Our Current Constitutional Crisis
Julie Rufo 01/15/06 presented at Arthur and Gretchen Lipow's Sunday Meeting
Peter Irons book was really educational for me. Although I had the usual vague understandings
of the constitution, his book provided a step by step understanding of the
original intentions of the framers and the ways in which the allocation of
powers between the three branches of government have changed over time.
As Ivan Eland writes: "The
U.S. Constitution was written after a war of independence from what the
colonists believed was a despotic king. The document was designed to strictly
limit federal power, vis-à-vis the powers of the states and the people. Within
the constricted federal realm, the framers intended to make the decentralized
Congress the dominant branch and gave that body many more enumerated powers
than the president or the judiciary. It is no coincidence that the article of
the Constitution setting forth the powers of the legislative branch is listed
first and is by far longer than Article II, which lists the responsibilities of the executive branch, and Article III, which
covers the judiciary.
In
particular, the founders feared the power of a potent executive to impose wars
upon the American people in which they would bear the brunt of the costs in
blood and treasure—much as the autocratic European monarchs of the day
inflicted such costs on their subjects. Thus, the framers, contrary to
conventional wisdom, gave most of the war powers to Congress. The legislature
has the power to declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a
navy, regulate the land and naval forces, make the rules for captures on land
and water, and provide for organizing, arming, disciplining, and calling forth
the militia in times of insurrection and invasion. In contrast, the president
has only the power of commander-in-chief of the army, navy, and militia when
called into service by the federal government.
It is this last power that modern presidents, especially the
current incumbent, have attempted to stretch from its narrow origins into the
very nightmare the framers wanted to avoid—a single official with unchecked war
powers. President Bush has justified unconstitutional acts in the “war on
terror” by expanding the power of the commander-in-chief beyond the founders’
intention. He has used that power to justify torture, the surveillance of
Americans without a warrant, and the effective suspension of habeas corpus by
indefinite detention of “enemy combatants”—including some Americans—without a
trial or access to lawyers. Yet the founders intended only that the president
command forces on the battlefield because it was difficult for the many members
of the legislative branch to do so. Yes, gathering intelligence is part of that
effort, but another part of the Constitution—that is, the Fourth Amendment in
the Bill of Rights—implicitly guarantees that people will be protected against
searches without a warrant. For conservatives that love original intent, the
Constitution says nothing about being suspended during wartime. Also, torturing
prisoners in violation of the congressionally approved Geneva Conventions and
indefinitely detaining them without a trial seem to run afoul of the
constitutional provisions providing that Congress has the power to make rules
concerning captures on land and water and implying that only Congress, rather
than the executive, has the power to suspend habeas corpus in times of
rebellion or invasion (this provision is in Article I and not Article II).
Of
course, there is currently no rebellion or invasion, so any suspension of
habeas corpus—whether by the president or Congress—is likely to be
unconstitutional. In fact, there is no war; the “war on terror” is not really a
war at all. The post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of force
against the attacks’ perpetrators and those that harbored them, which the
president uses as an additional justification for his domestic snooping, did
not even imply the approval of such surveillance, expanded executive power (in
fact, members of Congress from both parties went on record specifically
rejecting that interpretation), or a declaration of war.
So
even though the president and his administration constantly say, “we are at
war,” technically we are not. The last official war the United States fought was World War
II. After that, the Congress abdicated its responsibility to declare war. Since
then, presidents have declared a unilateral right to send U.S. forces into harms
way—the founders’ worst fear."*
We are now faced with what can only be called a constitutional
crisis. If, in fact, the President can
issue a signing statement when signing a bill into law that he has the power as
commander in chief, and under the theory of the unitary executive to ignore
that law whenever he chooses, he is in fact slapping congress in the face. If he can do this, we don’t have any need or
reason to have a congress, to pass laws, or to debate the patriot act. It all becomes farce, performance art. On the other hand, when laws are passed, such
as the denial of habeas corpus to guantanamo
detainees that was included, along with the torture amendment, in the defense
act, the congress is now attempting to strip the courts of certain selected
oversight of the other branches of government.
As noted by Tom Wilner, who is representing guantanamo
detainees, “what is at stake is the rule of law. If you let the government decide when it will
submit to judicial review, this violates a fundamental aspect of the separation
of powers which protects our liberty.”
In fact, according to Brian Foley of Florida Coastal School
of Law, Congress may not have exceeded its own powers in stripping the courts
of jurisdiction and eliminating habeas corpus.
Under Article III of the constitution, Congress can control the
Appellate jurisdiction of the supreme court and can “ordain and establish”
lower federal courts (and abolish them if it wished). Under Article I (9), Congress can suspend the
right to habeas corpus “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety may require it.”
On the NSA wiretapping, a new wrinkle was revealed this
week. It was reported in a declassified
document cited by Jason Leopold in an article on Truthout, and in NY Times
reporter James Risen’s new book “State of War”,
that the NSA began spying on American citizens shortly after George Bush was
elected president. After 9/11, the
administration granted authorization to the NSA to continue and expand the
program, without adequately informing congress and without seeking to
legitimize the program by law.
There are many other areas in which this administration is
undermining the balance of powers and the constitution, and seeking to govern
unchecked by any authority. Using the
theory of the unitary executive, which I understand to mean that there is only
one executive, the president, and that only he has the authority to instruct the
agencies in the executive branch how to carry out the laws passed by congress (which
President Bush has invoked via the signing statements) and that the President,
as commander in chief, can order these executive agencies to carry out his
wishes without the necessity of authorization from Congress. Many of the so-called alphabet agencies, the
FBI, CIA, NSA, EPA, etc., are all under the executive branch of government. The Unitary Executive theory also believes
that independent agencies, like the SEC and FCC, are unconstitutional.
So where are we and what can we do to preserve our
liberties. Every article I have read, as
well as Peter Irons book, comes to the same conclusion. It is up to Congress to check the
president. And Congress will only act,
if at all, in response to severe pressure from its constituents. Although the courts also can check
presidential power, they can only do so when a case reaches them. In the matter of the guantanamo
detainees, and in some torture cases, there are plaintiffs that have standing
and legal representation to bring cases that will eventually wend their way to
the Supreme Court. How the court will
rule is questionable, especially with the two new appointments and the long
history of court deference to executive power.
But if Congress passes laws with teeth, and seeks to enforce them, the
court has less leeway to bow to executive power.
The problem with the spying issue is that there is no way to
know who would have standing to bring a case, since no one can claim they have
been spied on by the NSA. It is possible that in upcoming terror trials, an
attempt will be made to determine if evidence was obtained by the government
through this illegal spying. If this
happens, it can provide an avenue to further the cases on to the Supreme
Court. One of the great difficulties in
reining in this administration is the excessive secrecy in which it has
enfolded its actions. It is difficult
for Congress, much less human rights groups and individual citizens, to find
out what the government has been doing.
A former General Counsel of the CIA, Jeffrey H. Smith, has
sent a 14 page memorandum to the House Committee on Intelligence outlining the
legal authorities regarding warrantless surveillance of U.S.
persons. His conclusion is that there
are no legal authorities that allow this program to continue, especially due to
the enactment of the FISA law in 1978 which makes it a crime to engage in such
activities without obtaining a warrant from the FISA court. I have a copy of this memorandum for those
who would like to look at it.
Noah Feldman’s article in last Sunday’s NY Times magazine is
another thoughtful discussion of the situation we now face. He also reaches the conclusion that Congress
must be pressured to exert its co-equal authority and prohibit the excesses of
this administration. And again, he
reminds us that the constituents of the elected officials must exert pressure
upon them to do so.
The other avenue being discussed more and more is
impeachment. In a certain segment of the
population, the idea of impeachment has reared its head and is being seriously
pursued. If the democrats regain a
majority in congress, and if they can be pressured to act with courage and
boldness, they can hold hearings and subpoena witnesses and, if warranted,
bring articles of impeachment. That may
be far fetched, but is not impossible considering the blatant contempt that
Bush has shown for the constitution and the rule of law.
One way that the people can express their dissent is by
participating in marches and demonstrations.
Although we rail about needing a movement, and about the failure of the
anti-war movement to consider other issues we think are important, such as
nuclear proliferation, we are very close to a tipping point in terms of our
form of constitutional government. We
don’t have time to build a movement, or to fight about the motives or agenda of
the organizers of the anti-war demonstrations.
People go to these marches to express their adamant opposition to the
war and lately, to the usurpation of power by the President, and for no other
reason. Although these gatherings may be
exercises in futility, they are a way to show that large numbers of citizens
are in disagreement with the government’s agenda. In addition, it is crucial that we find ways
to engage in a dialogue with moderate Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians to
discuss in a frank and fair way whether they think these acts are
constitutional and remind them that the Constitution must come before party
affiliation or ideology.
The consensus that I have seen in all my readings of books
and articles is that the people must pressure congress as much as possible,
continuously, to do their duty; must pressure the media on how, and how much,
they are covering these important matters; and must support those groups and
individuals that are doing our work for us in the courts. If enough noise is made, it will eventually
reach even those who have not been listening, because it can become deafening. If not, in a few years an announcement may be
made that “the times are too dangerous to hold an election”.
*From Ivan Eland's article "An Imperial Presidency Based on Constitutional Quicksand", Antiwar.com 01/10/06
Decadent America must give up imperial ambitions
By Anatol
Lieven Published: November 28 2005
US global power, as presently
conceived by the overwhelming majority of the US establishment, is
unsustainable. To place American power on a firmer footing requires putting it
on a more limited footing. Despite the lessons of Iraq, this is something that
American policymakers -- Democrat and Republican, civilian and military -- still
find extremely difficult to think about.
The basic reasons why the
American empire is bust are familiar from other imperial histories. The empire
can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted and
key vassal states are no longer reliable. In an equally classical fashion,
central to what is happening is the greed and decadence of the imperial elites.
Like so many of their predecessors, the US wealthy classes have gained a grip
over the state that allows them to escape taxation. Mass acquiescence in this
has to be bought with much smaller -- but fiscally equally damaging -- cuts to
taxes on the middle classes.
The result is that the empire can no longer
pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfil its self-assumed
imperial tasks. It cannot introduce conscription because of the general
demilitarisation of society and also because elite youths are no longer prepared
to set an example of leadership and sacrifice by serving themselves. The result
is that the US is incapable of waging more wars of occupation, such as in Iraq.
It can defeat other states in battle easily enough but it cannot turn them into
loyal or stable allies. War therefore means simply creating more and more areas
of anarchy and breeding grounds for terrorism.
It is important to note
that this US weakness affects not only the ambitions of the Bush administration,
but also geopolitical stances wholly shared by the Democrats. The Bush
administration deserves to be savagely criticised for the timing and the conduct
of the Iraq war. Future historians may, however, conclude that President Bill
Clinton's strategy of the 1990s would also have made the conquest of Iraq
unavoidable sooner or later; and that given the realities of Iraqi society and
history, the results would not have been significantly less awful. For that
matter, can present US strategy against Iran -- supported by both parties -- be
sustained permanently without war? Indeed, given the nature of the Middle East,
may it not be that any power wishing to exercise hegemony in the region would
have to go to war at regular intervals in defence of its authority or its local
clients?
Furthermore, the relative decline in US economic independence
means that, unlike in 1917 or 1941, really serious war risks US economic
disaster. Even a limited US-Chinese clash over Taiwan would be likely to produce
catastrophic economic consequences for both sides.
In theory, the
desirable US response to its imperial overstretch is simple and has been
advocated by some leading independent US thinkers such as Professor Stephen Walt
of Harvard.* It is to fall back on "offshore balancing", intended to create
regional coalitions against potential aggressors and, when possible, regional
consensuses in support of order and stability. Not just a direct military
presence, but direct military commitments and alliances should be avoided
wherever possible.
When, however, one traces what this might mean in
practice in various parts of the world, it becomes clear how utterly
unacceptable much of this approach would be to the entire existing US political
order. In the former Soviet Union, it could mean accepting a qualified form of
Russian sphere of influence. In Asia, it could mean backing Japan and other
countries against any Chinese aggression, but also defusing the threat of
confrontation with China by encouraging the reintegration of Taiwan into the
mainland. In the Middle East, it could involve separating US goals from Israeli
ones and seeking detente with Iran.
Impossible today, some at least of
these moves may, however, prove inescapable in a generation's time. For it is
pointless to dream of long maintaining an American empire for which most
Americans will neither pay nor fight. My fear though is that, rather than as a
result of carefully planned and peaceful strategy, this process may occur
through disastrous defeats, in the course of which American global power will
not be qualified but destroyed altogether, with potentially awful consequences
for the world.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the New
America Foundation. His latest book is America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of
American Nationalism.
Cheney's World Vision (originally in Harper's Magazine in 2002)
Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy
papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney's masterwork.
It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of
several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has
been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his
name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind
them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents
the Plan.
The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title
of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, as Cheney ended his term as secretary
of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like Leaves
of Grass, a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense
Planning Guidance draft of 1992—from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to
distance himself—and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that
same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a
commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as
yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as
America's new national security strategy—and Cheney et al. will experience what
few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality.
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is
unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the
United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new
rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion
over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more
powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is
being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11
world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the
post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no
matter how different the questions.
Cheney's unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a
little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we
now act upon every day with the full might of the United States military.
Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney's work has a long history, or
that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to
circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a
well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth-like sureness
of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the
ball is sailing over the fence.
Before the Plan was about domination it was about money. It took shape in
late 1989, when the Soviet threat was clearly on the decline, and, with it,
public support for a large military establishment. Cheney seemed unable to come
to terms with either new reality. He remained deeply suspicious of the Soviets
and strongly resisted all efforts to reduce military spending. Democrats in
Congress jeered his lack of strategic vision, and a few within the Bush
Administration were whispering that Cheney had become an irrelevant factor in
structuring a response to the revolutionary changes taking place in the world.
More adaptable was the up-and-coming General Colin Powell, the newly appointed
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Ronald Reagan's national security
adviser, Powell had seen the changes taking place in the Soviet Union firsthand
and was convinced that the ongoing transformation was irreversible. Like
Cheney, he wanted to avoid military cuts, but he knew they were inevitable. The
best he could do was minimize them, and the best way to do that would be to
offer a new security structure that would preserve American military
capabilities despite reduced resources.
Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in
shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States was the only nation
capable of managing the forces at play in the world; it would have to remain
the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the
emerging order in accordance with American interests. U.S. military strategy,
therefore, would have to shift from global containment to managing
less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this,
the United States would have to project a military “forward presence” around
the world; there would be fewer troops but in more places. This plan still
would not be cheap, but through careful restructuring and superior technology,
the job could be done with 25 percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that
maintaining superpower status must be the first priority of the U.S. military.
“We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,' no
matter what the Soviets do,” he said at the time. He also insisted that the
troop levels he proposed were the bare minimum necessary to do so. This concept
would come to be known as the “Base Force.”
Powell's work on the subject proved timely. The Berlin Wall fell on
November 9, 1989, and five days later Powell had his new strategy ready to
present to Cheney. Even as decades of repression were ending in Eastern Europe,
however, Cheney still could not abide even the force and budget reductions
Powell proposed. Yet he knew that cuts were unavoidable. Having no alternative
of his own to offer, therefore, he reluctantly encouraged Powell to present his
ideas to the president. Powell did so the next day; Bush made no promises but
encouraged him to keep at it.
Less encouraging was the reaction of Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of
defense for policy. A lifelong proponent of the unilateralist, maximum-force
approach, he shared Cheney's skepticism about the Eastern Bloc and so put his
own staff to work on a competing plan that would somehow accommodate the
possibility of Soviet backsliding.[1]
As Powell and Wolfowitz worked out their strategies, Congress was losing
patience. New calls went up for large cuts in defense spending in light of the
new global environment. The harshest critique of Pentagon planning came from a
usually dependable ally of the military establishment, Georgia Democrat Sam
Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nunn told fellow
senators in March 1990 that there was a “threat blank” in the administration's
proposed $295 billion defense budget and that the Pentagon's “basic assessment
of the overall threat to our national security” was “rooted in the past.” The
world had changed and yet the “development of a new military strategy that
responds to the changes in the threat has not yet occurred.” Without that
response, no dollars would be forthcoming.
Nunn's message was clear. Powell and Wolfowitz began filling in the blanks.
Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his Base Force approach.
With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant, Powell argued, the United States
could no longer assess its military needs on the basis of known threats.
Instead, the Pentagon should focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide
variety of new and unknown challenges. This shift from a “threat based”
assessment of military requirements to a “capability based” assessment would
become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from countering
Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own dominance. Again, this project
would not be cheap.
Powell's argument, circular though it may have been, proved sufficient to
hold off Congress. Winning support among his own colleagues, however, proved
more difficult. Cheney remained deeply skeptical about the Soviets, and
Wolfowitz was only slowly coming around. To account for future uncertainties,
Wolfowitz recommended drawing down U.S. forces to roughly the levels proposed
by Powell, but doing so at a much slower pace: seven years as opposed to the
four Powell suggested. He also built in a “crisis response/reconstitution”
clause that would allow for reversing the process if events in the Soviet
Union, or elsewhere, turned ugly.
With these new elements in place, Cheney saw something that might work. By
combining Powell's concepts with those of Wolfowitz, he could counter
congressional criticism that his proposed defense budget was out of line with
the new strategic reality, while leaving the door open for future force
increases. In late June, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Cheney presented their plan to
the president, and within a few weeks Bush was unveiling the new strategy.
Bush laid out the rationale for the Plan in a speech in Aspen, Colorado, on
August 2, 1990. He explained that since the danger of global war had
substantially receded, the principal threats to American security would emerge
in unexpected quarters. To counter those threats, he said, the United States
would increasingly base the size and structure of its forces on the need to
respond to “regional contingencies” and maintain a peacetime military presence
overseas. Meeting that need would require maintaining the capability to quickly
deliver American forces to any “corner of the globe,” and that would mean
retaining many major weapons systems then under attack in Congress as overly
costly and unnecessary, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program.
Despite those massive outlays, Bush insisted that the proposed restructuring
would allow the United States to draw down its active forces by 25 percent in
the years ahead, the same figure Powell had projected ten months earlier.
The Plan's debut was well timed. By a remarkable coincidence, Bush revealed
it the very day Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.
The Gulf War temporarily reduced the pressure to cut military spending. It
also diverted attention from some of the Plan's less appealing aspects. In
addition, it inspired what would become one of the Plan's key features: the use
of “overwhelming force” to quickly defeat enemies, a concept since dubbed the
Powell Doctrine.
Once the Iraqi threat was “contained,” Wolfowitz returned to his obsession
with the Soviets, planning various scenarios involving possible Soviet
intervention in regional conflicts. The failure of the hard-liner coup against
Gorbachev in August 1991, however, made it apparent that such planning might be
unnecessary. Then, in late December, just as the Pentagon was preparing to put
the Plan in place, the Soviet Union collapsed.
With the Soviet Union gone, the United States had a choice. It could
capitalize on the euphoria of the moment by nurturing cooperative relations and
developing multilateral structures to help guide the global realignment then
taking place; or it could consolidate its power and pursue a strategy of
unilateralism and global dominance. It chose the latter course.
In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support
for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals.
The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee,
required “sufficient power” to “deter any challenger from ever dreaming of
challenging us on the world stage.” To emphasize the point, he cast the United
States in the role of street thug. “I want to be the bully on the block,” he
said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that “there is no future in
trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.”
As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their congressional
rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and working to have it
incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early months of 1992, Wolfowitz
supervised the preparation of an internal Pentagon policy statement used to
guide military officials in the preparation of their forces, budgets, and
strategies. The classified document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance,
depicted a world dominated by the United States, which would maintain its
superpower status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming
military might. The image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.
The DPG stated that the “first objective” of U.S. defense strategy
was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective
required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a
region” of strategic significance. America's new mission would be to convince
allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue
a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options,
the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off
a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening
punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes
against weapons-manufacturing facilities.
The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear
arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in other
countries. It depicted a “U.S.-led system of collective security” that
implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any kind by countries such as
Germany and Japan. And it called for the “early introduction” of a global
missile-defense system that would presumably render all missile-launched
weapons, including those of the United States, obsolete. (The United States
would, of course, remain the world's dominant military power on the strength of
its other weapons systems.)
The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and military
superiority. While coalitions—such as the one formed during the Gulf War—held
“considerable promise for promoting collective action,” the draft DPG
stated, the United States should expect future alliances to be “ad hoc
assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many
cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.”
It was essential to create “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed
by the U.S.” and essential that America position itself “to act independently
when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in crisis situations
requiring immediate action. “While the U.S. cannot become the world's
‘policeman,'” the document said, “we will retain the preeminent responsibility
for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests,
but those of our allies or friends.” Among the interests the draft indicated
the United States would defend in this manner were “access to vital raw
materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S. citizens from
terrorism.”
The DPG was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on
both the left and the right attacked it immediately. Then-presidential
candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed it as giving a “blank check” to America's
allies by suggesting the United States would “go to war to defend their
interests.” Bill Clinton's deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos,
characterized it as an attempt by Pentagon officials to “find an excuse for big
defense budgets instead of downsizing.” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden
criticized the Plan's vision of a “Pax Americana, a global security system
where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by U.S. military power.”
Even those who found the document's stated goals commendable feared that its
chauvinistic tone could alienate many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to
distance himself from the Plan. The Pentagon's spokesman dismissed the leaked
document as a “low-level draft” and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a
fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted “definitive
guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”
Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he
publicly embraced the DPG's core concept. In a TV interview, he said he
believed it was “just fine” that the United States reign as the world's
dominant military power. “I don't think we should apologize for that,” he said.
Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell insisted that America's
European allies were “not afraid” of U.S. military might because it was “power
that could be trusted” and “will not be misused.”
Mindful that the draft DPG's overt expression of U.S. dominance
might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new rationale
for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a post-Soviet world, filled
with new dangers, the United States needed the ability to fight on more than
one front at a time. “One of the most destabilizing things we could do,” he
said, “is to cut our forces so much that if we're tied up in one area of the
world . . . and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area
of the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we're trying to deter.”
This two-war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn's “threat blank.” One
unknown enemy wasn't enough to justify lavish defense budgets, but two unknown
enemies might do the trick.
Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more comprehensive
response to the DPG furor. A revised version was leaked to the press
that was significantly less strident in tone, though only slightly less
strident in fact. While calling for the United States to prevent “any hostile
power from dominating a region critical to our interests,” the new draft
stressed that America would act in concert with its allies—when possible. It
also suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future
political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously absent from
the original draft.
The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under way, the
Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush's defeat, however, the
Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very last days in office, Cheney
released a final version. The newly titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s
retained the soft touch of the revised draft DPG as well as its darker
themes. The goal remained to preclude “hostile competitors from challenging our
critical interests” and preventing the rise of a new superpower. Although it
expressed a “preference” for collective responses in meeting such challenges,
it made clear that the United States would play the lead role in any alliance.
Moreover, it noted that collective action would “not always be timely.”
Therefore, the United States needed to retain the ability to “act
independently, if necessary.” To do so would require that the United States
maintain its massive military superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow
suit. It was kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And
it was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their way out.
The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed, unilateral
approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and Wolfowitz. Taking
office in the relative calm of the early post-Cold War era, Clinton sought to maximize
America's existing position of strength and promote its interests through
economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States),
greater international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions,
including American-led collective military action. American policy, in short,
shifted from global dominance to globalism.
Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient vigor
to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous administration. Wolfowitz found
Clinton's Iraq policy especially infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz
harshly criticized the decision—endorsed by Powell and Cheney—to end the war
once the U.N. mandate of driving Saddam's forces from Kuwait had been
fulfilled, leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton
Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces and sending
U.S. ground troops to defend a base of operation for them in the southern
region of the country. In a 1996 editorial, Wolfowitz raised the prospect of
launching a preemptive attack against Iraq. “Should we sit idly by,” he wrote,
“with our passive containment policy and our inept covert operations, and wait
until a tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and
sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?” Wolfowitz suggested it was
“necessary” to “go beyond the containment strategy.”
Wolfowitz's objections to Clinton's military tactics were not limited to
Iraq. Wolfowitz had endorsed President Bush's decision in late 1992 to
intervene in Somalia on a limited humanitarian basis. Clinton later expanded
the mission into a broader peacekeeping effort, a move that ended in disaster.
With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Wolfowitz decried Clinton's decision to send
U.S. troops into combat “where there is no significant U.S. national interest.”
He took a similar stance on Clinton's ill-fated democracy-building effort in
Haiti, chastising the president for engaging “American military prestige” on an
issue “of little or no importance” to U.S. interests. Bosnia presented a more
complicated mix of posturing and ideologies. While running for president,
Clinton had scolded the Bush Administration for failing to take action to stem
the flow of blood in the Balkans. Once in office, however, and chastened by
their early misadventures in Somalia and Haiti, Clinton and his advisers
struggled to articulate a coherent Bosnia policy. Wolfowitz complained in 1994
of the administration's failure to “develop an effective course of action.” He
personally advocated arming the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the
Serbs. Powell, on the other hand, publicly cautioned against intervention. In
1995 a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign, combined with a Croat-Muslim ground
offensive, forced the Serbs into negotiations, leading to the Dayton Peace
Accords. In 1999, as Clinton rounded up support for joint U.S.-NATO action in
Kosovo, Wolfowitz hectored the president for failing to act quickly enough.
After eight years of what Cheney et al. regarded as wrongheaded military
adventures and pinprick retaliatory strikes, the Clinton
Administration—mercifully, in their view—came to an end. With the ascension of
George W. Bush to the presidency, the authors of the Plan returned to
government, ready to pick up where they had left off. Cheney, of course, became
vice president, Powell became secretary of state, and Wolfowitz moved into the
number-two slot at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. Other
contributors also returned: Two prominent members of the Wolfowitz team that
crafted the original DPG took up posts on Cheney's staff. I. Lewis
“Scooter” Libby, who served as Wolfowitz's deputy during Bush I, became the
vice president's chief of staff and national security adviser. And Eric Edelman,
an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush Administration,
became a top foreign policy adviser to Cheney.[2]
Cheney and company had not changed their minds during the Clinton interlude
about the correct course for U.S. policy, but they did not initially appear
bent on resurrecting the Plan. Rather than present a unified vision of foreign
policy to the world, in the early going the administration focused on promoting
a series of seemingly unrelated initiatives. Notable among these were missile
defense and space-based weaponry, long-standing conservative causes. In
addition, a distinct tone of unilateralism emerged as the new administration
announced its intent to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia
in order to pursue missile defense; its opposition to U.S. ratification of an
international nuclear-test-ban pact; and its refusal to become a party to an
International Criminal Court. It also raised the prospect of ending the
self-imposed U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing initiated by the President's
father during the 1992 presidential campaign. Moreover, the administration
adopted a much tougher diplomatic posture, as evidenced, most notably, by a
distinct hardening of relations with both China and North Korea. While none of
this was inconsistent with the concept of U.S. dominance, these early actions
did not, at the time, seem to add up to a coherent strategy.
It was only after September 11 that the Plan emerged in full. Within days
of the attacks, Wolfowitz and Libby began calling for unilateral military
action against Iraq, on the shaky premise that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda
network could not have pulled off the assaults without Saddam Hussein's
assistance. At the time, Bush rejected such appeals, but Wolfowitz kept pushing
and the President soon came around. In his State of the Union address in
January, Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil,” and warned
that he would “not wait on events” to prevent them from using weapons of mass
destruction against the United States. He reiterated his commitment to
preemption in his West Point speech in June. “If we wait for threats to fully
materialize we will have waited too long,” he said. “We must take the battle to
the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they
emerge.” Although it was less noted, Bush in that same speech also reintroduced
the Plan's central theme. He declared that the United States would prevent the
emergence of a rival power by maintaining “military strengths beyond
challenge.” With that, the President effectively adopted a strategy his
father's administration had developed ten years earlier to ensure that the
United States would remain the world's preeminent power. While the headlines
screamed “preemption,” no one noticed the declaration of the dominance
strategy.
In case there was any doubt about the administration's intentions, the
Pentagon's new DPG lays them out. Signed by Wolfowitz's new boss, Donald
Rumsfeld, in May and leaked to the Los Angeles Times in July, it
contains all the key elements of the original Plan and adds several
complementary features. The preemptive strikes envisioned in the original draft
DPG are now “unwarned attacks.” The old Powell-Cheney notion of military
“forward presence” is now “forward deterrence.” The use of overwhelming force
to defeat an enemy called for in the Powell Doctrine is now labeled an “effects
based” approach.
Some of the names have stayed the same. Missile defense is back, stronger
than ever, and the call goes up again for a shift from a “threat based”
structure to a “capabilities based” approach. The new DPG also
emphasizes the need to replace the so-called Cold War strategy of preparing to
fight two major conflicts simultaneously with what the Los Angeles Times refers
to as “a more complex approach aimed at dominating air and space on several
fronts.” This, despite the fact that Powell had originally conceived—and the
first Bush Administration had adopted—the two-war strategy as a means of
filling the “threat blank” left by the end of the Cold War.
Rumsfeld's version adds a few new ideas, most impressively the concept of
preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. These would be earth-penetrating
nuclear weapons used for attacking “hardened and deeply buried targets,” such
as command-and-control bunkers, missile silos, and heavily fortified
underground facilities used to build and store weapons of mass destruction. The
concept emerged earlier this year when the administration's Nuclear Posture
Review leaked out. At the time, arms-control experts warned that adopting
the NPR's recommendations would undercut existing arms-control treaties,
do serious harm to nonproliferation efforts, set off new rounds of testing, and
dramatically increase the prospects of nuclear weapons being used in combat.
Despite these concerns, the administration appears intent on developing the
weapons. In a final flourish, the DPG also directs the military to
develop cyber-, laser-, and electronic-warfare capabilities to ensure U.S.
dominion over the heavens.
Rumsfeld spelled out these strategies in Foreign Affairs earlier
this year, and it is there that he articulated the remaining elements of the
Plan: unilateralism and global dominance. Like the revised DPG of 1992,
Rumsfeld feigns interest in collective action but ultimately rejects it as
impractical. “Wars can benefit from coalitions,” he writes, “but they should
not be fought by committee.” And coalitions, he adds, “must not determine the
mission.” The implication is the United States will determine the missions and
lead the fights. Finally, Rumsfeld expresses the key concept of the Plan:
preventing the emergence of rival powers. Like the original draft DPG of
1992, he states that America's goal is to develop and maintain the military
strength necessary to “dissuade” rivals or adversaries from “competing.” With
no challengers, and a proposed defense budget of $379 billion for next year,
the United States would reign over all it surveys.
Reaction to the latest edition of the Plan has, thus far, focused on
preemption. Commentators parrot the administration's line, portraying the
concept of preemptory strikes as a “new” strategy aimed at combating terrorism.
In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post following Bush's West Point
address, former Clinton adviser William Galston described preemption as part of
a “brand-new security doctrine,” and warned of possible negative diplomatic
consequences. Others found the concept more appealing. Loren Thompson of the
conservative Lexington Institute hailed the “Bush Doctrine” as “a necessary
response to the new dangers that America faces” and declared it “the biggest
shift in strategic thinking in two generations.” Wall Street Journal
editor Robert Bartley echoed that sentiment, writing that “no talk of this ilk
has been heard from American leaders since John Foster Dulles talked of rolling
back the Iron Curtain.”
Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is hardly
new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and his coauthors
rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the Cold War. Then the goal was
global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to
terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally
enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely
undetected.
This country once rejected “unwarned” attacks such as Pearl Harbor as
barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer the prospect of
conducting sneak attacks—potentially with nuclear weapons—on piddling powers
run by tin-pot despots.
We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our primary
objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union was its quest for global
domination. Through the successful employment of the tools of containment,
deterrence, collective security, and diplomacy—the very methods we now
reject—we rid ourselves and the world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we
now pursue the very thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet
Union is gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us.
Perhaps, however, there is. The Bush Administration and its loyal opposition
seem not to grasp that the quests for dominance generate backlash. Those
threatened with preemption may themselves launch preemptory strikes. And even
those who are successfully “preempted” or dominated may object and find means
to strike back. Pursuing such strategies may, paradoxically, result in greater
factionalism and rivalry, precisely the things we seek to end.
Not all Americans share Colin Powell's desire to be “the bully on the
block.” In fact, some believe that by following a different path the United
States has an opportunity to establish a more lasting security environment. As
Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth wrote recently in Foreign
Affairs, “Unipolarity makes it possible to be the global bully—but it also
offers the United States the luxury of being able to look beyond its immediate
needs to its own, and the world's, long-term interests. . . . Magnanimity and
restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that
have proved their worth.” Perhaps, in short, we can achieve our desired ends by
means other than global domination.
About the Author
David Armstrong is an investigative reporter for the National Security News
Service.
Notes
1. During the elder Bush's tenure as CIA director
in the 1970s, Wolfowitz had served on a panel of defense experts known as “Team
B,” which concluded that U.S. intelligence was vastly underestimating the scale
of the Soviet threat—an opinion he had yet to revise in 1990.
2. Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as assistant
deputy undersecretary of defense during the first Bush Administration, wrote a
book during the Clinton interval expressing the core concepts of the original DPG.
Khalilzad argued that the United States should “preclude the rise of another
global rival for the indefinite future,” and “be willing to use force if
necessary for the purpose.” Khalilzad joined the inner circle of the current
administration as a special assistant to the president and today serves as a
U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan.
Our Moral Values
by GEORGE LAKOFF
[from the December 6, 2004 issue of The Nation]
We are the 55 million progressives who came together in this
election, voted for Kerry and rejected the Bush agenda.
We came together because of our moral values: care and
responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment
in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and
openness. We united behind political principles: equality, equity
(if you work for a living, you should earn a living) and government for
the people--all the people.
These are traditional American values and principles, what
we are proudest of in this country. The Democrats' failure was a
failure to put forth our moral vision, celebrate our values and
principles, and shout them out loud.
We must immediately convince our leaders to unite behind
these values, express our common moral vision and hold the line against
the Bush agenda because it is immoral! Bush will call them
obstructionists. They must frame themselves as heading in the right
direction, going forward not backward, defending the greatest of
American ideals and moral principles, working against a radical right
agenda that would lead our country to disaster and speaking for more
than 55 million highly moral, patriotic Americans.
If we communicate our values clearly, most people will
recognize them as their own, personally more authentic and more deeply
American than those put forth by conservatives. At the very least they
will see progressives as having deeply held, traditional American
principles. This would be a huge step forward from the present state,
in which conservatives are seen as having a monopoly on "values" and
progressives are framed as the party of "if it feels good, do it," with
no higher principles.
Moral values at the national level are idealized family
values projected onto the nation. Progressive values are the values of
a responsible nurturant family, where parents (if there are two) are
equally responsible. Their job is to nurture their children and raise
them to be nurturers of others. Nurturance has two aspects: empathy and
responsibility--both for yourself and your children. From this, all
progressive values follow, both in the family and in politics.
If you empathize with your children, you will want them to
have strong protection, fair and equal treatment and fulfillment in
life. Fulfillment requires freedom, freedom requires
opportunity and opportunity requires prosperity. Since your
family lives in, and requires, a community, community building and
community service are required. Community requires cooperation,
which requires trust, which requires honesty and open
communication. Those are the progressive values--in politics as
well as family life.
Take protection. In addition to physical protection, there
is environmental protection, worker protection and consumer protection,
as well as all the "safety nets"--Social Security, Medicare and so on.
Equality means full political and social equality, without regard to
wealth, race, religion or gender. Openness requires open government and
a free, inquiring press. Progressive political ideals are nurturant
moral ideals.
On the other hand, the strict-father family model assumes
that evil and danger will always lurk in the world, that life is
difficult, that there will always be winners and losers and that
children are born bad--they want to do what feels good, not what's
right--and have to be made good. A strict father is needed to protect
and support the family and to teach his kids right from wrong. That can
be done in only one way: punishment painful enough that, to avoid it,
children will learn the internal discipline necessary to be moral. That
discipline can also make them prosperous if they seek their
self-interest and no one interferes. Mommy isn't strong enough to
protect the family and is too soft-hearted to discipline the children.
That's why fathers are necessary.
Apply this, via metaphor, to the nation: We need a strong
President who knows right from wrong to defend the nation. Social
programs are immoral because they give people things they haven't
earned and so make them undisciplined--both dependent and less able to
function morally. The prosperous people are the good people. Those who
are not prosperous deserve their poverty. Taxes take away the rightful
rewards of the prosperous. Wrongdoers should be punished severely.
Government should get out of the way of disciplined (hence good) people
seeking their self-interest. The President is to be obeyed; since he
knows right from wrong, his authority is legitimate and not to be
questioned. In foreign policy, he is also the absolute moral authority
and so needs no advice from lesser countries.
The so-called "moral issues" are affronts to strict-father
morality. Strict-father marriage cannot be gay; it must be between a
man and a woman. For a wife to seek an abortion on her own or a
daughter to need one is an affront to strict-father control over the
behavior of the women in his family. They are not the main moral issues
in themselves; rather they are symbolic of the entire strict-father
identity as applied to all spheres of life. That's why they are so
powerful for conservatives.
Swing voters have both models--in different parts of their
lives--and are unsure about which to apply to politics in a particular
election. The job of a candidate is to activate his model in the swing
voters. Conservatives know this: By talking to their base, they are
activating their base model in swing voters. When liberals move to the
right, they are shooting themselves in both feet: They alienate their
base and they activate the other side's models in the swing voters,
thus helping the other side.
Democrats in Congress need to understand this. They must
hold their ground, be positive and be aware that moving to the right is
a double disaster. It will only help the radical right's agenda, break
with values that unify us and make it harder to awaken our values in
swing voters.
The only way to trump their moral values is with our own
more traditional and more patriotic moral values. Proclaim them and
live them, and we will find that there are many more than 55 million of
us.
The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
by Dr. Lawrence Britt
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler
(Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and
several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14-defining characteristics
common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans,
symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as
are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in
fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in
certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way
or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long
incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need
to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or
religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists,
etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given
a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic
agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively
male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are
made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and
the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family
institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in
other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government
regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.
Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in
the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric
and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major
tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's
policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are
the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually
beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a
fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are
severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher
education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other
academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts
and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to
enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses
and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is
often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist
nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and
associates who appoint each other to government positions and use
governmental power and authority to protect their friends from
accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national
resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen
by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times
elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even
assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control
voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of
the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to
manipulate or control elections.
