Re: I am not convinced we are there yet, but I do not rule it out if we allow Cheney and company to pull the strings behind the scenes.
Johnson seeks to hoist the "neo-conservatives" with their own petard. They love, he writes, to breathe the air of "originalism" in the Constitution, yet they openly reject the framers' wisdom. James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," 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.... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."
Yet President Bush unilaterally declared a long war against terrorism. Johnson notes that a White House spokesman at the time remarked that the president "considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason." Treason? In his campaign, Bush joked in October 2000, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." After Sept. 11, he told a reporter: "I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." So much for James Madison.
Johnson has given us a polemic, but one soundly grounded in an impressive array of facts and data. The costs of empire are our sorrow, he contends. He anticipates a state of perpetual war, involving more military expenditures and overseas expansion, and presidents who will continue to eclipse or ignore Congress. He documents a growing system of propaganda, disinformation and glorification of war and military power. Finally, he fears economic bankruptcy as the president underwrites these adventures with a congressional blank check while neglecting growing problems of education, health care and a decaying physical infrastructure.
The Sorrows of Empire offers a powerful indictment of current U.S. military and foreign policy. It also provides an occasion to consider the constitutional values of our republic. A national frenzy erupted when Bill Clinton lied under oath about his sexual encounters. The media obsessed on the subject. His enemies passionately exalted the Holy Writ of the Constitution with religious-like devotion. Their silence now is deafening. Loyalty to the flag and the president seems more important, but these are not mandated constitutional principles. Would that these erstwhile defenders of constitutional faith and purity had expressed similar fervor in defense of the Constitution during the last two years.
This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted with permission of the author.
hnn.us |
