Village Voice
December 23 - 29, 1998 jason vest
(THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE. IT IS FOR FAIR USE ONLY.)
Clinton's Hail Mary - A political action that couples sex with
death
WASHINGTON— Was that a tomahawk missile in his pants or was Bill Clinton just happy to see
Richard Butler's report? Even before the bombs actually rained down on Baghdad, cries of "wag the dog"
went up from Capitol Hill to Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, and accusations characterizing the UNSCOM
chairman as a geopolitical handmaiden to his beleaguered American patron began to fly like lethal
airborne ordnance.
Such speculation was hardly untoward: As former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter ably demonstrated
earlier this year, Butler does seem to take the Clinton administration's input more seriously than that of his
UN bosses. In another vein, it was on the same day Monica Lewinsky gave her grand jury testimony that
Clinton commenced an utterly unnecessary bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan under the pretext of
immediate "clear and present danger." And, if we reach a little further into the recess of memory, we recall
that it was on the eve of Gennifer Flowers's revelations in 1992 that then governor Clinton returned to
Arkansas to preside over the execution of a retarded African American.
But despite the existence of a novel pattern of political action that couples sex with death, two neglected
realities borne out of the latest round of bombings stand virtually unacknowledged. One is that while
impeachment considerations likely factored into Clinton's decision, the latest attack had more to do with
the continued pursuit of a hopelessly inept and unnecessarily cruel approach to the Iraq question. The
other is that Clinton's actions are more easily— and appropriately— impeachable.
"At least George Bush went through the motions of getting UN approval and a supporting congressional
resolution," says Francis Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law who specializes in
international and constitutional legal issues. "This was just naked aggression. He's clearly in violation of the
War Powers Clause of the Constitution, the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the UN Charter, and the UN
Security Council resolutions on Iraq. This is a subversion of constitutional government, and he should be
impeached for it."
It's always been hard to say what's more amazing about Clinton: his willingness to use his office for
self-gain, or his ability to simultaneously co-opt Republican positions and get his fellow Democrats to
abandon traditional principles in the name of defending his perpetually imperiled posterior. During the
Judiciary Committee's proceedings, for example, New York's Jerrold Nadler held that LBJ should have
been impeached for deceiving Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution; rather than publicly
pondering if a similar standard might apply to Clinton's attacks on Iraq and Sudan, Nadler, like so many
other Democrats, rallied round the flagpole.
But last Thursday night, Democrat David Skaggs of Colorado took the floor and— in a speech no one
bothered to report— all but called for Clinton's impeachment for the Iraq attack. "President Clinton acted
in violation of the Constitution in ordering these attacks without authority of Congress," the retiring
Democrat and defender of Clinton against Ken Starr said, stating the painfully obvious and blasting his
House colleagues for "default[ing] on our responsibility . . . to insist" on accepting their prescribed legal
role.
"The president," Skaggs continued, "to the extent that he relies on a strict reading on the Constitution for
other purposes, should adhere to a strict reading of the War Powers Clause. Instead, his administration
engages in a contrived bit of legal sophistry to conjure up a pretext of legality where none exists. Shame
on him," Skaggs fumed. "And shame on us for letting other presidents and this one take away one of the
most important powers which the American people have a right to expect us here to exercise on their
behalf."
Lest one dismiss Skaggs's point of view, George Bush— even with a congressional resolution and UN
approval— was concerned about the possibility of ending up in the dock: "I'm going to have to share
credit with Congress and the world if it works quick," Bush wrote in a December 20, 1990, diary entry,
but "if it drags out, not only will I take the blame, I will probably have impeachment proceedings filed
against me." Representative Henry Gonzales of Texas did, in fact, have Boyle draft impeachment
resolutions against Bush. And it wasn't the first request Boyle had received, from either side of the aisle.
"In the early '80s, both Senator Daniel Moynihan and Representative Dan Crane, a conservative
Republican, called me asking how to get the Marines out of Lebanon," Boyle says. "My advice was,
because the president had sent them there in violation of the Constitution and the WPR, to get them out
and bring UN forces up, or consider impeachment. Later on, with Grenada, with Panama— both
impeachable— defenders of the presidents cited the 'commander in chief' line in the Constitution, even
though the Constitution clearly says it's Congress's job to declare war or issue letters of mark and reprisal
[the authorizations for smaller-scale actions]. Instead, Congress has continued to abrogate its powers and
responsibilities. And now you're seeing liberal Democrats making the same arguments the Reaganites and
Bushites were making."
Which— when applied to the Clinton administration and not Democratic legislators— isn't entirely
surprising, given that the Clinton administration inherited a bad Iraq policy from Bush and made it worse.
When the UN Security Council passed its Iraqi sanctions resolutions in 1991, it tied the lifting of the
sanctions to disarmament, weapons inspections, reparations, and cessation of internal repression. It did
not, however, stipulate that Saddam Hussein remove himself from power. Yet a month later, both Bush
and then secretary of state James Baker said that the U.S. line was no end to sanctions "as long as
Saddam Hussein is in power." Shortly before his inauguration, Clinton indicated he'd be willing to discuss
a change of situation with Saddam, but then began to echo the Bush position.
No one in the Clinton administration, however, has embraced the hard line with as much gusto as
Secretary of State Madeline Albright. While her British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, has
at least paid lip service to designing and implementing an "ethical" foreign policy, Albright— when
presented in 1996 with the fact that sanctions had led to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children—
simply responded, "We think the price is worth it."
Despite repeated reports from the United Nations that the death toll of innocents has steadily climbed
past 1 million, and despite even a plea from Pope John Paul II to end the "pitiless embargo [against] the
weak and innocent [who] cannot pay for mistakes for which they are not responsible," the fundamental
effect of the Clinton administration's policy of privately impeding inspections while publicly perpetuating
sanctions is more Iraqi civilians dead from hunger and disease.
"Their policies of both sanctions and bombings are inconsistent with their own goals— they've admitted
sanctions won't take Hussein out of power, they've admitted air strikes aren't likely to take Hussein out of
power, and they've admitted sanctions and air strikes aren't likely to increase access to
weapons-of-mass-destruction sites," says Jon Strange, an activist who drew Albright's ire when he asked
her several pointed questions about U.S. foreign policy at a public forum in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this
year. "Saddam's a butcher, but he's not irrational— what's his incentive to comply? I went to Iraq earlier
this year to deliver medicine, and what I saw was horrifying. Because there's no chlorine, children are
dying from water-borne bacteria and treatable ailments like asthma. We saw hospitals with unclean
sheets, three kids to a bed, and absolutely no medicine."
According to Strange and others who have recently been to Iraq and were interviewed by the Voice, the
Clinton administration has failed to face the reality that while the majority of Iraqi citizens live in fear of
Saddam, the sanctions have little impact on the military, which Saddam cares about more than civilians.
And earlier this month, the U.S. proved it cares more about the embargo than Iraqi citizens: members of
Voices in the Wilderness, a relief group that has delivered medicine and toys to Iraqi children and families,
were notified that they're facing a $163,000 fine for making their deliveries in violation of the embargo.
"It could have been worse," said Jeff Guntzel, a member of the group. "I think what's more frustrating to
us right now is the bombings, which show that there seems to be no real plan about how to deal with
Iraq." |
