Attack Iran, destroy the US constitution
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
During the 2004 election, President George W Bush famously proclaimed that he
didn't have to ask anyone's permission to defend the United States of America.
Does that mean he can attack Iran without having to ask Congress? A new
resolution being drafted by Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio may be a
vehicle to remind Bush that he can't.
Bush has called news reports of plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" and
declared that the United States is on a "diplomatic" track. But asked this week
if his options included
planning for a nuclear strike, he repeated that "all options are on the table".
The president is acting as if the decisions that may get Americans into another
war are his to make and his alone. So the Iran crisis poses not only questions
of military feasibility and political wisdom but of constitutional usurpation.
Bush's top officials openly assert that he can do anything he wants - including
attacking another country - on his authority as commander-in-chief.
Last October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked by members of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether the president would circumvent
congressional authorization if the White House chose military action against
Iran or Syria. She answered, "I will not say anything that constrains his
authority as commander-in-chief."
When pressed by Senator Paul Sarbanes about whether the administration can
exercise a military option without an authorization from Congress, Rice
replied, "The president never takes any option off the table, and he
shouldn't."
The founding fathers of the United States were deeply concerned that the
president's power to make war might become a vehicle for tyranny. So they
crafted a constitution that included checks and balances on presidential power,
among them an independent congress and judiciary, an executive power subject to
laws written by Congress and interpreted by the courts, and an executive power
to repel attacks but not to declare or finance war.
But the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, as laid out in the 2002 National
Security Strategy of the United States and reiterated this year, claims for the
president the power to attack other countries simply because he asserts they
pose a threat. It thereby removes the decision of war and peace from Congress
and gives it to the president. It is, as Senator Robert Byrd put it,
"unconstitutional on its face".
Congressional response
DeFazio is now preparing and seeking support from other House members for a
resolution asserting that the president cannot initiate military action against
Iran without congressional authorization.
"The imperial powers claimed by this administration are breathtaking in their
scope. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues were willing to cede our
constitutional authorities to the president prior to the war in Iraq. We've
seen how that turned out," DeFazio told the New York-based Nation newsmagazine.
"Congress can't make the same mistake with respect to Iran. Yet the constant
drumbeat we're hearing out of the administration, in the press and from
think-tanks on Iran eerily echoes what we heard about Iraq.
"It likely won't be long until we hear from the president that he can take
preemptive military action against Iran without congressional authorization,
which is what he originally argued about Iraq. Or that Congress has already
approved action against Iran via some prior vote, which he also argued about
Iraq," DeFazio said. "That is why it is so important to put the administration,
my colleagues and the American people on notice now that such arguments about
unilateral presidential war powers have no merit. Our nation's founders were
clear on this issue. There is no ambiguity."
There is considerable evidence that military action against Iran has already
begun. Retired air force Colonel Sam Gardiner told the Cable News Network that
"the decision has been made and military operations are under way". He said the
Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency recently told him
that the Iranians have captured dissident units "and they've confessed to
working with the Americans".
Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker that "American combat troops
are now operating in Iran". He quoted a government consultant who told him that
the units were not only identifying targets but "studying the terrain, giving
away walking-around money to ethnic tribes and recruiting scouts from local
tribes and shepherds".
Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has written to Bush, noting, "The presence
of US troops in Iran constitutes a hostile act against that country," and urged
him to report immediately to Congress on all activities involving US forces in
Iran.
Bipartisan concern
Concern about presidential usurpation of the war power is not just a partisan
matter. Former vice president Al Gore this year joined with former Republican
congressman Bob Barr to express "our shared concern that America's constitution
is in grave danger". As Gore explained, "In spite of our differences over
ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we
hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of
the administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power."
One of the stunning revelations of a recent spate of news stories is that top
military brass are strongly opposed to the move toward military strikes. The
Washington Post quotes a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Middle East
specialist that "the Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it". According to
Hersh's reporting in The New Yorker, the Joint Chiefs of Staff "had agreed to
give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly
opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran".
The Bush administration is putting military officials in a position where they
will have to decide whether their highest loyalty is to the president or to the
country and the constitution. Retired Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold, who
recently called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has
criticized the US military brass for its quiescence while the Bush
administration pursued "a fundamentally flawed plan" for "an invented war". Now
he is calling on serving military officers to speak out.
The "generals' revolt" has not publicly targeted the plans to attack Iran. But
its central critique concerns Rumsfeld's disregard for the US military's
evaluation of the costs of the Iraq war and the scale of commitment it would
require. Even if the generals don't speak about Iran specifically, their
arguments about the costs of the Iraq war logically fit a future Iran war too.
The American people are by now deeply skeptical of Bush's reliability in
matters of war and peace. In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, 54% of
respondents said they did not trust Bush to "make the right decision about
whether we should go to war with Iran", compared with 42% who did. Forty
percent said the war in Iraq had made them less supportive of military action
against Iran. But Americans are being systematically deprived of any
alternative view of the Iranian threat, the consequences of US policy choices,
or the real intentions of the Bush administration.
Congress and the US military allowed the Bush administration to bamboozle the
country with false information and scare talk prior to the Iraq war - and they
share responsibility for the resulting catastrophe. Now we're hearing again
talk about mushroom clouds. It's up to Congress and the military to make it
clear that the president does not assume monarchical power over questions of
war and peace.
Congress and the American people - who should make the decision about war and
peace - haven't even heard the forceful arguments of military officials against
military strikes. Calling those Pentagon officials to testify - and protecting
them against administration reprisals - would be a good place to start.
Gardiner, who specializes in war games and conducted one for The Atlantic
Monthly magazine that simulated a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities,
concluded, "It's a path that leads to disaster in many directions." Unless
preceded by a United Nations endorsement or an imminent Iranian attack, it's
also aggression, a war crime under international law and the UN Charter. If
Bush or his subordinates have already ordered military operations in Iran, it
should be considered a criminal act, Gardiner said.
The DeFazio resolution could provide a rallying point for a coalition to act
preemptively to put checks and balances on the Bush administration's usurpation
of constitutional powers. Indeed, the growing evidence that the United States
is already conducting military operations in Iran demonstrates the urgency of
placing limits on executive power.
Anyone in the United States who wants to avoid national catastrophe should get
busy defending it. Otherwise, Bush's legacy may be: "He bombed Iran, and the
collateral damage wiped out the constitution."
Legal analyst Brendan Smith and historian Jeremy Brecher
are the editors, with Jill Cutler, of In the Name of Democracy:
American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt, 2005) (www.americanempireproject.com),
and the founders of www.warcrimeswatch.org
.
(Copyright 2006 The Nation.
Used with permission.)
