Ed FirmageBlame Rocky or Bush?
Paul Rolly’s column in today’s Tribune reports that American Legion officials are blaming a lower than expected turnout for the Legion’s meeting in Salt Lake City upon Mayor Rocky Anderson’s opposition to the war in Iraq. Might it just be that even members of the American Legion are beginning to be disheartened by the President’s awful war and his dismal leadership? And therefore aren’t much interested in coming to Salt Lake City to cheer on the worst President the United States has ever had?
In 2002 and 2003, before the Iraq war was launched, but when the President’s intentions were clear, I wrote a number of articles in newspapers, opposing this war. (links coming)
My points:
l. Iraq was not the party that attacked us, on 9/11, in New York and Washington, D.C.
2. Such a war would be illegal under international law and constitutional law.
3. A war against Iraq would be seen as an attack on Islam throughout the Middle East and, indeed, throughout the world.
4. A war against Iraq would produce huge instability throughout Iraq. I suggested that the massive violence of war would result in sectarian violence, not only against us, but our aggression would destroy massive parts of Iraq’s infrastructure and, the tumult of war, we had no plans, and no capacity to restore a peaceful society once Saddam’s army was destroyed. I said that we would likely provoke spiraling violence, pitting Shiite v. Sunni, region against region, and that we had no plan or capacity to bring under control the savage forces of violence that we would unleash.
5. I suggested that this chaos in a vital part of the Middle East would not lead to a solution of other Middle Eastern hotspots, such as our relations with Syria and Iran. Contrarily, our assault on Iraq would embolden other states, and non-state actors, into more and more violence. Supporters of the President’s war in Iraq, then, were suggesting that “the road to Jerusalem lay through Bagdad,” that is, our war, however illegal and unprovoked, was with a state we could conquer with ease, and therefore intimidate other Middle Eastern states into compliance with our position regarding Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and nuclear weapons development, and Syria and its export of terror. Instead, this illegal war of aggression against a state with whom we were at peace has revealed our own impotence to quell the internal strife, the civil war, we have started.
6. I expressed my doubt that weapons of mass destruction would be found; and that…
7… unleashing the massive violence of war was no way to deal with the nuclear arms race, in any event, since we have more “weapons of mass destruction” than the rest of the world combined.
8. Finally, I suggested then and argue now that the one thing that we can count on when we unleash violence in war is that we can’t constrain that violence. It plays itself out in ways we only vaguely guess, in advance.
This is why the framers of the American Constitution made it hard to go to war. In the absence of an act of war committed upon us, and our proportional response to deflect this, war must be declared by the Congress of the United States. Bush distorted the facts regarding 9/11. He lied to Congress concerning his plans for war. These he had prepared long before 9/11. He simply waited to make war on Iraq until some pretext, any pretext came along, as a fig leaf. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of our catastrophic war in Iraq, who was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as President of the World Bank, are all war criminals, subject to impeachment, trial, conviction, and punishment.
Might it just be that American Legionnaires are coming to understand some of this? And have better things to do than watch this corrupt incompetent embarrassment of a president wrap himself in the flag, thus adding obscenity to his credits? The way to support our troops in the field is to bring them home. I, for one, have absolutely no confidence in the crew who gave us this mess, thinking up an exit strategy. Given the tragedy that they have produced, quite frankly, I don’t have any great ideas for an exit strategy either. In our personal lives, and in the life of nations, we can get ourselves into such a deep pit that any way out may in reality simply be the least bad way to proceed. We begin such a way by electing a new team. In the Congressional elections by voting for someone who’s against this awful war and has the track record to prove it. And then ditto for the presidential election two years thereafter.
Ed Firmage
July 28th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Prescient Ed. We too have better things to do than react to this corrupt embarrasment of a pResident. It’s a damn shame.
July 28th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Nicely put.
Your 2nd point “Such a war would be illegal under international law and constitutional law” reminds me that many of my conservative friends who want to support the president and his actions (unilateral war, torture, rendition, etc) like to claim that the term “international law” is a misnomer. According to them, international treaties and agreements do not qualify as law, and therefore our government is not bound by them.
Their logic seems highly suspect to me on moral grounds (we should avoid torture not because it may or may not be law, but because torture is unethical; and if we are moral people, we should be honor-bound to respect and uphold international agreements and treaties regardless of whether or not they are law). But as a scholar and expert on the subject, I would be interested to hear your perspective on the issue of international law.
July 28th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
derekstaff,
Article VI of the Constitution provides the answer re international law. It states:
“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land ….”
Seems pretty straightforward to me. But I will defer to the gun-toting, nutcake, extremist, butt-head, neo-con scholars of the Second Amendment, for they have much more experience interpreting Constitutional provisions than this former student of Prof. Firmage.
July 28th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
I just watched our local Fox affiliate suggest that according to several Legionaires, they would rather not spend their vacation in a City where they feel unwelcome because of Rocky and attributed THAT to the evidently low participation.
At the top of my lungs I scream BOGUS! to channel 13 management. What could possibly be more shallow and stupid?
The sheer numbers of recent polls means that a significant number people who used to support Bush and the war, no longer do. To the extent that the Legionaires convention will be a Bush love fest, its goes without saying that at least 30% of them no longer support Bush, and therefore will not come to the convention WHERE EVER it is held.
Pro Bush events have seen declining particpation across the board.
To blame it on Rocky is to mire in the dregs of local tribal loyaties if not to drop to ones knees for Rupert Murdock.
Blaming it on Rocky is the sorriest editorial decision making possible.
July 29th, 2006 at 2:37 am
NeoCons, by whatever age and regardless of the issue have adopted an Austinian view of international law. John Austin defined law as the body of rules and normative conduct, handed down by a superior to an inferior, in which the superior had the power to interpret and enforce those laws. This definition must supposse a vertical system of law, with the law giver at the top of the heap. The law reciever could be forced to obey the law thus handed down. Our municipal systems comport with the Austian notions pretty well. And it works. The problem is that the internationa system is much too young to possess either the institutions nor the uncoerced affinity to develop them speedliy. The European Union and the United Nations are slowly developing instutions that operate, in part, on the Austinian verticle scale, from superiors down to the lesser instutions at the lowest part of the ladder. The West had many centuries in which to devope concepts of separation and balances between our legislative, executive, and judicial arms at the national level. And the states as recipients, along with the people, of all power not innumerated by the Constitution as going to the federal government. Slowly, over centuries, this process, and its result, came to be called the “rule of law community.” Only fools and knaves really think that our evolution over centuries toward this result…our war of Independance, our civil war, and centuries of peace within our borders and at the borders of our allies to the North (Canada) and the South (Mexico) can be forced by a war of aggression upon an unwilling state whom we just conquered by illegal means…a shoddy beginning to teaching about Democracy. The U,S. learned so very much from the British…the Common Law, the movement toward Parliamentary democratic supremacy, their equivalent of separataion of powers for the United States. Both systems led, by different means, to the rule of law society. In this process, a nation at peace must learn to compromise dearly held beliefs to the betterment of the larger society. Iraq isn’t within many years, or decades, of such capacity to rally around central principles. This area, as I stated in my articles in Utah papers, and in papers in other states, is rent by tribal factions, ethnic hatreds, blood feuds between extended families. America and the European states who participated in World War I are to blame for a large part of this chaotic mess. After World War I, the victors: France, England, and other lesser states carved up the colonies owned by the vanquished states. Lines were arbitrarily drawn, creating Saudi Arabia, a shrunken Turkey; Iraq; Iran; Syria, and others. This peace was termed by a military historian “The Peace to End All Peace,” a book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand some of the murky parts of whats going on today.World War K began in 1914 and ended in 1918. Or did it? I believe profoundly that World War II was fordoomed in the most deterministic way by the unfairness of the Versailles Treaty. The Cold War followed. Our founders considered peace to be the norm, and war the hideous excption to peace, hence many checks were placed upon its inception. Congress possesses the entirety of the war power, not the president, suffering another boring Thursday afternoon with nothing to do, and so is tempted to beat the crap out of the smaller states next to the larger states with whom he’s really mad. But the Constitution clearly states the Congress Shall Declare War. The President may cry, or rant, saying just howvery much he wants to have a jolly good war. But if he does this without Congressional assent, he’s a criminal subject to impeachment, removal from office, and then trial and punishment for waging aggressive war. But problem: the Presient, through the DIA, the CIA, the FBI, and etc., possesses a lot of the intelligence necesary for Congress to make an informed decicion for war or peace. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz lied to the Congress regarding weapons of mass destruction and many other matters. they also lied, and continue to lie to the American people about 9/11 , and the role of Irag as a terrorist state led by al Queda. Bin Laudin and Hussein have been enemies for decades. Yet most voters in Red states still believe the artful lies of the president that the Iraqis participated in the attack on our country. We now know this to be a lie. But the president has been able to respond “9/11″to every serious question raised by the Press. So far, it has worked. Hitler knew that one could tell a lie, a big one, and incessantly repreat it, and most of the people would believe it. So far, it’s worked here. The unlimited money had by the incumbant controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress had an almost insurmountable lead. Our media must work more honestly, and harder, with great integrity to the truth, if an alternative to Bush is to be elected from someone of the Democratic Party. (This is my response to the most thoughtful statements of DerekStaff and One Nephi. Ed Firmage
January 29th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
I agree Ed, well put, however anyone lacking historical knowledge will just deny it all as your opinion.
With regard to the disposition of the ME after WW1, could it not be argued, especially in english controlled areas, that the “random” divisions of the geo-political reality, were actually rather carefully chosen to allow the division and chaos so necessary for british style empire and rule?
It appears we have adopted the same vile practices with regard to Iraq.
WW1 and WW2, the same war, the second with attitude, conviction, and aircraft bombing of civilian populations, a ramped upped version of all the old animosities, unsolvable to leaders then, and requiring of immolation of the adversary to have a conclusion. All the money to be made too.
Humanities misleaders, our very own horror show.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:03 am
Nice..nice post.
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