By William Fisher
President Bush sees the Israeli-Hezbullah conflict as “an opportunity.” Condoleeza Rice’s calls it “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.” These statements are likely to remembered by history as even more iconically absurd than Vice President’s Cheney’s description of the Iraqi insurgency as being “in its last throes.”
Israel’s expansion of its military campaign in Lebanon has turned the Arab world against the US, with the so-called moderate governments of the Middle East – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, as well as most of the “Arab Street” – now more estranged than ever from US policy. And despite Karen Hughes’s characterization as “absurd” the idea that the US gave a green light to Israel, the whole of the Arab world – and lots of other nations -- believes it to be true.
That Israel was provoked by Hezbullah’s prolonged firing of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and, finally, its cross-border incursion and kidnap of IDF soldiers is not open to debate – it happened. Ask yourself how France would react to similar aggressive acts by, say, Germany. Or Canada lobbing rockets into New England.
Whether or not Israel “over-reacted” is now largely moot. If Hezbullah is left with the capability of firing a single Katyusha, it will claim victory – if for no other reason than that it stood up to the region’s premiere military for some weeks, perhaps months.
Israel can also be counted on to offer reasons to claim its own victory, though there is likely to be a protracted debate within Israel about the strategy of this military campaign. And since no subject is off limits in Israeli political dialogue, there may even be debate about whether Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, with the legacy of Ariel Sharon weighing heavily around his neck, felt the political need to demonstrate his own military machismo.
But the real winner in this game of smoke and mirrors will be neither Israel nor Hezbullah. The real winner will be Hezbullah’s principal sponsor, Iran. This is Tehran’s war. Hezbullah is a mere proxy.
What will Iran have won? Even if the United Nations can muster the support – and the troops -- to put a multinational force in place in Lebanon, Iran will have succeeded in distracting the world from resolution of its nuclear issue. The mere survival of Hezbullah will likely embolden Iran to continue its efforts to create a Shia “state” in the South of Iraq, and to continue to work to undermine any notion of unity there. And the world will have been further distracted from serious efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue -- that will please the Iranians and many other Arab governments who over many years have shown they would rather have an open wound than a doctor. Finally, while Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbullah have not exactly been pals through the years, they could get a lot friendlier in the face of what they consider a common enemy – the US. To these parties, Israel is as much a proxy for America as Hezbullah is for Iran.
The US experience in Iraq has demonstrated the futility of attempting to defeat an armed insurgency militarily. Likewise, no matter how long Israel remains in Lebanon, it will never completely destroy Hezbullah. Given current attitudes in the Middle East, there will always be more Hezbullah recruits than there are Israeli shells.
And there will continue to be state actors happy to continue their covert support for such movements.
It would be simplistic to lay this mess at the feet of US foreign policy. But America does bear some responsibility. Preferring its “Axis of Evil” rhetoric to reality, it has chosen not to engage Iran. It has also shunned direct talks with Syria. Yet these countries are the two principal sources of physical and moral support for Hezbullah. Of equal consequence, the US has been largely AWOL on the Israeli-Palestinian issue for six years. Its love of elections brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories.
So, on that issue, if America hadn’t already completely lost its credibility as an honest broker, it has now.
The so-called International Community has also demonstrated its paralysis. Two years ago, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, demanding that Lebanon disarm militias like Hezbullah and assume complete control of all of its territory. That resolution placed Lebanon in a totally untenable position. Its armed forces are small, weak and heavily infiltrated by Hezbullah supporters. The UNIFIL force deployed to Lebanon was never mandated to enforce 1559 and, in any case, was never given the resources to do so. Syria was only too happy to fill that vacuum, thank you very much.
But most importantly, 1559 appeared to ignore Lebanon’s chief dilemma: Hezbullah’s role as a bona fide political party represented in the Parliament, with Ministers in the government, and with a growing constituency based on its ability to deliver the social and humanitarian services Lebanon’s government seemed incapable of providing. Both diplomats and the Western media conveniently suffered amnesia on these issues as they celebrated the Cedar Revolution.
Where was even the discussion of a multinational force then? Non-existent. As was any robust plan from the UN to help Lebanon achieve this virtually impossible goal. Pity is that there was widespread if quiet agreement that, given Lebanon’s divided government, Syria’s military presence, and Hezbullah’s growing popularity, any attempt by Lebanon to unilaterally disarm this “state within a state” would risk plunging Lebanon back into civil war.
Instead, a shattered Lebanon chose to concentrate on rebuilding itself after a generation of civil war. If the US had done half as well in Iraq, that quagmire might be looking a lot more hopeful now.
It will take Lebanon years to recover from the Israeli campaign, and exactly who will step forward to help remains problematic. Chances are that as long as the Katushas remain, the answer will be nobody.
President Bush claims he wants a resolution that will get at the root cause of the present mess. And he identifies the root cause as Hezbullah’s rockets and kidnappings.
But for most in the Middle East and other Muslim nations – states whose support we need now more than ever -- the root cause goes much further back than that -- to the establishment, with the UN’s blessing, to 1948, and the establishment of the State of Israel. Destroying Israel is high on the official agenda of Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmedinejad, and on the back-channel propaganda agendas of other Arab and Muslim states.
Disarming Hezbullah will not turn back the clock, and it is no long-term solution to the problems that beset the region, but it needs to happen. Every day it doesn’t happen means more death and destruction.
The unanswered question is: Who can make it happen? America’s green-lighting of Israel’s current Lebanon project – and the negative reaction to it by so many Arab and Western nations – leaves the US in a distressingly weakened state diplomatically. A byproduct of that sad truth is the Bush Administration’s sudden love affair with multilateralism. After six years of dissing the UN, the president and his secretary of state have, perhaps reluctantly, embraced their last remaining option.
In a best-case scenario, the UN will not only pass however many resolutions may be needed to stop the killing, but will pursue their implementation with the kind of energy too often absent from the world body.
But that will still leave many critical questions on the table: Will the US finally muster the resolve to sit down and talk directly with the Iranians and the Syrians? Can it regain the credibility to finally breathe some high-level consistency into the search for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine? And will it find the imagination to develop a sustainable strategy for success in Iraq?
In the end, talking may produce nothing. But it is better than killing.
.
.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Saturday, August 05, 2006
SCREW UP, COLLECT REWARD
By William Fisher
Millions of us shook our heads in disbelief as President George W. Bush made a cottage industry of rewarding the undeserving.
The cast of characters is long and Orwellian.
There’s Jay Bybee, the Justice Department lawyer who famously wrote the “torture memo” whose twisted logic somehow blew off the Geneva Conventions and justified the interrogation techniques that brought us Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. Dubya rewarded him with a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
Nor was Bybee’s boss, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, to be ignored. He got his reward by getting elevated to be the Attorney General of the United States – “the people’s lawyer.”
Then came that breathtakingly Kafkaesque White House ceremony where the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was conferred on yet more deserving folks.
There was General Tommy Franks, whose shock and awe led our troops into Baghdad without a clue about what to do when we got there.
And Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who became America’s proconsul in Iraq and arguably created history’s most inappropriate, arrogant and inefficient bureaucracy – wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and managing to create many of the conditions that have now brought that country to the brink of civil war.
Not to forget George (It’s a slam-dunk) Tenet, the CIA Director who told the President exactly what the Vice-President and his Iraq cabal wanted to hear about Saddam’s WMD stockpiles, yellowcake in Niger, aluminum tubes, and mushroom clouds.
And the rewarding of the undeserving goes on, the latest example being Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. (“Get dogs!”) Miller, the Guantánamo Bay commandant who helped organize interrogation centers in Afghanistan and at Abu Ghraib. An Army investigation recommended that Gen. Miller be reprimanded for his key role in “GITMO-izing” Iraqi prisons, but that recommendation was turned down by his commanding officer. Instead, Gen. Miller was able to retire honorably with the military’s highest non-combat medal -- the Distinguished Service Medal -- pinned to his chest following a ceremony in – wait for it! -- the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. The medal is for “exceptionally meritorious service to the government” beyond the performance of duty.
Well, what’s done can’t be undone, no matter how embarrassing it may be to our nation. But if there’s even a remote possibility that the President wants to restore the honor of the Medal of Freedom, I have a couple of nominees for him to consider.
The first is Stuart W. Bowen Jr., our special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Bowen, a Texas lawyer and longtime Bush loyalist – he spent 35 days in Florida during the 2000 presidential recount – was charged in 2004 with rooting out fraud, embezzlement and misappropriation of the billions Congress appropriated to rebuild Iraq.
He began his Congressionally-mandated work in Iraq under Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA, but could find few who were interested in what he was finding. Since the dissolution of the CPA, and Bremer’s departure from Iraq, he has found and reported to Congress evidence of millions of “missing” dollars, arrant over-charging and substandard performance – or non-performance -- by contractors, dazzling lack of oversight by American authorities both in Iraq and in the U.S., and pervasive corruption among Iraqi leaders. Many of his findings have been referred to the Justice Department and will likely result in criminal charges.
Bowen’s findings, reports and Congressional testimonies are not likely to win him many friends in the Bush Administration – but that’s exactly the point. He deserves to be honored not only for what he’s found, but because in reporting what he’s found, he has put the nation’s interest above his own.
My second nominee for President Bush’s consideration is the Controller General of the United States – a title virtually unknown outside the Beltway. His name is David M. Walker. Formerly a partner at Arthur Anderson, he was appointed to his 15-year term by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The Comptroller General is the nation’s chief accountability officer and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a legislative branch agency founded in 1921. GAO’s mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.
In that role, Walker has led hundreds of objective, fact-based, non-partisan investigations into government waste, fraud, and abuse – and has found no shortage of subject matter. No agency or department in the Executive Branch has been immune from GAO’s scrutiny – including, most recently, such sacred cows as the Department of Homeland Security and its FEMA unit, and the Pentagon’s non-existent systems to manage and account for the billions in its bloated budget.
While Walker’s staff works with each agency it is examining, and solicits and publishes their objections to GAO findings and recommendations, most Executive Branch agencies quietly regard GAO as the enemy.
In a large majority of cases, the investigated department expresses agreement with GAO findings, says it’s “working on the problem” or promises to do so but, far too often, does little or nothing to correct it -- a situation exacerbated by the pitiful state of Congressional oversight.
Walker’s mission is not made any easier by the paranoid secrecy of the Bush Administration. Nonetheless, the GAO is one of the few public bodies mandated to disinfect with sunshine. For that, it deserves the nation’s gratitude.
So, Mr. President, if the real meaning of the Medal of Freedom is of any consequence to you, you might start restoring it by honoring these two genuine public servants.
We’ll be watching.
Millions of us shook our heads in disbelief as President George W. Bush made a cottage industry of rewarding the undeserving.
The cast of characters is long and Orwellian.
There’s Jay Bybee, the Justice Department lawyer who famously wrote the “torture memo” whose twisted logic somehow blew off the Geneva Conventions and justified the interrogation techniques that brought us Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. Dubya rewarded him with a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
Nor was Bybee’s boss, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, to be ignored. He got his reward by getting elevated to be the Attorney General of the United States – “the people’s lawyer.”
Then came that breathtakingly Kafkaesque White House ceremony where the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was conferred on yet more deserving folks.
There was General Tommy Franks, whose shock and awe led our troops into Baghdad without a clue about what to do when we got there.
And Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who became America’s proconsul in Iraq and arguably created history’s most inappropriate, arrogant and inefficient bureaucracy – wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and managing to create many of the conditions that have now brought that country to the brink of civil war.
Not to forget George (It’s a slam-dunk) Tenet, the CIA Director who told the President exactly what the Vice-President and his Iraq cabal wanted to hear about Saddam’s WMD stockpiles, yellowcake in Niger, aluminum tubes, and mushroom clouds.
And the rewarding of the undeserving goes on, the latest example being Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. (“Get dogs!”) Miller, the Guantánamo Bay commandant who helped organize interrogation centers in Afghanistan and at Abu Ghraib. An Army investigation recommended that Gen. Miller be reprimanded for his key role in “GITMO-izing” Iraqi prisons, but that recommendation was turned down by his commanding officer. Instead, Gen. Miller was able to retire honorably with the military’s highest non-combat medal -- the Distinguished Service Medal -- pinned to his chest following a ceremony in – wait for it! -- the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. The medal is for “exceptionally meritorious service to the government” beyond the performance of duty.
Well, what’s done can’t be undone, no matter how embarrassing it may be to our nation. But if there’s even a remote possibility that the President wants to restore the honor of the Medal of Freedom, I have a couple of nominees for him to consider.
The first is Stuart W. Bowen Jr., our special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Bowen, a Texas lawyer and longtime Bush loyalist – he spent 35 days in Florida during the 2000 presidential recount – was charged in 2004 with rooting out fraud, embezzlement and misappropriation of the billions Congress appropriated to rebuild Iraq.
He began his Congressionally-mandated work in Iraq under Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA, but could find few who were interested in what he was finding. Since the dissolution of the CPA, and Bremer’s departure from Iraq, he has found and reported to Congress evidence of millions of “missing” dollars, arrant over-charging and substandard performance – or non-performance -- by contractors, dazzling lack of oversight by American authorities both in Iraq and in the U.S., and pervasive corruption among Iraqi leaders. Many of his findings have been referred to the Justice Department and will likely result in criminal charges.
Bowen’s findings, reports and Congressional testimonies are not likely to win him many friends in the Bush Administration – but that’s exactly the point. He deserves to be honored not only for what he’s found, but because in reporting what he’s found, he has put the nation’s interest above his own.
My second nominee for President Bush’s consideration is the Controller General of the United States – a title virtually unknown outside the Beltway. His name is David M. Walker. Formerly a partner at Arthur Anderson, he was appointed to his 15-year term by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The Comptroller General is the nation’s chief accountability officer and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a legislative branch agency founded in 1921. GAO’s mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.
In that role, Walker has led hundreds of objective, fact-based, non-partisan investigations into government waste, fraud, and abuse – and has found no shortage of subject matter. No agency or department in the Executive Branch has been immune from GAO’s scrutiny – including, most recently, such sacred cows as the Department of Homeland Security and its FEMA unit, and the Pentagon’s non-existent systems to manage and account for the billions in its bloated budget.
While Walker’s staff works with each agency it is examining, and solicits and publishes their objections to GAO findings and recommendations, most Executive Branch agencies quietly regard GAO as the enemy.
In a large majority of cases, the investigated department expresses agreement with GAO findings, says it’s “working on the problem” or promises to do so but, far too often, does little or nothing to correct it -- a situation exacerbated by the pitiful state of Congressional oversight.
Walker’s mission is not made any easier by the paranoid secrecy of the Bush Administration. Nonetheless, the GAO is one of the few public bodies mandated to disinfect with sunshine. For that, it deserves the nation’s gratitude.
So, Mr. President, if the real meaning of the Medal of Freedom is of any consequence to you, you might start restoring it by honoring these two genuine public servants.
We’ll be watching.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
THE LIMITS OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER
By William Fisher
President George W. Bush's widespread use of so-called "signing statements" to unilaterally decide which parts of acts passed by Congress he will enforce continues to face mounting opposition as the practice came under sharp criticism from a blue-ribbon task force assembled by the nation's premier legal organization and a powerful member of the president's own party announced he will soon introduce legislation authorizing Congress to sue him in Federal Court.
"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Specter's announcement on the Senate floor coincided with the conclusion of a task force organized by the American Bar Association (ABA) that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.
In issuing a signing statement, "a sitting president reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on grounds of national security or the "inherent powers" the Constitution grants the chief executive in wartime. The statements are customarily issued - usually with little or no public disclosure -- immediately after a president has signed into law an act passed by Congress.
Specter's committee estimates the president has challenged some 750 statutes passed by Congress. The ABA estimates Bush has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than the combined number issued by all presidents in U.S. history.
But some critics say the lax oversight exercised by Congress is equally responsible for the breakdown in the separation of powers between the three co-equal branches of government. Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told us, "Let's hope that Senator Specter's move represents an awakening Congress. Our legislators have been asleep on the job while the Executive has expanded its powers -- they are in a sense equally culpable for the reckless policies sent forth from Washington."
And Peter M. Shane, a professor at the University of Ohio Law School and a specialist in separation of powers, told us, "Because President Bush entertains the most radically expansive theory of presidential power in history, it is no accident that he has identified an unprecedented number of occasions on which he imagines Congress is threatening his prerogatives. Many of these are simply instances of routine congressional oversight. It is as if his copy of the Constitution somehow omitted the clause that explicitly authorizes Congress to issue laws that are 'necessary and proper' for carrying into execution even the constitutional authorities of the executive branch." Prof. Shane is co-author with Harold H. Bruff of "Separation of Powers Law: Cases and Materials" (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).
ABA President Michael Greco characterized signing statements as "non-vetoes" and charged that the practice "hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement." The practice, he added, "is harming the separation of powers."
Under the US Constitution, Congress alone is authorized to enact laws and the president is mandated to enforce them without change or modification. The current signing statement controversy erupted into public and congressional consciousness earlier this tear after Congress passed an extension of the USA Patriot Act and another measure forbidding the US from inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to people detained in the "war on terror."
President Bush signed the acts into law, but then issued statements saying in effect he would not enforce the laws when doing so might jeopardize national security.
Signing statements are not new, having been used by many previous presidents. But past use has typically been for purposes such as congratulating congress on enacting measures or instructing agencies on how to execute new laws.
While the White House maintains that President Bush's signing statements are not intended to allow the administration to ignore the law, many of his statements declare his belief that parts of bills he is signing are unconstitutional.
The ABA panel described the practice as "a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances," and urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements.
"The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA president Michael S. Greco, a Massachusetts attorney. "We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."
The 10-member ABA panel, chaired by prominent Miami attorney Neil Sonnett, includes at least three well-known conservatives or Republicans: former congressman Mickey Edwards, a Republican from Oklahoma, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) William S. Sessions, and a former Justice Department lawyer, Bruce Fein, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan. It also includes former appellate judge Patricia M. Wald, former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen M. Sullivan and Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Their report will be considered by the full ABA next month.
Task Force members contend that President Bush has changed the nature of signing statements. It said that many of his objections are based on the idea that congressional checks on the presidential power are limited.
They said that if the president has constitutional problems with a bill, he should make his concern known to Congress before it enacts the legislation. Signing statements should not be a substitute for vetoing bills the president considers unconstitutional, the panel said.
"The President's constitutional duty is to enforce laws he has signed into being unless and until they are held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or a subordinate tribunal," panel members wrote. "The Constitution is not what the President says it is."
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month to articulate the administration's position, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle E. Boardman denied that the president was trying to "cherry-pick" among the parts of a duly enacted law. "Presidential signing statements are, rather, a statement by the president explaining his interpretation of and responsibilities under the law," she said.
Whether the ABA report will influence the Bush administration is unclear, since many conservatives in the administration and in Congress believe that the ABA has a "liberal bias." In the early days of the Bush Administration, it ended the organization's role in evaluating judicial nominees.
Moreover, Bush has a number of conservative congressional allies in the signing statement issue. For example, Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former judge, has said that signing statements are merely expressions of presidential opinion that carry no legal weight because federal courts are unlikely to consider them when deciding cases that challenge the same laws.
But Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA summed up the feelings of human rights advocates. She told us, "Signing statements must not be used to skirt the President's responsibilities under international law. Amnesty International was pleased with the passage of the anti-torture bill through Congress in December. However, that victory came with a new challenge, as President Bush, in signing the bill, issued a "signing statement" in which he asserted that he could waive the ban on torture and inhumane treatment when he deemed it necessary. Torture is never necessary. It is absolutely prohibited through international law and human rights standards, as well as the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The President of the United States is not above the law."
That may come as something of a shock to Mr. Bush.
President George W. Bush's widespread use of so-called "signing statements" to unilaterally decide which parts of acts passed by Congress he will enforce continues to face mounting opposition as the practice came under sharp criticism from a blue-ribbon task force assembled by the nation's premier legal organization and a powerful member of the president's own party announced he will soon introduce legislation authorizing Congress to sue him in Federal Court.
"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Specter's announcement on the Senate floor coincided with the conclusion of a task force organized by the American Bar Association (ABA) that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.
In issuing a signing statement, "a sitting president reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on grounds of national security or the "inherent powers" the Constitution grants the chief executive in wartime. The statements are customarily issued - usually with little or no public disclosure -- immediately after a president has signed into law an act passed by Congress.
Specter's committee estimates the president has challenged some 750 statutes passed by Congress. The ABA estimates Bush has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than the combined number issued by all presidents in U.S. history.
But some critics say the lax oversight exercised by Congress is equally responsible for the breakdown in the separation of powers between the three co-equal branches of government. Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told us, "Let's hope that Senator Specter's move represents an awakening Congress. Our legislators have been asleep on the job while the Executive has expanded its powers -- they are in a sense equally culpable for the reckless policies sent forth from Washington."
And Peter M. Shane, a professor at the University of Ohio Law School and a specialist in separation of powers, told us, "Because President Bush entertains the most radically expansive theory of presidential power in history, it is no accident that he has identified an unprecedented number of occasions on which he imagines Congress is threatening his prerogatives. Many of these are simply instances of routine congressional oversight. It is as if his copy of the Constitution somehow omitted the clause that explicitly authorizes Congress to issue laws that are 'necessary and proper' for carrying into execution even the constitutional authorities of the executive branch." Prof. Shane is co-author with Harold H. Bruff of "Separation of Powers Law: Cases and Materials" (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).
ABA President Michael Greco characterized signing statements as "non-vetoes" and charged that the practice "hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement." The practice, he added, "is harming the separation of powers."
Under the US Constitution, Congress alone is authorized to enact laws and the president is mandated to enforce them without change or modification. The current signing statement controversy erupted into public and congressional consciousness earlier this tear after Congress passed an extension of the USA Patriot Act and another measure forbidding the US from inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to people detained in the "war on terror."
President Bush signed the acts into law, but then issued statements saying in effect he would not enforce the laws when doing so might jeopardize national security.
Signing statements are not new, having been used by many previous presidents. But past use has typically been for purposes such as congratulating congress on enacting measures or instructing agencies on how to execute new laws.
While the White House maintains that President Bush's signing statements are not intended to allow the administration to ignore the law, many of his statements declare his belief that parts of bills he is signing are unconstitutional.
The ABA panel described the practice as "a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances," and urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements.
"The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA president Michael S. Greco, a Massachusetts attorney. "We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."
The 10-member ABA panel, chaired by prominent Miami attorney Neil Sonnett, includes at least three well-known conservatives or Republicans: former congressman Mickey Edwards, a Republican from Oklahoma, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) William S. Sessions, and a former Justice Department lawyer, Bruce Fein, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan. It also includes former appellate judge Patricia M. Wald, former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen M. Sullivan and Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Their report will be considered by the full ABA next month.
Task Force members contend that President Bush has changed the nature of signing statements. It said that many of his objections are based on the idea that congressional checks on the presidential power are limited.
They said that if the president has constitutional problems with a bill, he should make his concern known to Congress before it enacts the legislation. Signing statements should not be a substitute for vetoing bills the president considers unconstitutional, the panel said.
"The President's constitutional duty is to enforce laws he has signed into being unless and until they are held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or a subordinate tribunal," panel members wrote. "The Constitution is not what the President says it is."
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month to articulate the administration's position, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle E. Boardman denied that the president was trying to "cherry-pick" among the parts of a duly enacted law. "Presidential signing statements are, rather, a statement by the president explaining his interpretation of and responsibilities under the law," she said.
Whether the ABA report will influence the Bush administration is unclear, since many conservatives in the administration and in Congress believe that the ABA has a "liberal bias." In the early days of the Bush Administration, it ended the organization's role in evaluating judicial nominees.
Moreover, Bush has a number of conservative congressional allies in the signing statement issue. For example, Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former judge, has said that signing statements are merely expressions of presidential opinion that carry no legal weight because federal courts are unlikely to consider them when deciding cases that challenge the same laws.
But Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA summed up the feelings of human rights advocates. She told us, "Signing statements must not be used to skirt the President's responsibilities under international law. Amnesty International was pleased with the passage of the anti-torture bill through Congress in December. However, that victory came with a new challenge, as President Bush, in signing the bill, issued a "signing statement" in which he asserted that he could waive the ban on torture and inhumane treatment when he deemed it necessary. Torture is never necessary. It is absolutely prohibited through international law and human rights standards, as well as the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The President of the United States is not above the law."
That may come as something of a shock to Mr. Bush.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
WHILE BEIRUT BURNS
By William Fisher
As rockets rain down on Lebanon and Israel, and the world stares into the abyss of a catastrophic Middle East conflagration, it was comforting to note last week that members of Congress refused to get depressed about the scary state of world affairs.
Instead, they busied themselves by concentrating their attention on some of the really crucial domestic issues facing our nation.
Like a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. Even though the Senate resoundingly rejected action on this dangerous “values issue” – and even President Bush couldn’t really work up much public enthusiasm for it – the House of Representatives persevered.
Or at least the God Squad wing of the Republican Party persevered.
"It's part of God's plan for the future of mankind," explained Rep. John Carter of Texas, while Rep. Bob Beauprez of Colorado found "the very hand of God" at work, adding, "We best not be messing with His plan." Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana weighed in with "It wasn't our idea, it was God's."
And Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, apparently fresh from a personal conversation with The Higher Power, told his colleagues, “I think God has spoken very clearly on this issue." The gynecologist-legislator referred critics to the Holy Scriptures.
But other House members evidently weren’t connected to Gingrey’s conference call. They defeated the measure, 236 to 187.
The truly religious were more successful in their effort to strip those pesky activist federal judges from ever hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. These so-called social conservatives approved the measure, 260 to167. It now faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
"We should not and cannot rewrite history to ignore our spiritual heritage,"
intoned Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican. "It surrounds us. It
cries out for our country to honor God."
Supporters argued that the "under God" phrase, added to the pledge in 1954, was intrinsic to the nation's heritage and traditions and must be shielded from
unelected judges. "This is an issue that clearly resonates to what we are about
as a country," said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.
Rep. Todd Akin, another Missourian and sponsor of the measure, said that denying a child the right to recite the pledge was a form of censorship. "We believe that there is a God who gives basic rights to all people and it is the job of the government to protect those rights."
Never mind those quaint notions of judicial independence and the rights of religious minorities.
From among the many ironies in the “under-God” debate came a cautionary note from conservative Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California. He said the effort to strip courts of authority could come back to haunt his fellow conservatives if liberals gain control of Congress in the future. Congress, for example, could then prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on a state's decision to ban guns.
Then there was the Mt. Soledad cross issue, to which learned authorities on foreign policy and geopolitics have devoted many hours.
The cross at issue is a concrete edifice that has stood on public land at the center of San Diego's Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial for more than 50 years. The American Civil Liberties Union, nemesis of social conservatism, has been challenging the constitutionality of the cross for more than twenty years.
In May, a US District Judge ordered San Diego to remove the cross by Aug. 2 or face fines of $5,000 a day. But Rep. Duncan Hunter of California – the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who seems to moonlight as a spokesman for the haute cuisine and luxurious accommodations at Guantanamo Bay – came up with a solution. Congress would enact legislation transferring the cross from city management to the Federal government, which would designate it a Federal war memorial and thus prevent it from being removed.
"Removing this landmark would send a message to our nation's veterans that their service and sacrifice has gone unnoticed," Hunter said. "This is the wrong message, especially when so many of our brave men and women are committed to the operational theaters of the global war on terror."
What a no-brainer for Congress in an election year – an issue that wrapped religion inside patriotism inside the Global War on Terror.
Dutifully, 379 courageous members of the US House voted to approve Hunter’s legislation. Only 74 demurred.
Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, one of the groups that has defended the cross in court, said the overwhelming support for Hunter's bill demonstrates that "the liberal judges who support the ACLU’s anti-Christian agenda" are out of touch with America.
"No doubt, the ACLU will return to its liberal judges to try to undo, once again, the democratic process and the will of the people," Thompson said. "However, an effective coalition of veterans groups, political leaders and public-interest organizations is developing to stop them."
An identical bill has been introduced in the Senate by that stalwart champion of the Constitution, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose aim is to bring it to the Senate floor before the Congressional summer recess.
Needless to say, the White House strongly endorses Hunter’s legislation.
Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Bush followed through with his threat to issue the first veto of his administration: The stem cell bill passed by Congress to expand Federal funding for research on a greatly enlarged community of embryonic stem cells – cells due to be destroyed by fertility clinics as “medical waste.”
Self-styled religious conservatives pulled out all the stops to defeat this legislation before it got to Mr. Bush’s desk, but were defeated not so much by an agitated pro-choice lobby but by most of our most distinguished scientists and physicians.
When the religious right-wing is in full-throated opposition, it is highly effective in conveying the impression that it speaks for every religious soul. The white noise of its rhetoric tends to drown out all other points of view and maintains that other points of view don’t exist at all.
Not so. Thankfully, there are thousands of religious leaders who believe that it is right-wing fundamentalism that dishonors God and science. They are still less visible and a lot less well-funded than the James Dobsons and Tony Perkins’s of the world. But the more the Bush Administration continues to pander to what it still calls its base, the more these other voices grow both in numbers and in influence.
One of the most articulate of these voices is Rev. Tim Simpson, who heads a relatively new organization known as The Christian Alliance. What he had to say about President Bush’s stem cell veto is worth our attention.
The president’s use of his veto authority, Rev. Simpson said, “will result in the early deaths and unnecessary suffering of millions of Americans. It is one of the most stunning, irrational decisions of an administration with a reputation for such and the most telling piece of evidence yet that America is under the sway of theocrats whose obsession for ideological purity outweighs their concern for America's, and the world's, sick and dying.”
He continues: “The most illogical aspect of this debate is that the embryos which were to be used had the legislation passed will be thrown away! The twisted moral framework that would allow the embryos to be discarded rather than used to heal and save lives goes hand in glove with the pseudoscience that has become the hallmark of the Religious Right, to which this administration gives its highest loyalty.”
And he asks, “How long will Christians in this country stand for such outrages?”
Rev. Simpson tells the story of Jesus the Healer in Mark 6. “The text says that Jesus had compassion for the crowd because they were ‘like sheep without a shepherd’. Into the midst of the chaos of the people's lives, Jesus' compassion manifested itself in the healing of their bodies, as the crowds brought the sick to him to make them whole. Tens of thousands of American churches whose pastors follow the lectionary will hear this text this Lord's Day in congregations all across the country. How sad that this is to be the text in so-called Christian America, on the Sunday after the Christian President of the United States threw the sick under the bus. Talk about sheep without a shepherd.”
Rev. Simpson assures us, “This is not a partisan issue. There isn't a Democrat, Republican or Independent who doesn't know someone who is suffering from diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, paralysis or a host of other diseases and ailments that could be ameliorated or cured through the use of stem cell therapies. Forget the Red State-Blue State clash. Polls indicate that better than 7 out of 10 Americans approve of federal funding for stem cell research. Even someone as conservative as Bill Frist, anxious to help mainstream America forget his embarrassing role in the Terri Schiavo affair, demonstrated that even he had not taken complete leave of his senses by supporting the bill. But the President threw a sop to the radical fringe in his party, so the entire nation has to suffer.”
Throwing the sick under the bus is likely to be a big part of the “compassionate conservative” legacy of George W. Bush. And we will probably never know whether his veto was borne of genuine conviction, however misguided, or of Karl Rove’s need to mobilize his flock to get to the polls in November.
But November is not an opportunity only for Mr. Rove. It is a chance for the nation’s flock to show that it’s a lot smarter than our president and our craven Congress thinks it is.
Let us pray.
As rockets rain down on Lebanon and Israel, and the world stares into the abyss of a catastrophic Middle East conflagration, it was comforting to note last week that members of Congress refused to get depressed about the scary state of world affairs.
Instead, they busied themselves by concentrating their attention on some of the really crucial domestic issues facing our nation.
Like a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. Even though the Senate resoundingly rejected action on this dangerous “values issue” – and even President Bush couldn’t really work up much public enthusiasm for it – the House of Representatives persevered.
Or at least the God Squad wing of the Republican Party persevered.
"It's part of God's plan for the future of mankind," explained Rep. John Carter of Texas, while Rep. Bob Beauprez of Colorado found "the very hand of God" at work, adding, "We best not be messing with His plan." Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana weighed in with "It wasn't our idea, it was God's."
And Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, apparently fresh from a personal conversation with The Higher Power, told his colleagues, “I think God has spoken very clearly on this issue." The gynecologist-legislator referred critics to the Holy Scriptures.
But other House members evidently weren’t connected to Gingrey’s conference call. They defeated the measure, 236 to 187.
The truly religious were more successful in their effort to strip those pesky activist federal judges from ever hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. These so-called social conservatives approved the measure, 260 to167. It now faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
"We should not and cannot rewrite history to ignore our spiritual heritage,"
intoned Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican. "It surrounds us. It
cries out for our country to honor God."
Supporters argued that the "under God" phrase, added to the pledge in 1954, was intrinsic to the nation's heritage and traditions and must be shielded from
unelected judges. "This is an issue that clearly resonates to what we are about
as a country," said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.
Rep. Todd Akin, another Missourian and sponsor of the measure, said that denying a child the right to recite the pledge was a form of censorship. "We believe that there is a God who gives basic rights to all people and it is the job of the government to protect those rights."
Never mind those quaint notions of judicial independence and the rights of religious minorities.
From among the many ironies in the “under-God” debate came a cautionary note from conservative Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California. He said the effort to strip courts of authority could come back to haunt his fellow conservatives if liberals gain control of Congress in the future. Congress, for example, could then prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on a state's decision to ban guns.
Then there was the Mt. Soledad cross issue, to which learned authorities on foreign policy and geopolitics have devoted many hours.
The cross at issue is a concrete edifice that has stood on public land at the center of San Diego's Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial for more than 50 years. The American Civil Liberties Union, nemesis of social conservatism, has been challenging the constitutionality of the cross for more than twenty years.
In May, a US District Judge ordered San Diego to remove the cross by Aug. 2 or face fines of $5,000 a day. But Rep. Duncan Hunter of California – the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who seems to moonlight as a spokesman for the haute cuisine and luxurious accommodations at Guantanamo Bay – came up with a solution. Congress would enact legislation transferring the cross from city management to the Federal government, which would designate it a Federal war memorial and thus prevent it from being removed.
"Removing this landmark would send a message to our nation's veterans that their service and sacrifice has gone unnoticed," Hunter said. "This is the wrong message, especially when so many of our brave men and women are committed to the operational theaters of the global war on terror."
What a no-brainer for Congress in an election year – an issue that wrapped religion inside patriotism inside the Global War on Terror.
Dutifully, 379 courageous members of the US House voted to approve Hunter’s legislation. Only 74 demurred.
Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, one of the groups that has defended the cross in court, said the overwhelming support for Hunter's bill demonstrates that "the liberal judges who support the ACLU’s anti-Christian agenda" are out of touch with America.
"No doubt, the ACLU will return to its liberal judges to try to undo, once again, the democratic process and the will of the people," Thompson said. "However, an effective coalition of veterans groups, political leaders and public-interest organizations is developing to stop them."
An identical bill has been introduced in the Senate by that stalwart champion of the Constitution, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose aim is to bring it to the Senate floor before the Congressional summer recess.
Needless to say, the White House strongly endorses Hunter’s legislation.
Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Bush followed through with his threat to issue the first veto of his administration: The stem cell bill passed by Congress to expand Federal funding for research on a greatly enlarged community of embryonic stem cells – cells due to be destroyed by fertility clinics as “medical waste.”
Self-styled religious conservatives pulled out all the stops to defeat this legislation before it got to Mr. Bush’s desk, but were defeated not so much by an agitated pro-choice lobby but by most of our most distinguished scientists and physicians.
When the religious right-wing is in full-throated opposition, it is highly effective in conveying the impression that it speaks for every religious soul. The white noise of its rhetoric tends to drown out all other points of view and maintains that other points of view don’t exist at all.
Not so. Thankfully, there are thousands of religious leaders who believe that it is right-wing fundamentalism that dishonors God and science. They are still less visible and a lot less well-funded than the James Dobsons and Tony Perkins’s of the world. But the more the Bush Administration continues to pander to what it still calls its base, the more these other voices grow both in numbers and in influence.
One of the most articulate of these voices is Rev. Tim Simpson, who heads a relatively new organization known as The Christian Alliance. What he had to say about President Bush’s stem cell veto is worth our attention.
The president’s use of his veto authority, Rev. Simpson said, “will result in the early deaths and unnecessary suffering of millions of Americans. It is one of the most stunning, irrational decisions of an administration with a reputation for such and the most telling piece of evidence yet that America is under the sway of theocrats whose obsession for ideological purity outweighs their concern for America's, and the world's, sick and dying.”
He continues: “The most illogical aspect of this debate is that the embryos which were to be used had the legislation passed will be thrown away! The twisted moral framework that would allow the embryos to be discarded rather than used to heal and save lives goes hand in glove with the pseudoscience that has become the hallmark of the Religious Right, to which this administration gives its highest loyalty.”
And he asks, “How long will Christians in this country stand for such outrages?”
Rev. Simpson tells the story of Jesus the Healer in Mark 6. “The text says that Jesus had compassion for the crowd because they were ‘like sheep without a shepherd’. Into the midst of the chaos of the people's lives, Jesus' compassion manifested itself in the healing of their bodies, as the crowds brought the sick to him to make them whole. Tens of thousands of American churches whose pastors follow the lectionary will hear this text this Lord's Day in congregations all across the country. How sad that this is to be the text in so-called Christian America, on the Sunday after the Christian President of the United States threw the sick under the bus. Talk about sheep without a shepherd.”
Rev. Simpson assures us, “This is not a partisan issue. There isn't a Democrat, Republican or Independent who doesn't know someone who is suffering from diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, paralysis or a host of other diseases and ailments that could be ameliorated or cured through the use of stem cell therapies. Forget the Red State-Blue State clash. Polls indicate that better than 7 out of 10 Americans approve of federal funding for stem cell research. Even someone as conservative as Bill Frist, anxious to help mainstream America forget his embarrassing role in the Terri Schiavo affair, demonstrated that even he had not taken complete leave of his senses by supporting the bill. But the President threw a sop to the radical fringe in his party, so the entire nation has to suffer.”
Throwing the sick under the bus is likely to be a big part of the “compassionate conservative” legacy of George W. Bush. And we will probably never know whether his veto was borne of genuine conviction, however misguided, or of Karl Rove’s need to mobilize his flock to get to the polls in November.
But November is not an opportunity only for Mr. Rove. It is a chance for the nation’s flock to show that it’s a lot smarter than our president and our craven Congress thinks it is.
Let us pray.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
OF PITBULLS AND LAPDOGS
By William Fisher
The recent Supreme Court decision that U.S. President George W. Bush does not have the authority to try suspected terrorist detainees without statutory approval – and must adhere to the Geneva Convention’s prohibitions against torture – has opened a widening chasm among members of the president’s own party.
Pitted against one another in what is already shaping up as an increasingly contentious and bloody battle are Republicans who would like to see the Congress simply affirm what the president has been doing since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, and other Republicans who are pushing for a set of clearer and fairer rules governing detention and interrogation.
Republicans who favor a change in the Administration’s policies and procedures are being joined by most Democrats. But neither political party is eager to take on this battle in an election year. Republicans fear the electoral impact of a public split in their ranks. And Democrats fear that voters will equate granting more due process and more humane treatment to alleged terrorists with “being soft on terror.”
But the poorly concealed back-story of this battle is a struggle for power between the President and the Executive Branch of Government on one hand and, on the other, the two houses of Congress that represent the Legislative Branch. The U.S. Constitution specifies that these two branches of government – along with a third branch, the Judiciary – are co-equals.
But many Congressional Republicans feel they have been systematically ignored by the White House since the beginning of the Bush Administration in 2000, and are determined to regain their power.
This determination is likely to affect not only prisoner detention and treatment, but also a number of other Administration programs that have been implemented by the President without approval by – or, in some cases, even knowledge of – Congress.
These include the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread wiretapping of American citizens allegedly speaking with members of Al Quaida overseas, and the NSA’s collection of millions of American citizens’ telephone records.
The Constitution specifies that searches of American citizens and seizure of their property cannot be carried out without a court finding of “probable cause” and a court-issued warrant. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, and established a special court to issue warrants for searches involving American citizens. In carrying out the NSA programs, the President publicly declared that no wiretaps were ever conducted without warrants, but in fact he ignored the FISA law, claiming “inherent authority” under the Constitution to protect the nation’s citizens in time of war. Many Constitutional scholars have questioned that authority.
The issue of prisoner detention and treatment was triggered by a Supreme Court decision late last month in a suit brought by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan against Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Court ruled 5-3 that the Yemeni detainee could not be tried by a special military commission established by the Administration without Congressional authorization. The court also held that the commissions violate the Geneva Conventions, especially the conventions' Common Article 3, which prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
A preview of the coming clash among Republicans, and between Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate was previewed during separate committee hearings last week.
Republicans on the powerful House Armed Service Committee indicated they were inclined to give the Bush administration largely what it wants in the
conduct of terrorism trials.
"This could be easy," said Rep. Candice S. Miller, a Michigan Republican, who proudly announced she has neither a law degree nor a college degree as she denounced the high court's 5 to 3 decision against the tribunals as "incredibly counterintuitive." "We could just ratify what the executive branch and the
[Department of Defense] have done and move on."
"That would be a very desirable way to proceed," said Daniel J. Dell'Orto, the
Pentagon's principal deputy general counsel, who set out the president’s position.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who chairs the House Committee has long been an advocate of the Bush administration's handling of detainees. He believes that the Pentagon has been too lenient with terror suspects, and has said, in "some cases we erred on the side of letting people go who we should not have let go." Hunter was referring to detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison, which currently holds about 450 suspected terrorists.
Hunter said, "We have to give the executive the tools to fight this war. This is not a separation of powers issue. It is an issue of how to defeat the enemy."
The tone at this first House hearing was distinctly different from the next day’s hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers from both parties said they wanted to make significant changes to the White House's plans.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who has made what he sees as excessive Executive Branch power a cause celebre, set off the fireworks by telling Dell'Orto and acting Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury, "I doubt very much that Congress is going to be disposed to leave these issues to the Department of Defense."
Key Senate Republicans -- including Specter, Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, and John McCain of Arizona -- believe Congress should use the existing Uniform Code of Military Justice as a starting point and then adapt the rules that govern courts-martial to the war on terrorism.
But Dell'Orto told Senators that to do that and meet national security needs, 73 military rules of evidence and 145 to 150 articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice would have to be amended, effectively "gutting" the military legal code.
However, there soon were signs that the administration was climbing down from its position. Sen. McCain announced that during a White House meeting involving Graham – who is a reserve military lawyer-- and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, an agreement was reached that legislation would use the military code -- not the administration's plan -- as the framework, and a final bill would adhere to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The bill could be based on a measure crafted by McCain last year to ban torture at U.S. detention facilities. While some minor changes might be required to conform to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, McCain said the legislation would remain faithful to the Conventions.
The McCain legislation was enacted last year after fierce opposition from the White House, led by Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush signed it into law, but appended a “signing statement” essentially saying he would disregard the law when national security was at stake.
While Dell'Orto and Bradbury had quietly accepted the skepticism expressed in the Senate hearing, they let loose a salvo of their own in their appearance before the friendlier House Committee.
"I don't want a soldier when he kicks down a door in a hut in Afghanistan
searching for Osama bin Laden to have to worry about . . . whether he's got to
advise them of some rights before he takes a statement," Dell'Orto said. "I
don't want him to have to worry about filling out some form that is going to
support the chain of custody when he picks up a laptop computer that has the
contact information for all manner of cells around the world, while he's still
looking over his shoulder to see whether there's not an enemy coming in after
him."
Democrats dismissed his statement as a hyperbolic red herring.
Meanwhile, Newsweek Magazine revealed that in 2002 a group of State Department lawyers warned that the Bush administration was inviting an enormous backlash, both from U.S. Courts and foreign allies, by denying terror suspects rights commonly given under U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions.
Newsweek wrote, "Even those terrorists captured in Afghanistan ... are entitled to the fundamental humane treatment standards of ... the Geneva Conventions," William Howard Taft IV, the State Department legal counselor wrote in a January 23, 2002 memo obtained by Newsweek. In particular, Taft argued, the United States has always followed one provision of the Geneva Conventions-known as Common Article 3, which "provides the minimal standards" of treatment that even "terrorists captured in Afghanistan" deserve.
As the week came to a close, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Defense Department had already issued a memorandum to the military requiring them to adhere to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. He said he did not know whether the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – whose usually-secret detention facilities are also covered by the Supreme Court decision – had issued its own instructions.
The recent Supreme Court decision that U.S. President George W. Bush does not have the authority to try suspected terrorist detainees without statutory approval – and must adhere to the Geneva Convention’s prohibitions against torture – has opened a widening chasm among members of the president’s own party.
Pitted against one another in what is already shaping up as an increasingly contentious and bloody battle are Republicans who would like to see the Congress simply affirm what the president has been doing since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, and other Republicans who are pushing for a set of clearer and fairer rules governing detention and interrogation.
Republicans who favor a change in the Administration’s policies and procedures are being joined by most Democrats. But neither political party is eager to take on this battle in an election year. Republicans fear the electoral impact of a public split in their ranks. And Democrats fear that voters will equate granting more due process and more humane treatment to alleged terrorists with “being soft on terror.”
But the poorly concealed back-story of this battle is a struggle for power between the President and the Executive Branch of Government on one hand and, on the other, the two houses of Congress that represent the Legislative Branch. The U.S. Constitution specifies that these two branches of government – along with a third branch, the Judiciary – are co-equals.
But many Congressional Republicans feel they have been systematically ignored by the White House since the beginning of the Bush Administration in 2000, and are determined to regain their power.
This determination is likely to affect not only prisoner detention and treatment, but also a number of other Administration programs that have been implemented by the President without approval by – or, in some cases, even knowledge of – Congress.
These include the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread wiretapping of American citizens allegedly speaking with members of Al Quaida overseas, and the NSA’s collection of millions of American citizens’ telephone records.
The Constitution specifies that searches of American citizens and seizure of their property cannot be carried out without a court finding of “probable cause” and a court-issued warrant. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, and established a special court to issue warrants for searches involving American citizens. In carrying out the NSA programs, the President publicly declared that no wiretaps were ever conducted without warrants, but in fact he ignored the FISA law, claiming “inherent authority” under the Constitution to protect the nation’s citizens in time of war. Many Constitutional scholars have questioned that authority.
The issue of prisoner detention and treatment was triggered by a Supreme Court decision late last month in a suit brought by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan against Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Court ruled 5-3 that the Yemeni detainee could not be tried by a special military commission established by the Administration without Congressional authorization. The court also held that the commissions violate the Geneva Conventions, especially the conventions' Common Article 3, which prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
A preview of the coming clash among Republicans, and between Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate was previewed during separate committee hearings last week.
Republicans on the powerful House Armed Service Committee indicated they were inclined to give the Bush administration largely what it wants in the
conduct of terrorism trials.
"This could be easy," said Rep. Candice S. Miller, a Michigan Republican, who proudly announced she has neither a law degree nor a college degree as she denounced the high court's 5 to 3 decision against the tribunals as "incredibly counterintuitive." "We could just ratify what the executive branch and the
[Department of Defense] have done and move on."
"That would be a very desirable way to proceed," said Daniel J. Dell'Orto, the
Pentagon's principal deputy general counsel, who set out the president’s position.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who chairs the House Committee has long been an advocate of the Bush administration's handling of detainees. He believes that the Pentagon has been too lenient with terror suspects, and has said, in "some cases we erred on the side of letting people go who we should not have let go." Hunter was referring to detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison, which currently holds about 450 suspected terrorists.
Hunter said, "We have to give the executive the tools to fight this war. This is not a separation of powers issue. It is an issue of how to defeat the enemy."
The tone at this first House hearing was distinctly different from the next day’s hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers from both parties said they wanted to make significant changes to the White House's plans.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who has made what he sees as excessive Executive Branch power a cause celebre, set off the fireworks by telling Dell'Orto and acting Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury, "I doubt very much that Congress is going to be disposed to leave these issues to the Department of Defense."
Key Senate Republicans -- including Specter, Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, and John McCain of Arizona -- believe Congress should use the existing Uniform Code of Military Justice as a starting point and then adapt the rules that govern courts-martial to the war on terrorism.
But Dell'Orto told Senators that to do that and meet national security needs, 73 military rules of evidence and 145 to 150 articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice would have to be amended, effectively "gutting" the military legal code.
However, there soon were signs that the administration was climbing down from its position. Sen. McCain announced that during a White House meeting involving Graham – who is a reserve military lawyer-- and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, an agreement was reached that legislation would use the military code -- not the administration's plan -- as the framework, and a final bill would adhere to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The bill could be based on a measure crafted by McCain last year to ban torture at U.S. detention facilities. While some minor changes might be required to conform to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, McCain said the legislation would remain faithful to the Conventions.
The McCain legislation was enacted last year after fierce opposition from the White House, led by Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush signed it into law, but appended a “signing statement” essentially saying he would disregard the law when national security was at stake.
While Dell'Orto and Bradbury had quietly accepted the skepticism expressed in the Senate hearing, they let loose a salvo of their own in their appearance before the friendlier House Committee.
"I don't want a soldier when he kicks down a door in a hut in Afghanistan
searching for Osama bin Laden to have to worry about . . . whether he's got to
advise them of some rights before he takes a statement," Dell'Orto said. "I
don't want him to have to worry about filling out some form that is going to
support the chain of custody when he picks up a laptop computer that has the
contact information for all manner of cells around the world, while he's still
looking over his shoulder to see whether there's not an enemy coming in after
him."
Democrats dismissed his statement as a hyperbolic red herring.
Meanwhile, Newsweek Magazine revealed that in 2002 a group of State Department lawyers warned that the Bush administration was inviting an enormous backlash, both from U.S. Courts and foreign allies, by denying terror suspects rights commonly given under U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions.
Newsweek wrote, "Even those terrorists captured in Afghanistan ... are entitled to the fundamental humane treatment standards of ... the Geneva Conventions," William Howard Taft IV, the State Department legal counselor wrote in a January 23, 2002 memo obtained by Newsweek. In particular, Taft argued, the United States has always followed one provision of the Geneva Conventions-known as Common Article 3, which "provides the minimal standards" of treatment that even "terrorists captured in Afghanistan" deserve.
As the week came to a close, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Defense Department had already issued a memorandum to the military requiring them to adhere to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. He said he did not know whether the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – whose usually-secret detention facilities are also covered by the Supreme Court decision – had issued its own instructions.
Monday, July 17, 2006
‘BRING IT ON’ STILL ALIVE AND WELL
By William Fisher
The punditocracy has lately been waxing eloquent about President Bush’s softer, more conciliatory tone and less hysterical, more humble rhetoric, which many have trumpeted as ‘the end of cowboy diplomacy’.
Not on your Nellie. If you believe our cowboy in the White House has somehow morphed into world statesman, have a look at Dubya’s two most recent choices for big promotions.
They are William Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, tapped to be a Federal Judge, and Gen. Bantz Craddock, who currently oversees "war on terror" detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, to be commander of US forces in Europe, as well as NATO.
Mr. Haynes has been a key player in shaping some of the Bush Administration’s most legally and morally reprehensible policies, notably on the use of torture. He is one of a small group of insiders who have developed the Bush administration’s policies on questioning detainees and declaring American citizens to be “enemy combatants.” The twisted legal reasoning of this group opened the door to the abusive treatment of US detainees at Guantanamo Bay and helped create the environment that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal. The Supreme Court has repeatedly had to step in to rein them in.
If confirmed by the Senate, Haynes would have lifetime tenure on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va. It is this court that has heard some of the most important cases about the constitutional limits on the war on terror. By what stretch of the imagination could anyone see Mr. Haynes as an impartial voice on these issues?
Of course, the Administration lawyers who crafted the Bush ‘torture policy’ and described the Geneva Conventions as ‘quaint’ have a rich history of being rewarded.
In 2002, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to prepare a memo dealing with limits on “standards of permissible conduct” for interrogations conducted “abroad” as found in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The memo concluded that the restrictions were limited only to acts inflicting and “specifically intended to inflict severe pain or suffering,” whether mental or physical. It said it was OK to allow severe mental pain not intended to have lasting effects and physical pain less than that which accompanies “serious physical injury such as death or organ failure.”
The author of that infamous – and now rescinded -- memo was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, one Jay Bybee. President Bush rewarded him with a lifetime appointment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And the man who requested that memo – and recommended it to the President – was then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who was then elevated to Attorney General of the United States – the “people’s lawyer.”
And it may be worth recalling that the Bybee memo was rescinded by the Justice Department virtually on the eve of Mr. Gonzales’s confirmation hearing in the US Senate.
But take heart – all may not be lost. As a New York Times editorial reminds us, “The administration likes to blame opposition to its judicial nominees on “liberal activists,” but Mr. Haynes’s most high-profile opposition comes from the military itself.
Twenty retired military officers, including a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote to the Senate to express their concern that the policies Mr. Haynes helped develop “compromised military values, ignored federal and international law and damaged America’s reputation and world leadership.” The officers expressed their “deep concern” about his fitness for the court.
And during Mr. Haynes’s confirmation hearing, some of the most pointed questioning came from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer who takes the law of combat seriously.
So Democrats may not have to worry about filibustering this grotesque nomination. Enough Republicans in Congress may join with Democrats to actually take their “advise and consent” role seriously.
Then there’s General Craddock. In a White House with a sterling record of PR over substance, only an extreme lack of oxygen inside the bubble can explain the special kind of chutzpah the President showed by nominating the current commander of GITMO to be our Supreme Allied Commander of anything.
As one of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s most trusted aides, Gen. Craddock has ordered investigations into allegations of abuse at the camp but has generally defended it against critics.
Last year, a team of military investigators looked into allegations by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who said they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. The FBI allegations were contained in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Act.
The chief investigator into Guantanamo practices, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, told a Senate panel of the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Al-Qahtani was thought to be “the 20th hijacker” in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Schmidt said interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra and wear a thong on his head, told him he was a homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women, and to wear a leash and act like a dog.
These techniques were reportedly approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use on al-Qahtani, and were used at Guantanamo in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking him down.
Members of the military team that conducted the three-month investigation told the Senate Armed Services Committee they recommended a reprimand for Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the officer widely reported to have been sent from Guantanamo to Iraq to “GITMO-ize” Abu Ghraib and other US detention facilities.
The Miller inquiry strongly supported the contention that Gen. Miller was the constant in the prisoner treatment equation, first at Guantanamo, and later at military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, where similar interrogation techniques were employed.
Their recommendation for a Miller reprimand, however, was overruled by Gen. Miller’s superior, the very same Gen. Craddock now about to be rewarded with yet another Bush promotion.
Gen. Craddock acknowledged that Gen. Miller had used “creative” and “aggressive” tactics, but did not practice torture or violate law or Pentagon policy. He concluded that Miller’s techniques did not rise to the level of torture, and referred the matter to the Army’s Inspector General. From whom, as far as we know, nothing has been heard since.
It might be reasonable to expect that, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent Hamdan decision reining in the unfettered power of the President to ignore Congress and make his own law, that a chastened White House might have given a tad of consideration to the public perception of these two nominations, even if it could care less about the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But that would require some kind of major epiphany from our cowboy president.
Instead, we get more bring-it-on!
The punditocracy has lately been waxing eloquent about President Bush’s softer, more conciliatory tone and less hysterical, more humble rhetoric, which many have trumpeted as ‘the end of cowboy diplomacy’.
Not on your Nellie. If you believe our cowboy in the White House has somehow morphed into world statesman, have a look at Dubya’s two most recent choices for big promotions.
They are William Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, tapped to be a Federal Judge, and Gen. Bantz Craddock, who currently oversees "war on terror" detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, to be commander of US forces in Europe, as well as NATO.
Mr. Haynes has been a key player in shaping some of the Bush Administration’s most legally and morally reprehensible policies, notably on the use of torture. He is one of a small group of insiders who have developed the Bush administration’s policies on questioning detainees and declaring American citizens to be “enemy combatants.” The twisted legal reasoning of this group opened the door to the abusive treatment of US detainees at Guantanamo Bay and helped create the environment that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal. The Supreme Court has repeatedly had to step in to rein them in.
If confirmed by the Senate, Haynes would have lifetime tenure on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va. It is this court that has heard some of the most important cases about the constitutional limits on the war on terror. By what stretch of the imagination could anyone see Mr. Haynes as an impartial voice on these issues?
Of course, the Administration lawyers who crafted the Bush ‘torture policy’ and described the Geneva Conventions as ‘quaint’ have a rich history of being rewarded.
In 2002, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to prepare a memo dealing with limits on “standards of permissible conduct” for interrogations conducted “abroad” as found in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The memo concluded that the restrictions were limited only to acts inflicting and “specifically intended to inflict severe pain or suffering,” whether mental or physical. It said it was OK to allow severe mental pain not intended to have lasting effects and physical pain less than that which accompanies “serious physical injury such as death or organ failure.”
The author of that infamous – and now rescinded -- memo was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, one Jay Bybee. President Bush rewarded him with a lifetime appointment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And the man who requested that memo – and recommended it to the President – was then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who was then elevated to Attorney General of the United States – the “people’s lawyer.”
And it may be worth recalling that the Bybee memo was rescinded by the Justice Department virtually on the eve of Mr. Gonzales’s confirmation hearing in the US Senate.
But take heart – all may not be lost. As a New York Times editorial reminds us, “The administration likes to blame opposition to its judicial nominees on “liberal activists,” but Mr. Haynes’s most high-profile opposition comes from the military itself.
Twenty retired military officers, including a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote to the Senate to express their concern that the policies Mr. Haynes helped develop “compromised military values, ignored federal and international law and damaged America’s reputation and world leadership.” The officers expressed their “deep concern” about his fitness for the court.
And during Mr. Haynes’s confirmation hearing, some of the most pointed questioning came from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer who takes the law of combat seriously.
So Democrats may not have to worry about filibustering this grotesque nomination. Enough Republicans in Congress may join with Democrats to actually take their “advise and consent” role seriously.
Then there’s General Craddock. In a White House with a sterling record of PR over substance, only an extreme lack of oxygen inside the bubble can explain the special kind of chutzpah the President showed by nominating the current commander of GITMO to be our Supreme Allied Commander of anything.
As one of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s most trusted aides, Gen. Craddock has ordered investigations into allegations of abuse at the camp but has generally defended it against critics.
Last year, a team of military investigators looked into allegations by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who said they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. The FBI allegations were contained in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Act.
The chief investigator into Guantanamo practices, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, told a Senate panel of the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Al-Qahtani was thought to be “the 20th hijacker” in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Schmidt said interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra and wear a thong on his head, told him he was a homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women, and to wear a leash and act like a dog.
These techniques were reportedly approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use on al-Qahtani, and were used at Guantanamo in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking him down.
Members of the military team that conducted the three-month investigation told the Senate Armed Services Committee they recommended a reprimand for Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the officer widely reported to have been sent from Guantanamo to Iraq to “GITMO-ize” Abu Ghraib and other US detention facilities.
The Miller inquiry strongly supported the contention that Gen. Miller was the constant in the prisoner treatment equation, first at Guantanamo, and later at military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, where similar interrogation techniques were employed.
Their recommendation for a Miller reprimand, however, was overruled by Gen. Miller’s superior, the very same Gen. Craddock now about to be rewarded with yet another Bush promotion.
Gen. Craddock acknowledged that Gen. Miller had used “creative” and “aggressive” tactics, but did not practice torture or violate law or Pentagon policy. He concluded that Miller’s techniques did not rise to the level of torture, and referred the matter to the Army’s Inspector General. From whom, as far as we know, nothing has been heard since.
It might be reasonable to expect that, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent Hamdan decision reining in the unfettered power of the President to ignore Congress and make his own law, that a chastened White House might have given a tad of consideration to the public perception of these two nominations, even if it could care less about the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But that would require some kind of major epiphany from our cowboy president.
Instead, we get more bring-it-on!
Monday, July 10, 2006
THE END OF DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN IRAQ?
By William Fisher
"America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof."
So spoke President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address last January, vowing to help build democratic institutions and strengthen civil society in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Yet today, the Bush administration is substantially reducing funding for the organizations that are traditionally mandated to transform the president's vision into reality.
In budget requests to Congress, funding for democracy promotion in Iraq has been limited. Some organizations ran out of funds in April; others are trying to make their resources last through the summer.
At risk are projects to teach Iraqis how to create and manage political parties, organize and run think tanks, human rights organizations, a free press, and trade unions.
The decline in funding is being attributed to ballooning security costs, which have already caused the Bush Administration to scale back its ambitious reconstruction programs designed to restore Iraq's infrastructure.
Administration officials admit they are requesting fewer dollars for traditional democracy-building programs, but contend that their efforts to help Iraqis to run more effective ministries also contribute to democracy.
At the beginning of the Iraq war, money was not a problem for the organizations traditionally involved in promoting democracy.
For example, soon after the fall of Baghdad, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), received $25 million to expand its Iraq programs, and eventually received a total of $71 million.
It distributed some of these funds to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and its sister organization, the International Republican Institute (IRI), both affiliated with America's two main political parties.
Now the funding for both organizations has dried up. Their sole source of finance are special funds earmarked by Congress last year, as the result of an effort spearheaded by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. The funds will be exhausted later this year.
"The solution to Iraq lies in the political process, and it's reckless for the White House to cut funds to strengthen democracy in Iraq at this time," Kennedy said.
The NED has received its final $3 million, but no further funding source has been identified. "It does feel like everybody's getting squeezed in this area," Barbara Haig, the endowment's vice president, told The Washington Post, adding, "There probably is a commitment to these programs in principle. I don't know how much commitment there is in specificity."
The Bush administration has included only $15 million for the two party institutes in next year's budget. The total for democracy promotion in Iraq for 2007 is $63 million, which would mean that most programs would have to be cut. Another $10 million for democracy promotion was included in the president's supplemental request to Congress. This is a tiny fraction of the ten of millions the US spends in Iraq each day.
Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group, called the situation "a travesty" and said she is "appalled" that more is not being done.
"This is the time to show that democracy promotion is more than holding an election. The US will be making a mistake if it "can't see fit to fund follow-up democracy promotion at this time," she said.
Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA agrees. She told us, "U.S. support for democratic institutions in Iraq is crucial to the future of human rights in that country. More than three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, conditions in that country are at a critical juncture, and the security of the Iraqi people hangs in the balance. The US owes it to the Iraqi people to provide the means to rebuild and strengthen not only their civil infrastructure but their societal infrastructure as well. Only then will Iraq be truly liberated."
But another view is expressed by Christopher J. Roederer, Associate Professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law. Prof. Roederer told us, "It is not wholly surprising that funding for democracy promotion in Iraq is dwindling. Democracy promotion was not the reason for invading Iraq, not even the stated reason for going into Iraq. Democracy promotion only came to the fore as a reason for invading Iraq after the invasion and after the 'weapons of mass destruction' justification and the 'connections to Al-Qaeda' justification had been discredited."
The White House and US aid agencies have declined to discuss the budget cuts.
However, the dramatic drop in support for democracy-building programs in Iraq may well signal a quiet Bush Administration decision that these types of programs cannot succeed given Iraq's current state of chaos.
Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, sums up the situation this way: "It looks as if the Administration has 'cut and run' on its alleged effort to bring democracy to Iraq -- though I don't think the Administration was ever serious about giving freedom to regular Iraqis. If so, there would be a referendum for Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should leave -- the debate would not be limited to discussion among U.S. leaders. Creating a government would be an Iraqi initiative, not a US-controlled one. Unfortunately, after the unnecessary invasion and all of the unnecessary death, destruction, and disorder, and the failure to provide services such as electricity and water in a timely manner, U.S. leaders are probably now afraid to let the Iraqi people have any real control over their own country and destiny."
"America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof."
So spoke President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address last January, vowing to help build democratic institutions and strengthen civil society in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Yet today, the Bush administration is substantially reducing funding for the organizations that are traditionally mandated to transform the president's vision into reality.
In budget requests to Congress, funding for democracy promotion in Iraq has been limited. Some organizations ran out of funds in April; others are trying to make their resources last through the summer.
At risk are projects to teach Iraqis how to create and manage political parties, organize and run think tanks, human rights organizations, a free press, and trade unions.
The decline in funding is being attributed to ballooning security costs, which have already caused the Bush Administration to scale back its ambitious reconstruction programs designed to restore Iraq's infrastructure.
Administration officials admit they are requesting fewer dollars for traditional democracy-building programs, but contend that their efforts to help Iraqis to run more effective ministries also contribute to democracy.
At the beginning of the Iraq war, money was not a problem for the organizations traditionally involved in promoting democracy.
For example, soon after the fall of Baghdad, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), received $25 million to expand its Iraq programs, and eventually received a total of $71 million.
It distributed some of these funds to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and its sister organization, the International Republican Institute (IRI), both affiliated with America's two main political parties.
Now the funding for both organizations has dried up. Their sole source of finance are special funds earmarked by Congress last year, as the result of an effort spearheaded by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. The funds will be exhausted later this year.
"The solution to Iraq lies in the political process, and it's reckless for the White House to cut funds to strengthen democracy in Iraq at this time," Kennedy said.
The NED has received its final $3 million, but no further funding source has been identified. "It does feel like everybody's getting squeezed in this area," Barbara Haig, the endowment's vice president, told The Washington Post, adding, "There probably is a commitment to these programs in principle. I don't know how much commitment there is in specificity."
The Bush administration has included only $15 million for the two party institutes in next year's budget. The total for democracy promotion in Iraq for 2007 is $63 million, which would mean that most programs would have to be cut. Another $10 million for democracy promotion was included in the president's supplemental request to Congress. This is a tiny fraction of the ten of millions the US spends in Iraq each day.
Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group, called the situation "a travesty" and said she is "appalled" that more is not being done.
"This is the time to show that democracy promotion is more than holding an election. The US will be making a mistake if it "can't see fit to fund follow-up democracy promotion at this time," she said.
Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA agrees. She told us, "U.S. support for democratic institutions in Iraq is crucial to the future of human rights in that country. More than three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, conditions in that country are at a critical juncture, and the security of the Iraqi people hangs in the balance. The US owes it to the Iraqi people to provide the means to rebuild and strengthen not only their civil infrastructure but their societal infrastructure as well. Only then will Iraq be truly liberated."
But another view is expressed by Christopher J. Roederer, Associate Professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law. Prof. Roederer told us, "It is not wholly surprising that funding for democracy promotion in Iraq is dwindling. Democracy promotion was not the reason for invading Iraq, not even the stated reason for going into Iraq. Democracy promotion only came to the fore as a reason for invading Iraq after the invasion and after the 'weapons of mass destruction' justification and the 'connections to Al-Qaeda' justification had been discredited."
The White House and US aid agencies have declined to discuss the budget cuts.
However, the dramatic drop in support for democracy-building programs in Iraq may well signal a quiet Bush Administration decision that these types of programs cannot succeed given Iraq's current state of chaos.
Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, sums up the situation this way: "It looks as if the Administration has 'cut and run' on its alleged effort to bring democracy to Iraq -- though I don't think the Administration was ever serious about giving freedom to regular Iraqis. If so, there would be a referendum for Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should leave -- the debate would not be limited to discussion among U.S. leaders. Creating a government would be an Iraqi initiative, not a US-controlled one. Unfortunately, after the unnecessary invasion and all of the unnecessary death, destruction, and disorder, and the failure to provide services such as electricity and water in a timely manner, U.S. leaders are probably now afraid to let the Iraqi people have any real control over their own country and destiny."
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