I have to admit that I have never been comfortable with this whole Iraq thing. I mean when we sent the ass kickers into Afghanistan to find Bin Laden I was all for that. Like the guys in “A Bronx Tale”, those guys had picked the wrong bar and had to be taught a lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson we taught them is we’ll get back to you later when we sew up this other thing, maybe.
My own beliefs were that George W. Bush was a guy who hadn’t done much in his life. His mother took him under her protection when he was in trouble. Bush attended Phillips Academy. There he played on the basketball team and was a member of the cheerleading squad. He was a popular student, known more for his charisma than his grades.
At Yale, one of his nicknames was "Lip," owing to his outspokenness. He was head cheerleader, played varsity baseball, basketball and rugby. He was an OK student and an enthusiastic member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and, like his father, a member of the secretive Skull and Bones society.
By the time Bush graduated in 1968, America was deep in the Vietnam War and he, along with most guys his age, was facing the draft. And while he wasn't exactly against the war, he wasn't too eager to join, either. So, with help from his father, Bush sat out the war in the cozy Texas Air National Guard, sort of.
George W., like his father, went into the oil business in Texas. George senior had got rich in the oil industry. The son's oil ambitions failed, and he was bailed out by relatives and powerful friends of the Bush family. He had a confrontation with his father – he challenged his Daddy to a fistfight. Man to man, when he was 26 and drunk. Think it indicated some sense of inadequacy that he knew no other way to channel, than to challenge his father, the war hero, the Ambassador, the success?
He became part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. He attended almost every game and many assumed that he was the owner, even though he'd bought only a two per cent share using borrowed money. He spent time in the dugout, rubbing shoulders with players and fans.
In the meantime, more than a handful of Republicans and powerful Texas oilmen urged him to run for governor. Politics didn't seem high on his list of priorities. But he agreed to run. Politics sure agreed with him as he sold his share of the Texas Rangers, netting a reported 15 million dollars! By my calculations that would mean if 2% is worth 15 mill the Rangers were worth 750 million! In 2005, Forbes Magazine said theTexas Rangers are worth 326 million. Were they really worth twice as much more when Bush sold his share? Hmmm?
Raised in wealth and privilege, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, he has acquired the image of a plain-speaking Texan who bootstrapped his way up.
Based on that history, I believed two things about Iraq:
1. It was time to pay back the oil men, and
2. I’ll do what Daddy wasn’t “man” enough to do. I’m going to kick Saddam’s ass.
Then the guy who didn’t want to serve in 1968 starts calling himself Commander in Chief, lands on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declares mission accomplished, almost.
I liked history as a schoolboy. I’m not a historian, but there was a bell that went off when the CINC started telling Americans that they had to give up some of their liberties because “I’m the CINC”. So I looked up that dusty old document the Constitution to the United States. I didn’t let someone tell me what it says; I actually read it. In Article II, it outlines the powers and responsibilities of the President of the United States. And this is what it says about that CINC stuff.
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
That was from the Preamble to the Constitution to the United States, Article II, and Section 2. It never says that the President is the CINC of you, the average American citizen. The designers of our Constitution went out of their way to prevent any such occurrence of an autocratic state, either by political (king, dictator) or military (CINC) means.
So why do we let this President get away with such a boldface fabrication? Because, the Administration says, we are at war! We are at War against Terrorism! War is a sustained effort to deal with or end a particular unpleasant or undesirable situation or condition, so a war on terrorism is a good thing. Terrorism is unpleasant and undesirable.
What this “war” lacks is the declaration of such by the United States Congress. According to that pesky document the Constitution:
"The Congress shall have Power To declare War." Clause 11 through 16 of Article II goes into pretty explicit detail about how that aspect works. Congress should be the ones running the show here. The President can ask to bomb Iraq, or Cleveland because he feels there are enough reasons to do so. But only Congress can tell the Joint Chiefs, “The President is correct. Go do this thing.” And then, and only then, does the President become the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And I don’t know about you, but I served my time and no one has sworn me in to be an active military personage. Have they done that to you? So without a declaration by Congress there is no war, right? Well, not so fast.
There’s that little thing called, “The Authorization For The Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution” or Public Law 107-243, or as some people have called it, “Bush’s Blank Check for War”. In this document, after a parroting of all, what we now know to be exaggerated White House, “Iraqi threats” that all begin with “Whereas”… we come across the meat of the law:
(a) Authorization for the use of United states armed forces
AUTHORIZATION
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—
(1) Defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) Enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
So after toppling the government, arresting the despot Hussein, destroying the infrastructure and setting off a situation that has/will deposit Iraq into a civil war, is there a threat to the United States from Iraq? Me? I don’t think so.
Whether you are a strict Constitutionalist, who believes there was never a war to begin with, or; you believe that the Public Law 107-243 is valid and therefore the threat is over, the CINC must bring the troops home. It’s the law.
Tuesday, at the United Nations, President Bush felt it necessary to talk over the heads of the assembled leaders of countries, talking directly to citizens of countries he has no authority over, yet, feels it necessary to inflict some influence on. And disregarding the past, almost as if it somehow unwrapped in an entirely different manner, shook his finger and threatened Iran and said if they didn’t stop this nu-clear program, the United States would have to do something about it.
Is the invasion of Iran the plan to get us out of Baghdad? You know, it’s almost genius. We’d would like to stay to finish the job in Iraq, but we have to redeploy to face the new threat. Save face on mistake #1 while hoping to play the Patriot card one more time. Hoping it will get them through the next two years, when they can turn it over to some other poor guy (male or female), and collect the coupons that have been saved for them by the CEO’s who have made the obscene amount of money in war profiteering, like the 42,000,000 coupons that the head of Halliburton made last year.
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