The Boy King and His War: James Madison wrote in 1793: "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department." If the President had that power, said Madison, "the temptation would be too great for any one man."
The Progressive: Commentary
By the time you read these words, George W. Bush may already have launched his war against Iraq. Since August, he has acted like a boy king, stomping his feet and demanding, "I want my war. Give me my war." He told all of his vassals to make sure it happened, and at press time, it sure looked likely.
The whole issue of getting inspectors into Iraq, even the goal of disarmament, was a ruse. What Bush has wanted all along is to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He was honest about that originally, though he used the hideous neologism "regime change." But when that wouldn't fly diplomatically, he reverted to disarmament. Then, when it became obvious that Saddam was cooperating, at least to some extent, with the inspectors, Bush pulled the "regime change" card out of his sleeve once again.
At almost every opportunity, Bush claimed that Saddam was not only a threat but a "growing" or "mounting" or "gathering" threat.
But how could Iraq be such a threat when U.N. inspectors were going anywhere they wanted, anytime they wanted, to search for these weapons?
How could Iraq be such a threat when Saddam was destroying many of his Al Samoud missiles? Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector, said this action constitutes "a substantial measure of disarmament. . . . We're not watching the breaking of toothpicks here. Lethal weapons are being destroyed."
How could it be such a threat when Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that there is "no evidence of the revival of a nuclear weapons program"?
How could it be such a threat when U.S., French, German, and Russian spy planes were free to survey every inch of Iraqi territory and then pass their intelligence on to the inspectors?
Before Secretary of State Colin Powell received other instructions from his boss, he used to say that Saddam was in a box. Because of inspections, the walls of the box were closing in on Saddam.
But that didn't satisfy Bush.
The boy king wanted Saddam's head.
This is not how democracy is supposed to work. Congress itself committed a horrendous blunder when, last October, it abdicated its responsibility under the Constitution. By handing Bush a bill that essentially said he could go to war against Iraq any damn time he pleased, Congress ceded its power to declare war and thus did away with a fundamental check and balance.
James Madison wrote in 1793: "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department." If the President had that power, said Madison, "the temptation would be too great for any one man."
Bush has shown how easily he is tempted.
He also has shown utter contempt for the views of the vast majority of people in nation after nation who have opposed this war. Dismissing worldwide protests as the equivalent of a focus group, Bush has failed to come to grips with the overwhelming unpopularity of his position. When 95 percent of the people in Turkey opposed the war, when 83 percent of the people in England opposed the war, when record numbers of protesters appeared in one capital after another to show their disgust with the Bush Administration's policy, a wiser, more prudent man might have reconsidered his plans. But not Bush. He pushed right ahead.
So enthralled is Bush with the might of the Pentagon, so enraptured is he with his self-assigned role of liberator, so sure is he of doing God's will that he has become an enormously frightening figure. He seems to believe he can rule the world alone--or at most as part of a triumvirate with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
The costs of the policy are already mounting. Bush has done grievous damage to Washington's relationship with its traditional European allies. Tony Blair might lose his job. The governments of Spain and Italy could also tumble because of their toadying. France or Germany could exercise a veto over the expansion of the European Union or NATO. Such expansion can occur only by unanimous consent, and if "Old Europe" sees the Eastern European countries as Trojan horses of Washington, it may decide to scuttle the whole deal.
U.S. relations with Russia also have suffered. Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of the house of Russia's parliament, condemned Bush's cowboy approach. "Do you know the difference between a policeman and a gangster? A policeman complies with rules which are elaborated not by the policeman but by a certain democratic community accepted by everyone," he told The New York Times. "A gangster implements his own rules."
More trouble is likely to come from the Muslim world. Bush has argued that invading Iraq will solve just about every problem in the Middle East except male pattern baldness. The central argument that Bush made--that installing democracy (as if it were a spare part) in Iraq will bring peace to the Middle East--doesn't stand up. The Bush Administration actually fears democracy in Iraq because a majority of Iraqis are Shiites, who are likely to ally with Iran. Bush also is opposed to self-determination for the Kurds, much to their consternation. He has already promised Turkey that the Kurds will not get a state of their own.
Bush bases his absurd claim that the overthrow of Saddam will hasten peace between Israel and the Palestinians on the assumption that Saddam's demise "will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers." But if Bush thinks that Palestinian suicide bombers engage in their unjustifiable, bloody acts simply to get monetary rewards from Saddam for their families, he's kidding himself.
What's more, by threatening to invade and occupy another Muslim country, Bush is playing the role that Osama bin Laden has assigned to him: that of Islam's enemy. In February, bin Laden denounced "the crusaders" for trying to "occupy the capital of Islam in the past and to usurp the wealth of Muslims and to put up a puppet government to control you."
If the U.S. military inflicts grotesque civilian casualties on Iraq, and if pictures of this brutalization run on Al Jazeera TV day in and day out, the war against Iraq will serve only as a recruiting call for Al Qaeda. Bush advertised the war on Iraq as a war against terror, but it may serve to swell the ranks of the terrorists. And it may foment fundamentalist unrest from Nigeria to Egypt and Pakistan.
Other consequences of Bush's bellicosity we are seeing already: The U.S. economy wobbles, oil prices skyrocket, unemployment jumps. These may pale in comparison to the death toll in Baghdad, but they represent real suffering for millions of Americans.
History is not preordained or static, much less finished (Francis Fukuyama notwithstanding). Bush's overreaching has already produced its antithesis: the surprising and exhilarating and enormous worldwide mass protests against the war. The anti-war movement has merged with the anti-globalization movement and morphed into a single movement against the U.S. empire.
Six months ago, few could have predicted this global revolt. But here it is. And it won't go away soon. With its increasing power, this movement will challenge Bush's economic and military policies, seeing them as wings of the same predator.
In some basic sense, then, what we are seeing is a worldwide democratic movement vying against Bush's policy of empire, war, and repression.
We are now in a desperate race to see whether Bush will wreak immeasurable global havoc, or whether the anti-empire protesters in one country after another (including in the United States!) will catch up to him and, by pressuring their respective governments, bring to heel this international outlaw.
There is no more urgent task before us.
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