Thursday, January 11, 2007
(11:53 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
What happens to a coup deferred?
Regular readers of such blogs as A Tiny Revolution know that it has long been the official position of the Bush Administration that neither the constitution nor international law applies to them. They argue that, on the one hand, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) against Al Qaeda gave the Bush Administration limitless power to undertake military action at its sole discretion until such time as the War on Terror is over (i.e., until the eschaton); on the other hand, since Congress has not officially declared war, we are not at war and thus the laws of war do not apply. In sum, we are in a "sweet spot" where the administration gets to use all the powers associated with war, without being bound by any of the legal limitations associated with war.Obviously, this makes no rational sense. Congress did not intend to suspend the constitution when it passed the AUMF, and Congress's sole prerogative to declare war has been a dead letter for decades now. But it doesn't matter what I think about this -- it matters what the administration thinks. And it appears to still think that we are in a state of exception. This is technically limited to matters pertaining to terrorism, but the administration has claimed the right to define what matters are related to terrorism at its own sole discretion.
For public-relations purposes, administration officials have occasionally made gestures of submitting to congressional or judicial oversight, but the end result of those has been official endorsement of the administration's unrestrained power -- if it had been anything else, everyone knows that it would not have been followed, and it seems that everyone, including the Democrats, has decided that avoiding the appearance of a constitutional crisis is more important than the fact that there is a constitutional crisis going on.
So while I agree with Ogged on principle that the Democrats should be out there protesting and speaking the truth, I don't think it would make any difference whatsoever. Bush is de facto in control of the most powerful military apparatus the world has ever seen, and no matter what may be legally or morally the case, he believes that he can do whatever he wants with it. There is no way of forcing him to refrain from invading Iran, and there appears to be no way of persuading him, either -- he has no regard for public opinion or expert opinion. All we can do, for all practical purposes, is hope that he doesn't.
The other option is to force the issue and admit that we have been in the midst of a constitutional crisis for the past four years -- which would have to mean removing Bush and Cheney from office. We have no way of knowing for sure how Bush would react in such a situation, and he is still de facto in control of the most powerful military apparatus the world has ever seen. Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment. Bush seems to have a very different personality from Nixon's.
