Musharraf As Lincoln?

The general is making the comparison. It doesn’t wash, historian Michael Knox Beran e-mails:

1. Lincoln did not, like Musharraf, seize power in a military coup; he was voted into office in a legitimate election. His opponents in what became the Confederacy violated the Constitution when they voted to secede from the Union; the Constitution recognizes no right of secession. (That there was no right of exit was clear in the debates on the ratification of the Constitution. See also James Madison’s “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” April 1787, in The Papers of Madison, vol. 9, p. 352.) 2. The main charge against Lincoln is that his various suspensions of the writ of habeas corpus violated the Constitution. But the language of Article I, Section 9 is not free from ambiguity: the writ “shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The Constitution does not say who may suspend the writ, though arguably, because the clause appears in Article I, the power of suspension belongs to Congress.

3. Lincoln violated the letter of the Constitution in 1861 when he raised new regiments; the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to “raise and support Armies.” But Congress was not in session at the time and Lincoln argued that in an emergency the president must be able to defend the country and its Constitution.

4. Free elections continued to be held during Lincoln’s presidency, and an opposition press flourished. We know, from his private notes, that he had no intention of trying to stay in office in the event he had lost the1864 election.