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How Bush's Sick Joke Became Public Policy
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A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.?
So declared George W. Bush in July 2001, just weeks prior to 9/11. This was at least the third occasion on which Mr. Bush spoke wistfully, in public and on the record, about exercising dictatorial powers.
Once would be a lame joke; twice, a symptom of a seriously impaired sense of humor. Three times, however, is suggestive of seriously malevolent intentions. In our system of government, which remains in form ? if not in practice ? a constitutional republic, chief executives simply do not joke about dictatorial ambitions.
Here's a useful parallel. It is a serious federal offense even to joke about wanting to kill the President of the United States. Doing so even one time is sufficient to provoke a visit from the Secret Service. Were someone to do so three times, he would almost certainly face prosecution, as well as an invasive psychological evaluation.
Shouldn't it be considered just as grave an offense for a president, who swore an oath in God's name to uphold our Constitution, to make jokes about murdering our republic in order to erect a dictatorship?
We now know that Mr. Bush wasn't merely repeating one of his favorite thigh-slappers. In the hours immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the legal alchemists in Mr. Bush's court sought to transmute his insipid, adolescent joke into a tangible reality.
Of course, the assumption that Bush can wield quasi-dictatorial powers has been woven into the extravagant claims he and his underlings have made regarding the supposedly illimitable ?Commander-in-Chief? authority permitting him to imprison people at will, wage aggressive war without a congressional declaration, order illegal surveillance of American citizens, and otherwise do pretty much anything he is not explicitly forbidden by Congress to do. That is the gravamen of The Powers of War and Peace, John Yoo's book-length brief on behalf of the Bush regime's doctrine of unfettered executive power. As a second-tier functionary in the regime's legal directorate, Yoo was a primary author of that doctrine.
But thanks to a badly overdue disclosure offered by former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, we now have a better understanding of just how arrogantly lawless the Bush regime has become. In a December 23 Washington Post op-ed column that was prompted by the unfolding ?Snoopgate? scandal, Daschle testifies that the Senate specifically denied to the Bush regime the plenary powers it now claims were given to it.
?On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to `deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States,'? Daschle recounts. ?Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize `all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided' the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.?
That language, as I argued at the time, represented an abdication by Congress of its sole and exclusive constitutional power to declare war, thereby granting to Bush the license to attack any country of his choosing. It's hardly shocking to learn that Bush and his cohorts sought to make this even more explicit ? or that in staging an aggressive war against Iraq they acted on the power of pre-emption Congress specifically denied to them.
Almost as if by afterthought, Bush and his comrades sought to extract from Congress the power to erect a domestic dictatorship as well. Daschle continues his account:
Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words `in the United States and' after `appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.?
Granted, the tardy and politically opportunistic timing of Daschle's disclosures ? as well as its self-dramatizing nature ? could cast suspicions on his reliability. However, his allegations remain unrebutted by Republican leaders with first-hand knowledge of the events.
The New York Sun, a neo-Trotskyite media organ that unabashedly supports foreign war and unfettered executive power, bounced Daschle's account off the White House and the office of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (who was the minority leader at the time of the events described by Daschle). In its December 27 issue, the Sun reported: ?A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said yesterday that he could not comment on Mr. Daschle's description of the discussions surrounding the use-of-force resolution. A spokeswoman for Senator Lott of Mississippi, who was the minority leader at the time, said he was with family for the week and not available for an interview.?
Let's recap briefly: The former Senate Majority Leader, a central participant in negotiations with the White House, has accused the president of an impeachable abuse of power. The president and the senator who was his chief legislative ally at the time, who like Daschle were directly involved in those events, have not contested those allegations.
Bush's jokes? about wanting the powers of a dictator were troubling evidence of malevolent intentions. His silence regarding Daschle's revelations is terrifying testimony that those intentions have, in principle, been fulfilled. He has the power he sought, and will use it to the extent he can, until it is taken back from him.