever

After Mosul - If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.

Iraq on the brink of civil war

Iraq: Al-Qaida-inspired militants capture Tikrit; 500,000 flee Mosul

Al-Qaeda's uprising in northern Iraq comes five years after had been all but defeated as a result of the US troop "surge". Former Telegraph Iraq correspondent charts the key points in its rebirth

By Colin Freeman

2007-2008

After two years of Sunni-Shia civil war, US troops mount a "surge" designed to quell the violence. Among its strategies is turning Iraq's Sunni community against their former allies in al-Qaeda, with whom they had united to fight the US occupation and the US-backed, Shia-dominated Iraqi government. The strategy succeeds and al-Qaeda finds itself largely defeated in Iraq.

2010

New elections in Iraq sow the seeds of future disconent. Iraqiyya, a secular and religiously mixed bloc led by Ayad Allawi, a former British exile, win a narrow majority votes, but the Shia bloc run by current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, wins power after forming a governing coalitiion with Iranian help. Rather than handing key security positions to his opponents as promised, Mr Maliki concentrates power in his own hands, alienating the Sunni community.

December 2011

Mr Maliki issues an arrest warrant for Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's Sunni vice-president, who flees abroad. The government claims Mr Hashemi has been using his bodyguards for terrorism campaigns, but Iraq's Sunnis see it as a sectarian smear campaign against his political rivals. Mr Maliki is also accused of replacing competent military leaders who had worked with the Americans with political cronies, undermining the military's strength at the very time when the US is pulling out its forces.

Autumn 2012

Belatedly inspired by the Arab Spring movements in neighbouring countries, Sunnis around Iraq begin a series of mass civil rights demonstrations, alleging that they are treated as second-class citizens by Mr Maliki's government. While their complaints get limited sympathy in the wider world - Sunnis, after all, enjoyed privileged lives during the reign of Saddam Hussein - Western diplomats in Baghdad concede that they have some grounds for complaint. In particular, the protesters allege harassment by the security forces and discrimination in getting government jobs.

December 2012

The arrest of Rafaie al-Esawi, a finance minister who is one of the last prominent Sunnis in government, galvanises the protests further. The growing sense of alienation with the government provides a ready source of new recruits to al-Qaeda, which has re-energised in western Iraq thanks to its campaign against President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria. While many Sunnis do not share al-Qaeda's extreme religious vision, they are willing to help it fight Mr Maliki's government.

April 2013

Iraqi government forces antagonise the Sunni community further when they attack a protest camp in the town of Hawijah in northern Iraq, killing 53 people. While the Iraqi government claims that the camp had become a haven for al-Qaeda militants, who had fired on them first, the raid on the camp prompts fighting that spills across northern Iraq. Gunmen briefly sieze one town from police and declare it to be "liberated" from government rule.

July 2013

The new joint Syrian-Iraqi al-Qaeda offshoot, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams (ISIS), gains a major coup when it breaks nearly 500 fellow militants from Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, supposedly the most secure jail in the country. Many rejoin their comrades' campaign.

December 2013

Human Rights Watch issues a report criticising the Iraqi government over the scale of its use of the death penalty, often in cases where confessions have been extracted by torture. A disproportionate number of those on death row appear to be Sunni insurgents.

January 2014

ISIS sends gunmen into the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The Iraqi army surrounds both cities but does not go for an all-out assault for fear of large civilian casaulties that would alienate locals still further. Five months later, both cities remain outside of Iraqi security forces' control.

June 2014

ISIS takes over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, also threatening Baghdad. Five years from being all but vanquished, al-Qaeda's writ in Iraq is as strong, if not stronger, as it was before.

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Maybe it's time to leave the Ukraine to the Ukrainians

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International manipulation underway by Russia, the United States and the European Union to control the fate and future of the Ukraine might be the way we like to play the game of foreign policy but recent events raise serious questions as to the validity of such an approach.

Sometimes it just seems like the big boys, those so called more civilized Western nations don't know when to leave well enough alone.  I think most countries like to give lip service to respecting the will of the people indigenous to a region like the Ukraine, but darn if we can really keep our word when it comes to actions.

 

 

Perhaps we forget little historical facts like the Ukraine has been settled by members of the homo genus since 43,000-45,000 BC when they were first called Neanderthals and discovered in the Molodova archaeological sites.  And Gravettian settlements were unearthed dating to 32,000 BC in the Buran-Kaya cave site of the Crimean Mountains.

 

 

It was part of the Khazar kingdom when time changed from BC to AD, the time of the birth and life of Jesus, and by 800 AD became Jewish.  Prior to that the Roman Emperor Constantine, a non-Christian, was convinced by his mother Helena to first issue the Edict of Milan in 313 AD granting religious tolerance to all religions.

 

 

Twelve years later there was the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, when he ordered the adoption of the Nicene Creed which evolved into the universal creed of Christendom.  Thus Constantine embraced Christianity and became the first Holy Roman (Christian) emperor.  From that time on Christianity was also evolving in the Ukraine.

 

 

However, it took until the Great Moravia empire under the Grand Duke Vladimir the Great before the Ukraine formally embraced Christianity in 988 AD.  Like Emperor Constantine earlier Vladimir was influenced by a strong Christian female in the family, his grandmother, Princess Olga.

 

 

The Ukraine, like every country or kingdom in the world, was beset by war after war throughout the centuries, the rather odd consequence of the evolution of civilization in the western world.

 

 

So commonplace were wars that The New York Times reported in 2003 that in the prior 3,400 years humans have been entirely at peace for just 268 years, or just 8 percent of recorded history.  You can throw in the last 11 years since The New York Times article because wars continued (Iraq & Afghanistan).

 

 

In Europe alone which includes the Ukraine there have been 550 wars recorded throughout history.  Ironically during the most recent 20th century a staggering 76 wars were recorded, the most of any century in history.  Included were the largest, most expensive and most devastating wars ever including World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam wars, though neither Korea nor Vietnam count in the European total.

 

 

So nations like the Ukraine and most of Europe have been buried in a deluge of wars since recorded history began and as mankind matured and became more civilized the pace and terror of war increased proportionately.  What in the world does that tell you about the nature of mankind?

 

The Ukraine took the first step in actual independence, something they really haven't had since the Neanderthal age some 45,000 years ago.  They revolted and threw out the President Viktor Yanukovych accusing him of murdering civilians during the recent demonstrations and stealing billions of dollars from the nation.

 

 

In the meantime in Crimea thugs seized government buildings and today two airports and raised Russian flags.  Crimea has been pro-Russia ever since the Soviet Union quashed a Ukrainian revolt and brought on the great famine of 1921, leaving 1.5 million Ukrainians dead.

 

From then on the Soviets under Josef Stalin tried to liquidate opposition and to repopulate the country with Russians.  With the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991 independence seemed to return to the nation but economic difficulties, foreign interference and competitive manipulation by Russia, the European Union and United States made it impossible.

 

 

The people of the Ukraine and Crimea have been forced together for so long and manipulated by so many that the Crimea favors strong ties to Russia and the Ukraine to Europe.  Perhaps in the end the two must become separate countries so they can align with the nations they desire.

 

 

My plea is for all competitors to stop this game of international chess and for the first time in about 45,000 years let the people of the Ukraine and Crimea decide for themselves how to structure and align their nation.

 

Hasn't our brand of western civilization ruined enough lives and nations over the centuries?  The people of the Ukraine and Crimea know what is best, what kind of government they want, and what kind of relationships they want with the rest of the world.  Give them the few billions of dollars of foreign aid they need and step back and let it happen.

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Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - The Foundation of American Equality

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