Letters to the Editor
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Randy Holm
Glenn has posted on those topics extensively at his old blog, Unclaimed Territory. You are a new reader since he moved to Salon, perhaps? Good, and welcome.
I'm sure he will refer to them from time to time, and post on them occasionally, but you may like to go through the archives there. I hope he keeps them available for a long time.
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/
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Democritus
Exactly. North America in the late eighteenth century was hardly some Utopia where the Founders were free to experiment with refined political systems at their leisure. Yet the facile neoconservative mantra--"Things are different now"--seems implicitly predicated on the notion that checks and balances, limited government, and invidual liberty were all well and good "back then," but these terrible, dark times (The Age of Terror!) we find ourselves in now call for different civic values. See David Brooks.
When the Founders sought a governmental framework to ensure the survival of their new breakaway republic, they failed on their first attempt--Articles of Confederation, anyone? We forget that the Constitution, as much as it represented a limited view of government, was considered radical by many Founders and at the state level because of the power it invested in the federal government. It sounds crazy now, but the carefully enumerated powers of Articles I, II, and III were just too much for many early Americans. Hence the need for safeguards like the Ninth Amendment and poisonous compromises like the three-fifths clause in order to get a sufficient number of states on board.
I'm glad you mentioned piracy too, since it is something I bring up whenever a conservative intones ominously that we've never faced a threat remotely like jihadist terrorism. Really? We've never faced a stateless criminal and military actor with occassional state sponsorship? Funny, considering piracy is specifically mentioned in the Constition, and the first covert military action taken by the United States was against the Barbary Pirates (hence the "shores of Tripoli" in the Marine hymn). See The Pirate Coast for the definitive history.
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sysprog nails it
What I don't get is how any people yearn so strongly for leadership that they actually convince themselves that emperor George Bush is wearing clothes.
That's the $64K question, no?
Maybe, if it could be boiled down to a single term, one unifying concept (it can't, but that's a trifling concern), it'd be:
Fear.
With a smattering of wistful refusal to once and for all jettison the conceit that real life should have the same sense of resolution, of Meaning, of Truth, that typifies the most popular movies and TV shows of our time.
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priorities
Ktwdawg :
Education is top priority for people who care about other people. Tax cuts are top priority for people who don't care about other people. I guess some are in between...
(P.S. I share your sentiments.)
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Is We Learning History Yet?
I studied here only at graduate level; hence I don't have enough familiarity with the basic education here. I am stunned that these concepts would still be debatable after that much time IF PEOPLE WERE EDUCATED ABOUT IT DURING BASIC EDUCATION.
FYI: I'm a natchurul-born Murkin, teach history at a community college, and am 56 years old.
When I first learned about the Constitutional Convention (6th grade?) the Founding Fathers were demigods who Walked on Water.
Later they morphed into Sexist Racist Colonialist Dead White Guys.
The moral of the story? Most Americans find it virtually impossible to adopt an honest, judicious and objective perspective on their own country's history. They aren't unique in that respect--look how long it's taken the French to come to terms with the realities of the Occupation and Resistance 65 years ago. It's just that for us, all of our history has to be packaged as a series of comic-book stereotypes. Either that, or ignored altogether as Henry Ford recommended.
Which is why, for example, the US military still can't win unconventional wars despite a 250+ year history of unconventional wars. No learning curve.
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Flush the "Weekly Standard" down the nearest "American Standard"
You're probably familiar with American Standard, manufacturers of fine, high-quality toilet bowls. The Weekly Standard fills them.
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He's a weak coward, but a King he is...
...It's ironic matters & debates concerning an American president being christened King take place while an America president who is universially loathed is in office.
Take a president who is detested by 70% of Americans (and close to 100% by non-Americans) and yet you have .00001% of Americans who long to see the wastrel knave rule as some ancient, barbaric War-King.
Sounds like something out of a fantasy novel (think Lord of the Rings).
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Shooter242 should learn history
I'm pretty sure that the previous administration bombed Bosnia and Iraq into "submission" with nary a congressional vote. East Timor, or Haiti possibly? No? Congress didn't authorize Korea or Vietnam either.
There was no US air campaign mounted against the government of Bosnia-Herznegovnia.
"Operation Desert Fox" was undertaken in 1998 in reaction to inspections reports that that Hussein regime was attmepting to reconstitute banned weapons production facilities, and did not involve the introduction of new US units. It also was undertaken under the aegis of pre-existing authorizations against the Hussein regime.
No US forces were involved in either INTERFET or UNTAET in East Timor.
US armed forces personnel - primarily engineers and support staff - were not equipt for armed engagement in Haiti and were under very strict ROE to avoid any such conflict, hence their withdrawl.
While Congress did not declare war against North Korea for its invasion of the south in 1950, it fully supported (both rhetorically and materially) the Truman Administration's stance against it.
Congress did pass the Gulf of Tonkein Resolution, which authorized expanded US involvement in the Vietnam conflict; in hindsight, there was little appreciation for the complexity of the conflict involved and the 'incident' that prompoted the resolution's passage was subject to controversy.
Clear enough, you unshat placenta?
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Neocon memo to Democritus
If Henry bunked here, why shouldn't we?
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Turns out Jefferson was a Neocon
Has anyone actually seen Doug Feith lately? I envision him holed up in a basement office in the Library of Congress, extracting particular phrases from the Founding Fathers to be reworked and then stovepiped (via pneumatic tube) directly onto Cheney's desk.
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They're Right & They're Wrong
I can't exactly say that I've seen too many examples, either in my lifetime or in the history I've heard, read, & discussed, of Congress or mainstream thinkers disputing the "near-dictatorial" powers of the Presidency in foreign policy.
Nobody, for example, directly voted to help Ronald Reagan directly facilitate genocide in Guatemala, but they didn't do a whole lot to stop him, either.
I agree that this reality is a terrible departure from Constitutional theory, and many Americans' ideal of what they would like to believe.
However, the Bush Jr. Republicans are in reality just making a more fake division: the previously and hideously weak constraints on Executive power is too much for them. Whereas previous Presidents had to, say, pretend to respect Congress & hearings regarding their typical near-dictatorial exercise of foreign policy power.
The ugly reality is that there are no extra-terrestrial authorities capable of dragging the near-dictatorial Executive Branch authorities into Hague-like trials for their regular crimes against humanity. So in reality it doesn't matter to Americans or the world if their presidents regularly facilitate genocide or mass slaughter in other countries. For Cambodia, and Guatemala alone three entire Executive Branches might have in that extra-terrestrially-run world justice system been tried & given life in prison. (Just assuming the E.T. gods weren't into capital punishment.)
I'm all for people arguing (correctly) against interpreting the Constitution giving the President "near-dictatorial" authority in foreign policy, but I'm certainly not going to go live in imaginary la-la land and pretend that it isn't an accurate description of actual history.