WAR IS SWELL: By Sidney Blumenthal

[kpete]

War is swell
Sept. 11 offered Bush a reason for being, and nothing will get in the way of his holy "war paradigm" -- not even the Constitution.

By Sidney Blumenthal

June 1, 2006 | Something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the Bush administration's central organizing principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, just among themselves, but they bend policy to serve it. After Sept. 11, 2001, they instantly adopted the war paradigm without any internal discussion. George W. Bush, who proclaimed, "I'm a war president" and insisted that he made decisions "with war on my mind," assumed the war paradigm as his natural state and right. According to its imperatives, the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, in effect as a sovereign, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances. Some of the paradigm's expressions include Bush's fiats on the treatment of "war on terror" detainees, domestic surveillance, and international law and treaties, and his more than 750 signing statements appended to laws enacted by Congress that he claims he can implement as he chooses.

In the beginning, the elements of the war paradigm appeared to be expediencies, conceived as a series of emergency measures in the struggle against al-Qaida. But, in fact, their precepts were developed in law review articles before Sept. 11 by John Yoo, promoted to deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, where Vice President Cheney's office assigned him to write key secret memos on torture, surveillance and executive power. Once Bush approved them, the clerisy of neoconservative lawyers, at least as tightly knit as Opus Dei, put them into effect. The war paradigm is Bush's "Da Vinci Code," the difference being that its high priests acknowledge in private that it is real.

They fervently believe that the Constitution is fatally flawed and must be severely circumscribed. The Bush administration's "holy grail," another phrase officials use in private, is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm, which they contrast with a caricatured "law enforcement paradigm," is to be constantly strengthened to conduct a permanent war against terror, which can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.

.................

Bush does not contemplate the slightest retreat from the war paradigm, which he embraces as his reason for being, regardless of the war's unpopularity. After his 2004 victory, he claimed he had had his "accountability moment." But the Constitution is an intricate mechanism of checks and balances that creates constant accountability. The question at the heart of Bush's politics is whether that can be indefinitely suspended and in the meantime the Constitution radically revised.

more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/06/01/bush_war/index.html

[enough]

1. another snip

snip>

In the short run, Bush's defense of his war paradigm could precipitate three potential constitutional crises. In the first, freedom of the press would be at issue. On May 21, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the "possibility" that the New York Times would be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for publishing its Pulitzer Prize-winning article on the administration's warrantless domestic surveillance. "It can't be the case," he said, that the First Amendment "trumps" the "right" of the government "to go after criminal activity" -- and he then defined the Times' printing of its story as "criminal activity."

In the second case, the administration could assert that a wartime executive is above the law. Last week, in a federal court filing, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has charged the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, with perjury and obstruction of justice, made plain his intention to summon Cheney to the witness stand in order to impeach Libby's credibility or else commit perjury himself. Will the administration defend the "war vice president" by fighting the subpoena as an infringement on the "unitary executive," who should be immune from such distractions in wartime?

In the third case, if either house of Congress should fall to the Democrats in the November midterm elections, the oversight suppressed during one-party rule would be restored. Would the administration then refuse congressional requests for documents, as it did when the short-lived Democratic Senate in Bush's first year asked for those pertaining to Cheney's energy task force -- whose members reportedly included Enron CEO Ken Lay, last week convicted on numerous counts of fraud?

snip>

[bryant69]

2. It's well worth reading. Kind of scary

I do wonder if President Bush and his followers see the war on terror as a war that can't be won, though.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Toots]

4. They don't want it won. They want it to go on forever

That gives them unlimited power forever...

[bryant69]

6. And how do you know that?

I mean what evidence can you present to prove that that is what they really want?

[1932]

7. Because they probably read 1984, and because they picked a war on

something that, not only, can't be won, the tactics they use and their objectives in the war almost guarantee that it will continue.

[bryant69]

8. Your evidence is that they "probably" read 1984?

As for the rest, well yeah I agree that this is a war that probably can't be won - but do they believe that? Just because something seems logical to you and me doesn't mean it seems logical to them.

Bryant

[1932]

9. Orwell was definitely inspired by people just like this crew.

And history may not repete itself, but it does rhyme, as Mark Twain said.

[RufusEarl]

3. Bush paradigm

This is the kind of thinking that scares the hell out of me, and makes me think this admin has no intention of leaving office after 2008.

The decider has painted this country into a corner, he has broken so many laws that if he ever looses power he'll go to jail and he knows this.

Me thinks the 2006 and 2008 election cycle will be ones to remember, if they can't Die-bold victories for the RNC then i would look for troops on the ground.

Peace!

5. Gore for President

clean house.

[WiseButAngrySara]

10. This is possibly what worries me the most about this 'above the

law' administration. If the Republican controlled Congress sees no problems, then is there really a 'constitutional crisis'? Why doesn't Congress do something about these extremely important breaches of constitutional law? Are they that short-sight and selfish? It is truly appalling.

:kick: and R!

kpete, we need to send you roses!!

[WiseButAngrySara]

11. BurtWorm posted another excellent NY Book Review that is very

similar in content to the Blumenthal article and is equally frightening.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1333199

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19092
Power Grab

Elizabeth Drew
<snip>

During the presidency of George W. Bush, the White House has made an unprecedented reach for power. It has systematically attempted to defy, control, or threaten the institutions that could challenge it: Congress, the courts, and the press. It has attempted to upset the balance of power among the three branches of government provided for in the Constitution; but its most aggressive and consistent assaults have been against the legislative branch: Bush has time and again said that he feels free to carry out a law as he sees fit, not as Congress wrote it. Through secrecy and contemptuous treatment of Congress, the Bush White House has made the executive branch less accountable than at any time in modern American history. And because of the complaisance of Congress, it has largely succeeded in its efforts.

**********

Grover Norquist, a principal organizer of the conservative movement who is close to the Bush White House and usually supports its policies, says, "If you interpret the Constitution's saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws you don't have a constitution: you have a king." He adds, "They're not trying to change the law; they're saying that they're above the law and in the case of the NSA wiretaps they break it." A few members of Congress recognize the implications of what Bush is doing and are willing to speak openly about it. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic senator from California, talks of a "very broad effort" being made "to increase the power of the executive." Chuck Hagel, Republican senator from Nebraska, says: "There's a very clear pattern of aggressively asserting executive power, and the Congress has essentially been complicit in letting him do it. The key is that Bush has a Republican Congress; of course if it was a Clinton presidency we'd be holding hearings."

**********

The President could of course veto a bill he doesn't like and publicly argue his objections to it. He would then run the risk that Congress would override his veto. Instead, Bush has chosen a method that is largely hidden and is difficult to challenge. As of this writing, Bush has never vetoed a bill (though he has threatened to do so in the case of a spending bill now pending in Congress). Some of the bills Bush has decided to sign and then ignore or subvert were passed over his objections; others were the result of compromises between Congress and the White House. Arlen Specter, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told me, "Under the Constitution if the president doesn't like a bill he vetoes it. You don't cherry-pick the legislation."

Bush has cited two grounds for flouting the will of Congress, or of unilaterally expanding presidential powers. One is the claim of the "inherent" power of the commander in chief.Second is a heretofore obscure doctrine called the unitary executive, which gives the president power over Congress and the courts. The concept of a unitary executive holds that the executive branch can overrule the courts and Congress on the basis of the president's own interpretations of the Constitution, in effect overturning Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the principle of judicial review, and the constitutional concept of checks and balances.

More at link....