THE BUSH DOCTRINE
"The president's personal authority to use America's military might was subject to two opposite historical trends. On the one hand, there is the biggest scandal in constitutional law: the gradual disappearance of the congressional Declaration of War. Has there ever been a war more suited to a formal declaration—started more deliberately, more publicly, with less urgency and at more leisure—than the U.S. war on Iraq? Right or wrong, Gulf War II resembles the imperial forays of earlier centuries more than the nuclear standoffs and furtive terrorist hunts of the 20th and 21st. Yet Bush, like all recent presidents, claims for his person the sovereign right to launch such a war. Like his predecessors, he condescends only to accept blank-check resolutions from legislators cowed by fear of appearing disloyal to troops already dispatched."
"Bush's defense of his decision to make war on Iraq was basic: "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security." He did not claim that Iraq is a present threat to America's own national security but suggested that "in one year or five years" it could be such a threat. In the 20th century, threats from murderous dictators were foolishly ignored until it was too late. In this century, "terrorists and terrorist states" do not play the game of war by the traditional rules. They "do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations." Therefore, "Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide."
"So first of all, the right Bush is asserting really has no limits because the special circumstances he claims aren't really special. Striking first in order to pre-empt an enemy that has troops massing along your border is one thing. Striking first against a nation that has never even explicitly threatened your sovereign territory, except in response to your own threats, because you believe that this nation may have weapons that could threaten you in five years, is something very different."
"Putting all this together, Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct."
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