Are Obama’s Hands Tied?

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Are Obama’s Hands Tied?
Posted on Sep 28, 2010

By William Pfaff


A splendid and courageous new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War,” by Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University (and for many years previously, the U.S. Army), describes with lucidity the degree to which the power of the American presidency over war and peace has been weakened in our day, and, in important respects, superseded.

One might call this a silent coup against the presidency, but a coup implies intention: a responsible actor who sets the coup d’etat into action for a defined purpose. The argument Bacevich makes implies that a coup can be institutional or intellectual, and come from outside as well as inside government. Its characteristic is to create a situation in which a president is no longer free to act as he might wish, because all of the doors except one have been closed.

The most commonly cited foreign example of this is the German imperial general staff’s war plan in 1914, a meticulously set out schedule for mobilization of the army and its reserve components in order of the troops’ units and training preparations, integrated with the transport programs prearranged with the railroads, and the logistical arrangements to be set in motion, all of this assuming that the enemies would be France and Russia. France, the main enemy, was to be dealt a crippling blow, and slow-mobilizing Russia dealt with at leisure. When Germany’s initial enemies in 1914 proved to be Serbia and Russia, Germany (to oversimplify) was compelled by its mobilization schedules nonetheless to attack France—by way of neutral Belgium, thereby bringing Britain into the war.

Bacevich writes about the American Strategic Air Command, as hyper-organized by Gen. Curtis LeMay, with an initial mission in 1948 to deter Soviet attack on the U.S. with 29 wartime B-29 bombers, only half of them operational, and the handful of nuclear bombs the U.S. had managed to manufacture. By 1970, LeMay’s SAC was capable of delivering more than 10,000 nuclear attacks across the entire Soviet bloc. What use could a sane American president make of that force? (One remembers Peter Sellers, as the U.S. president in “Dr. Strangelove,” announcing to his Soviet counterpart, Dmitri, that a nuclear attack was underway, saying, “Well, listen, Dmitri, how do you think I feel about it?”) ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/are_obamas_hands_tied_20100928/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[mopinko]

2. sounds like an interesting book.

i am not one of those who is disappointed in obama, i'm just disappointed to find how little he is president of. i suspect he is also.

[Demeter]

3. In a Word, No

[DirkGently]

4. It takes extraordinary courage and strength of conviction to stand up to the MIC. But it can be done