February 26,
2007
A Political War against the American People
and its Institutions
Second sorrow: "A loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as
the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal
'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Chalmers
Johnson (Sorrows of Empire)
"Now those who seek absolute
power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding
the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind
you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."
Barry Goldwater, former Republican senator
from Arizona
"Kings had always been involving
and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always,
that the good of the people was the object. This, our (U.S.) Convention
understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they
resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of
bringing this oppression upon us."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th U.S. president
“There are no hereditary kings in
America.”
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor
The Iraq war is turning into a war against the American
people and its institutions. According to the latest poll, an overwhelming
majority of Americans (63 %) want U.S. troops to be out of Iraq by the end of
next year. This is the clear message the
American electorate is sending to President George W. Bush. On February 16
(2007), 56 percent of the members of the U.S. House of Representative
essentially said the same thing when they adopted Resolution 63, by a vote of
246 against 182, in which they stated that "... Congress disapproves of
the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to
deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq." And,
to make it complete, 56 percent of U.S. Senators signified their opposition to
the war on February 17 (2007). These clear democratic signals of the people's
wishes came after the November 7 (2006) election, in which pro-war Republican
candidates took a thumping. They also came after a blue ribbon study group, the Baker-Hamilton Commission,
unanimously concluded that the solution in Iraq is political and not military,
and unanimously recommended that the U.S. terminate its open-ended presence in
Iraq and begin its disengagement and “redeployment” from that
country.
You would think that politicians who respect
democracy and the people's right to govern themselves would pay attention and
listen to what the sovereign electorate is saying. —But to no avail. The
Bush-Cheney regime, initially placed into power by one Supreme judge in 2000,
after presidential candidate Al Gore won the
popular vote, went the other way and ordered a military build-up in the Persian
Gulf, and, against the advice of the generals on the ground, ordered a military
'surge' in Iraq.
It is a strange spectacle in a democracy when the
influence of a few people trumps the will of the majority. The Bush-Cheney
regime seems to be inclined to follow the narrow advice of powerful lobbies rather
than listen to what the electorate and elected officials are saying. In
Washington D.C., under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI) has more clout than the U.S. Congress. On January 14 (2007), U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his personal conception of democracy when he
said: "... they [the Congress]
could try to stop me from doing it. But I’ve made my decision. And
we’re going forward." —And
two weeks later, on January 25 (2007), oil-man Dick Cheney
reinforced this cynical point of view by saying, after a Senate Committee
adopted a resolution in opposition to Bush's plan for a military escalation in
Iraq: "It won't stop us"..."We are moving forward." ...
"We need to get the job done." And Cheney added
defiantly it's "hogwash to say Bush's credibility is at stake in Iraq."
It does not matter that the Bush-Cheney team has made
colossal errors of judgment,
they feel they have absolute powers in their hands and they intend to
use them for whatever project they have in mind, and damn the American public,
damn the elected Congress, and damn world opinion. Indeed, this regime has
resurrected President Richard Nixon's old and infamous philosophy of 'executive
supremacy' and has even gone further in adopting the anti-democratic theory of an "imperial presidency.". According to this dangerous theory, there are no limits to presidential wartime powers, even when no such
war has been declared by Congress. In such circumstances of his own choosing, a
president could then stop recognizing the authority of the elected Congress and
refuse to accept the courts as final arbiters of constitutional rights, each
time he considers this role to be at odds with his vision of national security.
Of course, such an outright grasp for power smacks
dictatorship and represents a direct attack on the U.S. Constitution, with its
Checks and Balances and the Rule of Law at its center, provisions which have
been precisely designed to avoid the pitfalls of dictatorship. Maybe people
should have paid more attention when George W. Bush joked aloud that "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a
lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." (December 18, 2000), or when he proclaimed that
"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best.“ (April 14, 2006)
As President and
Father of the U.S. Constitution James Madison (1751-1836) put it: "There
are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and
silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
In fact, most constitutional experts believe that Bush's claim for an imperial
presidency is prima facie unconstitutional and is not
supported by anything in the U.S. Constitution. In
particular, it has been pointed out that the Bush-Cheney administration cannot
invoke the October 2, 2002 Iraq resolution as
a blank check to claim absolute powers, because this resolution explicitly
invoked the War Powers Resolution (1976 War Powers Act), Section 2(b), which requires the President
of the United States to gain congressional approval before any troop deployment
abroad.
Therefore, it remains
to be seen if the Bush-Cheney regime can go on challenging the American people,
Congress and the courts for two more years, not even considering international
law and world public opinion.
_____________________________________________________________
Rodrigue
Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also
visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book
"The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.MoralityWithoutReligion.com
_______________________________________________
Posted,
February 26, 2007, at 5:30 am
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