George Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” is the defining event of his presidency and of our times. Subsumed under that phrase is the good majority of crimes that the Bush administration has committed against the U.S. Constitution and the American people, including: its illegal war of aggression against Iraq; its warrantless wiretapping of American citizens; it abuse and torture of American prisoners; the destruction of political opponents as a means of political retribution; and many of the “signing statements” that George Bush has used to avoid complying with duly enacted U.S. laws.
David Rothkopf has many prescient and important things to say about George Bush’s “War on Terror” in the last part of his book, “Running the World – The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power”. That book is something of an enigma in my opinion. Most of the first 461 pages of the 469 page
book (with some exceptions) were a disappointment to me. Most of those first 461 pages were boring to me largely because they seemed to lack moral intensity, or even a point of view regarding matters that I (and most liberals) consider to be of great importance. For example, the monumental abuses of the
Nixon and
Reagan presidencies were covered in insufficient detail and with a kind of sterile detachment it seemed to me. I almost, but not quite, felt as if Rothkopf was an apologist for many of our nation’s worst historical actions. Maybe he didn’t exactly condone those actions, but how can one talk of the waging of secret wars against the will of Congress and the American people in a supposed democracy without condemning of those actions?
My disappointment of Rothkopf’s book in that regard is the mirror image of why so many of us love
Al Gore for his outspoken condemnation of the Bush administration’s abuse of power; why so many of us were thrilled when
Barbara Boxer rose on the Senate floor in January 2005 to register an official objection to a presidential election for the first time in 128 years; why we admired
John Conyers so much for his relentless investigation of Bush administration crimes, against the fierce opposition of our Republican Congress; why
Wes Clark’s condemnation of George Bush’s immoral war policies make many of us wish that he would run for President; why many of us find
John Edwards’ railing against the taboo subject of poverty in our country so endearing; and why many of us were so excited when
Russ Feingold introduced a censure resolution against George Bush, when
Cynthia McKinney introduced an impeachment resolution against him, and when
Dennis Kucinich introduced an impeachment resolution against Dick Cheney.
But enough of the faults of Rothkopf’s book. I believe he made up for the rest of his book in the last eight pages when, despite the fact that he spoke in an emotionless tone, he provided a concise but thorough and scathing indictment of George Bush and his “War on Terror” that is a
must read for all American citizens who don’t understand what Bush’s “War on Terror” is all about. The really good part IMO starts on page 463, when Rothkopf explains that war is the opposite of law and order:
War is the opposite of law and orderEinstein’s analysis from 1946 still holds: “Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.” Our past, and the past of every other nation, tells us that law and war were opposites, two means to resolve differences, one guided by commonly agreed-upon standards of justice, the other resolved by the calculus of power.
In 1946, emerging from a global conflict, we made the stunning choice to help the international community uphold law. Standards of justice required submitting ourselves to the will of a community in which our power advantage, however appreciable, was considerably less than it would have been at that moment had we chosen to resolve issues by force. We made the calculus then that virtually all civilizations have made since the beginning of history, namely, that peace and stability were preferable to submitting to the will of the strongest – and we recalled that power always ebbs and flows, that the accumulation of power motivates others to contain, undermine, or surpass that power and thus that power advantages are always negated over time.
We built a set of institutions, our national security apparatus, to help balance our ability to work within that system and our ability to protect ourselves against those who did not. They were conceived as institutions not to expand our dominion over the world but to ensure our safety and prerogatives within the global community of nations we were creating.
George Bush and company produce a substantial break with our previous peaceful traditionsI will be one of the first to admit that the American propensity for
violently overthrowing democratically elected governments and for aggressive war did not
start with George W. Bush. Rothkopf’s discussion of U.S. foreign policy seems to ignore or minimize some past American history in that regard. Yet, his emphasis on the perils and evils of Bush’s policies goes to show that the state of our nation under Bush is so much worse than it has ever been that even historians who don’t get much worked up about past American transgressions can’t tolerate what has become of our country under George W. Bush:
But a break with those traditions occurred during the first years of the twenty-first century. The United States appeared to revert to the old, discredited idea that because we had power we could impose it if we saw doing so to be in our national interest – regardless of the views of the community we were a part of … It was argued that we did so in response to a threat that was so great that it warranted our unilateral action. But such a threat did not exist. It was, as it turned out, either misperceived or manufactured (My gosh, where did that come from – a Freudian slip or something?) to justify our actions. My own personal belief, based on the fact that President Bush’s team came into office already discussing the removal of Saddam Hussein long before they were seriously considering the risks posed by terrorism, is that they chose to see what they wanted to see in the evidence of that threat and that they manipulated public perceptions of that threat to justify their actions…
“In Iraq, where the justification for our actions was a threat that did not in fact exist, our leaders either failed to fulfill their responsibility to accurately assess the threat – which is a very high responsibility in such a case – or they chose to deceive the public, themselves, or both. The alternative choices are negligence and malfeasance. But if the costs included violations of international laws, the infliction of great destruction, death and injury, and an apparent repudiation of our most basic philosophies about the nature of the international community; neither of these is a misdemeanor… It was a failure on many levels – a failure of intelligence, of analysis, and of the moral responsibilities of leadership.
A comparison of our first with our most recent presidentThough Rothkopf’s book deals almost exclusively with American foreign policy since the enactment of the law that created the
National Security Council in 1947, he nevertheless felt it necessary to devote the second chapter of his book to George Washington, in order to put our foreign policy in perspective. Washington is almost universally given credit for getting our nation started off on a democratic rather than a monarchical footing. Rothkopf explains:
By 1783 General George Washington’s stature was unequaled within the fledgling nation he had battled to bring into existence… Throughout history, victors in war had sought power in exchange for their labors…But Washington, like the often-cited example of the Roman farmer-soldier Cincinnatus, chose to return to his fields and his family.
Washington stepped into the uncharted waters of the presidency and acquitted himself with the same grace and desire to place the institutions of government above any individual… He also eschewed any suggestions of monarchy, taking pains to ensure that people knew he had no desire to pass the role on to his children and that he intended to retire at the end of his term…
Washington tolerated and actually embraced a wide range of views in his cabinet…The character of this man became the glue that held a new administration together and the foundation on which a stable republic was built. Again, had he chosen self-aggrandizement, personal reward, and placing himself above the law when Congress disagreed with him, as he easily could have… the outcome would have been very different. Instead Washington carefully, repeatedly, and very publicly invested his hard-earned political capital back into the government he had helped found, into its laws and its institutions. He ensured that the Constitution was interpreted properly…
Had not the greatest man in the country… the one to whom virtually no one would stand up, chosen the course he did, it is substantially less likely that the republic would be here today or that democracy would have taken root and spread so successfully worldwide. It was a string of decisions, including… the choice to place himself beneath the law and at the will of the people, and above all, the choice to serve rather than dominate…
Contrasting Washington’s philosophy of government with George Bush’s, while being careful to rarely mention Bush by name, Rothkopf later says:
But after (9-11) there was a sudden change in… the driving philosophy shaping America’s choices. This time…our leaders chose a different course. Rather than investing our power and prestige into civil institutions of the global community… they chose to go it alone, to use our power and resources to advance our interests as they defined them. And rather than showing a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind”, we set aside past notions of “our justice” and consequently rejected the path that had distinguished the country and its leaders at our birth and at the previous moment of our greatest triumph. The words from Truman’s first address as president to a joint session of Congress – that the “responsibility of great states is to serve and not to dominate the world” – were drowned out by concepts like preemption and unilateralism, ideas that were more founded in raw power than they were on the philosophies of America’s Founders.
Putting George Bush’s “War on Terror” in proper perspectiveOn page 465 of his book Rothkopf does something that most Democratic politicians are apparently afraid to do, fearing the political repercussions – He puts George Bush’s stupid “War on Terror” in proper perspective:
Terrorism truly is a threat… But it is not a strategic threat. It poses a threat quantum levels of scale beneath that of the Cold War. There are greater dangers. As Zbigniew Brzezinski said, terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. Terrorists are a symptom of the failure of the societies from which they come to offer them opportunities or the lives they seek within those societies… To eliminate terrorists, we need to present a better alternative. Democracy and reform are, indeed, parts of that alternative. Failing to recognize that to advance such goals by abrogating the principles on which they are founded is a fatal flaw.
The consequences to our nation of George Bush’s phony war on terrorism Speaking of terrorists or of anyone else who would challenge American power, Rothkopf says:
Today they have the additional argument that America imposes its will on the world, that we have a double standard, that we do not require facts and resort to lies to undercut the international order, and that we act not in the interest of justice but… In short, through a series of bad judgments… we have undercut the moral authority of American global leadership… Damage has been done that will take years to repair.
In so doing, we have opened the door to a greater danger while pursuing a lesser one. We have called into question the legitimacy of our claim to leadership, and the reasons we have done so are rooted in a breakdown at the center of the decision-making processes that were developed to help ensure an opposite result. Paul Wolfowitz and his associates have written papers in the past about understanding, identifying, and eliminating threats to future U.S. supremacy in the world. They seem to have made the mistake of assuming that such threats would come in the form of the rise of rivals with measurable advantages economically or militarily, that is, traditional sources of power. What they have failed to acknowledge is that … our greatest vulnerability by far is linked to the legitimacy of our leadership. No nation is in a better position to undercut our legitimacy, and thus our ability to lead, than we are.
A few final words on our “War on Terror”George Bush’s “War on Terror” has served mainly as a screen behind which he has accumulated powers for himself and his cohorts that are unprecedented in the history of our nation. Consequently, he and his administration pose the gravest threat to our nation and the world since we defeated the Nazis in 1945. The creation of an international order with U.S. leadership following World War II was a valiant attempt to create a system of international order and cooperation that would prevent the catastrophic consequences of war and failed nations. The United States under George Bush and company is working hard to destroy that system – as they are working to destroy the U.S. Constitution that serves as the foundation of law and order in our own country.
David Rothkopf, as a former member of the U.S. national security establishment, attempted to write a book about U.S. foreign policy while being extremely careful not to harshly criticize the people involved in producing that policy. He succeeded in doing that through 95% of his book, but apparently the damn broke loose in the final pages as he attempted to sum up our current situation.
Precedents carry with them a kind of momentum that can make them very difficult to displace. Our first President established a precedent for the rule of law in our nation and the related principle that our elected representatives are servants of the people, not their masters. That precedent lasted a very long time, but it is now under serious attack.
Our current president and vice president have repeatedly and consistently shown nothing but contempt for the rule of law. They have repeatedly shown by their words and actions that they believe their word IS the law. That principle is becoming our new precedent. The longer Bush and Cheney are allowed to remain in office the more that precedent will become fixed. The only alternative is to use the remedy wisely provided in our Constitution by our Founding Fathers to remove them from office.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
