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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Congress Has Marginalized Itself
Iraq and the
Failures of Democracy
By RICHARD FALK and
DAVID KRIEGER
There is no decision in foreign policy more serious
than recourse to war. As the Bush administration prods the country
toward an unpopular and illegal war with Iraq, it is a matter
of national urgency to question whether our constitutional system
of government is providing adequate protection to the American
people against the scourge of war. Given the turbulence of the
current world scene and considering America's military primacy
on the global stage, what the United States does affects the
well-being, and possibly the survival, of others throughout the
world. So we must question whether our system of representative
democracy is currently working in relation to this momentous
question of war or peace.
Without doubt the events of September
11 were a test of the viability of our institutions under a form
of stress never before experienced, the menace of a mega-terrorist
enemy lurking in the concealed recesses of dozens of countries,
including possibly our own. To respond effectively without losing
our democratic identity in the process required wise and sensitive
leadership. It required as well a display of political and moral
imagination to devise a strategy capable of dealing effectively
with mega-terrorism while remaining ethical and in keeping with
our values as a nation. At this point, on the brink of a war
against Iraq, a country that has not been persuasively linked
to the terrorist attacks of September 11, it is impossible to
conclude that our government is meeting this unprecedented challenge.
Indeed, the Bush administration appears likely to intensify the
danger while further widening the orbit of death and destruction.
The American system of constitutional
government depends on a system of checks and balances. Such checks
and balances among the three main branches of government is a
fundamental principle, and never more so than in relation to
war and peace. At the very least, Congress has the responsibility
of restraining a rush to war by engaging in serious public debate.
To date Congress has only held low profile hearings some months
back. No opponents of the approach taken by the Bush administration
were invited to participate in the hearings, which almost exclusively
analyzed the costs and benefits of the war option as applied
to Iraq. There was no consideration of alternatives to war, no
reflections on the dubious legality of the preemptive war doctrine,
no discussion of the absence of urgency and necessity that undermined
the argument that there was no time to waste in achieving "disarmament"
and "regime change" in Iraq.
Congress has so far failed in its constitutional
responsibilities. In passing the USA Patriot Act shortly after
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress seriously
eroded traditional American guarantees of freedom and privacy
found in the Bill of Rights. The Act allows the government to
conduct secret searches, provides for FBI access to extensive
personal and financial records of individuals without court order
or even probable cause of a crime, and creates a new, broad definition
of "domestic terrorism" that could subject individuals
who engage in public protest to wiretapping and enhanced penalties.
The open-ended resolution of Congress
authorizing the president to resort to force only accentuates
its failure to uphold these responsibilities. It would seem that
the patriotic mood that followed the terrorist attacks, along
with shortsighted anxieties about challenging a popular president,
has dulled the critical faculties of Congress as a whole despite
the willingness of a small number of senators and congressmen
to raise their voices in opposition. As a republic, the US Government
cannot function properly if Congress fails to exercise its constitutional
responsibilities in relation to the ultimate issues of war and
peace, and simply gives spineless deference to the president.
Closely connected with this institutional
breakdown, is the lamentable behavior of the Democratic Party,
particularly its leadership. They have failed in the role of
an opposition party to raise issues of principle, especially
when so much is at stake. The passivity of the Democratic Party
in these circumstances can only be explained by its ill-considered
opportunism with regard to domestic politics, including an inappropriate
pretension of patriotism. Given the importance of the party system,
our governing procedures cannot protect the citizenry against
unacceptable policies if the opposition party becomes mute and
hides in the face of anticipated controversy.
These issues have been compounded by
a compliant mainstream media, especially the corporate-owned
news networks. The media has largely viewed its role in terms
of promoting patriotic obedience to the government and mobilizing
the country for war against Iraq rather than illuminating the
debate about whether such a war is justified and necessary. The
media has focused its attention on when the war will begin, how
it will be fought, and what kind of occupation policy and exit
strategy will be attempted. It has refrained from considering
the question of why the US should or should not engage in war
or from examining the many serious possible consequences to the
Middle East and to the US itself of engaging in this war.
There are numerous qualified critics
among the American citizenry, as well as overseas, and yet their
voices are virtually never heard in the mainstream media. The
media tends to orient its analysis around compliant "military
analysts" and conservative think tank policy wonks. Even
when prominent military figures, such as General Norman Schwartzkopf
or General Anthony Zinni, express doubts about the rush to war,
their objections are given virtually no attention. This spectacle
of a self-indoctrinated and self-censored media weakens our democratic
fabric, depriving the citizenry of information and perspectives
that are needed to reach intelligent conclusions as to support
or opposition.
Most important of all, the Bush administration
seems to be moving toward a non-defensive war against Iraq without
providing a coherent account to the American public. It has presented
evidence to the UN Security Council suggesting that Iraq retains
unreported stocks of biological and chemical weaponry, but has
provided no convincing proof of this and certainly no rationale
on this basis for war. The American people need to realize that
there are at least twenty countries with greater capabilities
than Iraq with respect to such weaponry. A number of these countries
are far more likely to be a conduit for such weaponry to pass
into the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorist operatives, which
is the greatest danger.
It is also important for the American
people to understand that in the course of an American attack
on Iraq, its leadership would only then have an incentive, in
their helplessness, to turn such weaponry as they possess over
to al Qaeda or to use it against American troops. Without such
an incentive, Iraq is likely to remain the most deterred country
on the planet, fully aware that any provocative step involving
deployment or threats of weapons of mass destruction would bring
about the instant annihilation of the Baghdad regime and Iraq
as an independent country.
Under these circumstances, we must wonder
why the Bush administration, with pro forma Congressional support,
is plunging ahead with a war that seems so contrary to reason.
There are two lines of explanation, both raising disturbing questions
about the legitimacy of governance under the leadership of the
Bush administration. The first explanation is that the shock
impact of September 11 has upset the rationality of the policy
process to such an extent that an unwarranted war is being undertaken.
Part of this explanation is the frustration experienced by the
Bush administration in the aftermath of the Afghanistan War.
Not knowing what to do next has led the administration irrationally
to treat Saddam Hussein as if he were Osama Bin Laden and to
treat Iraq as if it were al Qaeda. Such irrationality overlooks
the radical difference between responding to a terrorist network
that cannot be deterred and dealing with a hostile and unpalatable
minor state. War is neither needed nor acceptable in the latter
case.
The second line of explanation, the more
likely in our judgment, is that the American people and the other
governments of the world are not being told the main reasons
behind the US war policy. From this perspective, the alleged
preoccupation with Iraqi weaponry of mass destruction is largely
diversionary, as is the emphasis on Saddam's brutality. The real
reasons for the war are oil and regional strategic control, a
military beachhead in relation to the volatile Middle East. Such
justifications for war make strategic sense if, and only if,
America is pursuing global dominance to ensure that its current
economic and military preeminence is sustained into the future.
But it is undoubtedly impolitic for the Bush administration to
reveal such motives for war. The American people are overwhelmingly
unwilling to spill blood for oil or empire. And most of the international
community would certainly oppose the war if Washington's strategic
goals were made explicit.
The suspicion that the underlying reasons
for war are not being disclosed is not based on adherence to
a conspiracy theory of government. If we examine closely the
worldview expressed years before September 11 by the Pentagon
hawks and Vice President Cheney, this understanding of American
goals in the world becomes more transparent. What September 11
did was to provide an anti-terrorist banner under which these
grandiose schemes could be realized without public acknowledgement.
Again, this is not a paranoid fantasy. President Bush explicitly
endorsed this vision of America's world role in his West Point
commencement address last June, and more subtly, in the major
document issued by the White House in September 2002 under the
title The National Security Strategy of the United States of
America.
We are left then with two related problems.
The first is that of concealment from the American people, and
the second is the substantive issue of whether the United States
should initiate a war to promote this grand design of American
power and empire. It seems reasonable to assume that the motives
for concealment are connected with the administration's assessment
of the political unacceptability of their undisclosed motives
for war. This double image of our democratic crisis is particularly
troublesome in the face of the breakdown of our constitutional
reliance on checks and balances.
But all is not lost. There are many indications
that opposition to the war is growing at the grassroots level
in America, and has been robust all along among the peoples of
the world. In the United States, polling information shows that
more than 70 percent of the people do not support a unilateral
preemptive war led by the United States. More than 70 city councils
across the country have registered their opposition to a war
against Iraq, and the number continues to grow. Recently over
forty American Nobel Laureates went on record opposing a US preventive
war against Iraq. More and more Americans are taking to the streets
in opposition to the Bush administration's plans for aggressive
warfare. These numbers can be expected to grow and the voices
of protesters become angrier as the administration moves ever
closer to war.
It seems doubtful that this resistance
at the level of the citizenry can operate as a check in the short
run on White House zeal, but perhaps it can both strengthen the
resolve of Congress and the Democratic Party, and convey the
wider message that we need to recover trust in government if
our constitutional system is to uphold our security and our values
as a democratic republic. Already in the US Senate, Senators
Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd have introduced a resolution (S.
Res. 32) calling on the president to provide full support to
the UN weapons inspectors to facilitate their ongoing disarmament
work and obtain a new resolution of approval by Congress before
using military force against Iraq without the broad support of
the international community.
The stakes are extremely high. It is
not only the prospect of war against Iraq, but it is the whole
relationship of the United States to the world. Continuing down
the path along which the Bush administration is leading is likely
to produce a climate of perpetual fear and war. It is also likely
to undermine further our security and our freedoms at home, even
moving us in the direction of a police state. Already, American
consulates around the world are warning Americans of the heightened
dangers that they are likely to face in reaction to the Iraq
War. At home, the color-coded alert system created by the Department
of Homeland Security seems designed to keep Americans in a state
of fear without providing them with any positive steps they can
take to increase their security. With each passing week the government
moves ahead with its claims to exercise sweeping powers that
erode our civil liberties while arousing our fears that terrorists
are poised to strike at the American heartland. We do not need
to have such a future, but it will be difficult to avoid unless
the American people exercise their democratic prerogatives and
rise in defense of their civil liberties, as well as in support
of peace, international law and constitutional government.
Richard Falk,
a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California
at Santa Barbara, is chair of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. David Krieger is a founder and
president of the Foundation. They are the co-editors of a recent
Foundation Briefing Booklet, The Iraq Crisis and International
Law.
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
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Colin
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Rep. Dennis
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The Whole World is Watching
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Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
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The Revolt in Bolivia
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The Lies of Tom Lantos
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