FYI
Unauthorized Entry
The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 12:51 PM PT

Until this week, the president's personal authority to use America's
military might was subject to two opposite historical trends. On the one
hand, there is the biggest scandal in constitutional law: the gradual
disappearance of the congressional Declaration of War. Has there ever been a
war more suited to a formal declaration-started more deliberately, more
publicly, with less urgency and at more leisure-than the U.S. war on Iraq?
Right or wrong, Gulf War II resembles the imperial forays of earlier
centuries more than the nuclear standoffs and furtive terrorist hunts of the
20th and 21st. Yet Bush, like all recent presidents, claims for his person
the sovereign right to launch such a war. Like his predecessors, he
condescends only to accept blank-check resolutions from legislators cowed by
fear of appearing disloyal to troops already dispatched.
On the other hand, since the end of World War II, the United States has at
least formally agreed to international constraints on the right of any
nation, including itself, to start a war. These constraints were often
evaded, but rarely just ignored. And evasion has its limits, enforced by the
sanction of embarrassment. This gave these international rules at least some
real bite.
But George W. Bush defied embarrassment and slew it with a series of
Orwellian flourishes. If the United Nations wants to be "relevant," he said,
it must do exactly as I say. In other words, in order to be relevant, it
must become irrelevant. When that didn't work, he said: I am ignoring the
wishes of the Security Council and violating the U.N. Charter in order to
enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution. No, no, don't thank me! My
pleasure!!
By Monday night, though, in his 48-hour-warning speech, the references to
international law and the United Nations had become vestigial. Bush's
defense of his decision to make war on Iraq was basic: "The United States of
America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own
national security." He did not claim that Iraq is a present threat to
America's own national security but suggested that "in one year or five
years" it could be such a threat. In the 20th century, threats from
murderous dictators were foolishly ignored until it was too late. In this
century, "terrorists and terrorist states" do not play the game of war by
the traditional rules. They "do not reveal these threats with fair notice in
formal declarations." Therefore, "Responding to such enemies only after they
have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide."
What is wrong with Bush's case? Sovereign nations do have the right to act
in their own self defense, and they will use that right no matter what the
U.N. Charter says or how the Security Council votes. Waiting for an enemy to
strike first can indeed be suicidal. So?
So first of all, the right Bush is asserting really has no limits because
the special circumstances he claims aren't really special. Striking first in
order to pre-empt an enemy that has troops massing along your border is one
thing. Striking first against a nation that has never even explicitly
threatened your sovereign territory, except in response to your own threats,
because you believe that this nation may have weapons that could threaten
you in five years, is something very different.
Bush's suggestion that the furtive nature of war in this new century somehow
changes the equation is also dubious, and it contradicts his assertion that
the threat from Iraq is "clear." Even in traditional warfare, striking first
has often been considered an advantage. And even before this century,
nations rarely counted on receiving an enemy's official notice of intention
to attack five years in advance. Bush may be right that the threat from Iraq
is real, but he is obviously wrong that it is "clear," or other nations as
interested in self-preservation as we are (and almost as self-interested in
the preservation of the United States as we are) would see it as we do,
which most do not.
Putting all this together, Bush is asserting the right of the United States
to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the
right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole
discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf
of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can
start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop
him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same
right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.
Well, so what? Isn't this the way the world works anyway? Isn't it naive and
ultimately dangerous to deny that might makes right? Actually, no. Might is
important, probably most important, but there are good, practical reasons
for even might and right together to defer sometimes to procedure, law, and
the judgment of others. Uncertainty is one. If we knew which babies would
turn out to be murderous dictators, we could smother them in their cribs. If
we knew which babies would turn out to be wise and judicious leaders, we
could crown them dictator. In terms of the power he now claims, without
significant challenge, George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long
time to dictator of the world. He claims to see the future as clearly as the
past. Let's hope he's right.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:

        http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html

AAM Website:  http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------