Congress Must Not Abdicate to Bush

During our national tragedy, Congress seems too willing to capitulate its role to the President's ambition.



Congress Must Not Abdicate to Bush
URL: http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010914/ts/attack_congress_force_dc.html
By Kendall Clark


   DALLAS, TX & RALEIGH, NC (14 September) -- The pace of official
   Washington, of Congress and the White House, has quickened
   dramatically, even as the progress of relief workers atop the
   mountain of WTC rubble has slowed to an agonizing pace.
   
   In short, the President and Congress are moving too fast to hammer
   out and then pass, in a pro forma gesture, a resolution authorizing
   the President's use of force to prosecute what the administration
   has been calling "a new war on terrorism", what the President
   himself called "the first war of the 21st century".
   
   Why too fast? Because the rest of the country has neither time nor
   access to these deliberations, and it's ultimately the rest of the
   country who will be expected to cash the check Congress is writing
   to the President.
   
   While the country is concerned with the rescue and relief progress,
   with its grief and its mourning, and with the need to reacquire some
   sense of safety, politicians in Washington are preparing for a war.
   That's not the kind of thing they should be left to do on their own.
   
   The American people grieve the loss of innocent human life. But what
   the President has suggested he wants -- by way of response and by
   way of authorization for the use of force from Congress -- certainly
   puts many, many thousands of innocent humans in jeopardy of losing
   their lives. The administration has been leaking and hinting that
   "collateral damage" will have to be higher than the American people
   may be comfortable with. But we refuse to believe that what ordinary
   Americans finally will want is mere vengeance.
   
   Despite our pain and anger, what we need now, perhaps more than
   ever, is deliberateness and deliberation; in short, we need
   democracy and lots of it. The President is asking for essentially a
   blank check, authorizing whatever force he sees fit to pursue the
   terrorists responsible for Tuesday's attacks.
   
   As [1]Jake Tapper reported yesterday in Salon.com,
   
     Wednesday evening, the White House presented draft legislation to
     Congress that would give to him "the authority to use all
     necessary and appropriate force a) against those nations,
     organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized,
     committed or aided the attacks against the United States that
     occurred on September 11, 2001; and b) to deter and prevent any
     future acts of terrorism against the United States." It's that
     last clause that members of the House and Senate, both Democrat
     and Republican, expressed concern about...
     
   We are concerned about both clauses.
   
   First, why should the president have the power to do whatever he
   wants against whomever he "determines authorized, committed or aided
   the attacks"? What could possibly be wrong with having him, dare say
   it, consult with Congress? Shouldn't the supposed representatives of
   the people have some voice in what counts as "necessary and
   appropriate" force? And how about some specificity as to whom may be
   targeted? After all, "aided" is very broad. What could be the harm
   in having a full, reasoned debate over what to do? And in having
   that debate at some later point after which the wave of national
   rage and pain has crested?
   
   It would be particularly good to have specific restrictions on the
   use of force. For example, no nukes Again, if Bush wants to use
   tactical nukes, why shouldn't he have to come back to Congress for
   specific authorization?
   
   Whatever kind of war the President make of this, clearly most,
   perhaps all of the overarching, decisions do not require split
   second resolution. There's no issue of second guessing military
   commanders here; the decisions the Congress seems poised to
   relinquish to the President are explicitly political -- What are our
   goals? What is the mission? What war are we fighting? Against whom?
   What means are acceptible? And so on.
   
   These are not properly Bush's decisions to make, and the Congress
   shouldn't capitulate to him.
   
   Second, if the first clause is unacceptable, the second is even more
   unacceptable. If we can take the time to be a democracy with regard
   to the punishment of the actual attackers, we can take the time to
   decide what acts of violence we will commit, if any, in order to
   deter similar attacks. Indeed, we can take the time to ask whether
   such deterrance would even work, much less be legal, prudent, or
   moral.
   
   Giving Bush carte blache to use massive force at his sole discretion
   in pursuit of vaguely defined goals is clearly wrong. Even if he
   were saint-like, if he were Gandhi, it would be wrong. To abdicate
   the soveriegnty of the people to one person is precisely to abandon
   the freedom so loudly praised by Bush himself.
   
   Righteousness doesn't make right. Our anger and grief is righteous,
   but we have to work to ensure our response is right. It will not be
   so if we give way to the "unyielding anger" Bush appealed to on
   Tuesday. The attempt -- no matter what noble motive propels it -- to
   circumvent the spirit of our democratic institutions in the wake of
   the attack is as [2]blatant and hurtful a misuse of the deaths of
   innocents as the [3]faux-relief-agency scams which [4]divert
   generosity into private profit. In the wake of this national
   tragedy, it's doubly awful that we have to remind our
   representatives that it's their job to represent us, to be our
   democratic proxies.
   
                              Bijan Parsia contributed to this article.

References

   1. http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/13/bush/print.html
   2. http://www.spamcon.org/about/news/releases/20010912.shtml
   3. http://www.scambusters.org/current.html
   4. http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0%2c4125%2cNAV47_STO63825%2c00.html


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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/779