King George

[kskiska]

It is slowly becoming clear that the Bush administration's real goal is not winning the right to torture, or to spy on Americans, or to lock people up without recourse. It is absolute power.

By Tom Engelhardt

As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not completely unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency. It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex. It reached its constraintless apogee with Richard Nixon's presidency and what became known as the Watergate scandal -- an event marked by Nixon's attempt to create his own private national security apparatus, which he directed to secretly commit various high crimes and misdemeanors for him. It was as close as we came -- until now -- to a presidential coup d'état that might functionally have abrogated the Constitution. In those years, the potential dangers of an unfettered presidency (so apparent to the nation's Founding Fathers) became obvious to a great many Americans. As now, a failed war helped drag the president's plans down and, in the case of Nixon, ended in personal disgrace and resignation, as well as in a brief resurgence of congressional oversight activity. All this mitigated, and modestly deflected, the growth trajectory of the imperial presidency -- for a time.

The "cabal," as Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, has called Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and various of their neocon-ish pals, stewed over this for years, along with a group of lawyers who were prepared, once the moment came, to give a sheen of legality to any presidential act. The group of them used the post-9/11 moment to launch a wholesale campaign to recapture the "lost" powers of the imperial presidency, attempting not, as in the case of Nixon, to create an alternate national security apparatus but to purge and capture the existing one for their private purposes. Under George Bush, Dick Cheney and their assorted advisors, acolytes and zealots, a virtual cult of unconstrained presidential power has been constructed, centered around the figure of Bush himself. While much has been made of feverish Christian fundamentalist support for the president, the real religious fervor in this administration has been almost singularly focused on the quite un-Christian attribute of total earthly power. Typical of the fierce ideologues and cultists now in the White House is Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank described him this way back in 2004 (when he was still Cheney's "top lawyer"):

"(A) principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects ... a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts(,) Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information ... Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president."

(snip)

This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the "global war on terror" almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks was so important. It was to be a "war" without end. No one ever attempted to define what "victory" might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations. Even the recent sudden presidential announcement that we will now settle only for "complete victory" in Iraq is, in this context, a distinctly limited goal because Iraq has already been defined as but a single "theater" (though a "central" one) in a larger war on terror. A war without end, of course, left the president as a commander in chief without end, and it was in such a guise that the acolytes of that "obscure philosophy" of total presidential power planned to claim their "inherent" constitutional right to do essentially anything. (Imagine what might have happened if their invasion of Iraq had been a success!)

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/01/05/engelhardt/

[babylonsister]

1. I wish you had a date; I've seen this before. nt

[Patchuli]

2. And many more need to see it as well!

Over and over, through the MSM until they 'get it.' WE, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA or all of us 'little People' who finance this whole shebang need to see how and by whom we are being SCREWED.

I agree with the original poster's intent.

*edited for sp and clarity*

[kskiska]

3. Salon date: Jan. 5, 2006

At end: This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.com, posted January 4, 2006 at 10:21 am.

[Marie26]

4. Alito may be an example

That pesky Supreme Court is always trying to limit the President's Constitutional powers - unless the President can stack the deck. The article says that back in the 80's "a group of lawyers were prepared, once the moment came, to give a sheen of legality to any presidential act." In 1986, Judge Alito wrote a memo while working at the Justice Dept. supporting the President's use of "signing statements" to intepret the law. This policy would allow the President himself to determine what a law means, and what he has to follow. Bush just used a "signing statement" to create an exception to the torture ban. Maybe he wants Alito so he'll have a Supreme Court that will approve these practices. Here's the DU thread on this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x183118