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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (6684)	9/3/2003 2:29:32 PM
From: MSI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793639

A description of the wider problem This also helps explain Dean's popularity. Niether GOP nor Dems will fix this, other than someone out of the Beltway like Dean. independent.org "By “autocratic government,” I refer to the reality of how foreign policy is actually made in the United States. Notwithstanding the trappings of our political system’s democratic procedures, checks and balances, elections, and so forth, the making of foreign policy involves only a handful of people decisively. "When the president and his coterie of top advisers decide to go to war, they just go, and nobody can stop them. The “intelligence” agencies, the diplomatic corps, and the armed forces do as they are told. "Members of Congress cower and speak in mealy-mouthed phrases framed to ensure that no matter how the war turns out, they can share any credit and deny any blame. No one has effective capacity to block the president, and few officials care to do so in any event, even if they object. "Rarely does anyone display the minimal decency of resigning his military commission or his appointment in the bureaucracy. "In short, in our system the president has come to hold the power of war and peace exclusively in his hands, notwithstanding anything to the contrary written in the Constitution or the laws. He might as well be Caesar." ... "In the late 1930s, Congress considered the Ludlow Resolution, which would have amended the Constitution to require approval in a national referendum before Congress could declare war, unless U.S. territory had been invaded. Franklin D. Roosevelt vigorously opposed such an amendment, writing to the Speaker of the House on January 6, 1938, that its adoption “would cripple any President in his conduct of our foreign relations,” and the resolution was narrowly voted down [209 to 188] in the House soon afterward. Can’t let the inmates run the asylum, now can we?"