Category Archives: War

Letter of the Week: War Powers by John Danforth

War

John Danforth responds to “A Republic, if You Can Keep It…”:

The Constitution of the United States of America has become just a decoration in some museum in Washington DC. Its words are platitudes, phrases to be used whenever the ACLU wants to sound scholarly. The populace has been government schooled in studious avoidance of the subject; ignorance of the constitution is fashionable, and this extends to members of congress.

I saw a snippet of an interview with our President the other day. I saw him say that he didn’t question the patriotism of those who opposed this latest bill, but he just sees things differently. He said, in his view, that we are at war, and they don’t see it that way.

This is where the equivocation comes in. We are at war, but not really. Just like other “Wars” we have been in, but weren’t really. I can dredge up from my rusty memory that the constitution explicitly says that congress has the power to declare war, and that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. Although newer laws and bills have been passed, whereby congress gave assent to the use of force, still, we are NOT at war (at least not legally).

If we are not in a state of war, the U.S. government has no business trying to assert war-time emergency powers (which ought to be limited as well.) The Founding Fathers knew of the dangers of perpetual mini-wars. I believe that is why they tried to prevent them with the wording in our constitution. The threat of real war is intended to be something that our enemies and our citizenry will consider very seriously and very cautiously.

Just as with the commerce clause and amendments to the constitution, if the distinctions drawn by the authors of it can be fuzzed out of our ‘six-pack and ball game’ consciousness, then the fact that we are ‘sort of’ at war can allow the government to ‘sort of’ erode the foundations of our rights, and then only the ACLU will ‘sort of’ argue against the portions of a bill that don’t fit with their socialist agenda.

The attack on rational epistemology that started so long ago and has resulted in the United States adopting many of the planks of the Communist Manifesto–has now begun to bear real rotten fruit. We can justify the constitutionality of virtually anything, especially if the Supreme Court says so.

Pass me the laughing gas, I need another hit. I’m feeling like I don’t fit in around here.

—John Danforth

Updated: Rotten Reporting Again (About Those 650 Thou Dead in Iraq)

Iraq, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist, War

The Associates Press (via Rational Report) reports that:

A “controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq—more than 10 times higher than other independent estimates of the toll.”

Dubya and his Oh-What-A-Wonderful-War contingent dispute these figures. And so they should.

The latest Lancet report has never claimed 655,000 civilian deaths total, but rather that, “An estimated 655,000 more Iraqis have died as a consequence of the March 2003 military invasion of Iraq than would have been expected in a non-conflict situation.”

What we have here, once again, is rotten reporting. When the first Lancet report appeared two year ago, mainstream press also fudged the facts. I think I was the only writer who made the necessary distinctions. I explained:

“In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: heart attack, stroke and chronic illness. Since Iraq became another neocon object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence, according to the report.
Since March 2003, Iraqis have suffered from an excess of deaths, if you will. As Dr. Les Roberts, author of the study, told BBC News, ‘About 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.’
According to the study, “The relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months. But ‘the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion.”

Update: My thanks to Bob Murphy and Sean Mercer for demanding further clarification: My point is non-ideological; I’d simply like to see accurate reporting. The 650,000 figure would include deaths due to a greater incidence of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, stress and displacement-related deaths, deaths associated with a lack of health care and potable water, etc. Thus, silly journalists build doubt into the report because they give the impression that this many people died directly because of the war. Rather, the figure represents both direct and indirect casualties of the invasion, which is why it’s believable.

It goes without saying that the report is a criminal indictment of the invasion. If not for the invasion, the leading cause of death in Iraqi would still be natural, as it was during Saddam’s suzerainty.

You say Foley; I Say Iraq

Democrats, Iraq, Republicans, War

Florida Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican, “abruptly quit Congress on Friday after reports surfaced that he had sent sexually charged electronic messages to boys working as pages,”reports the Washington Times. Foley is under the FBI’s criminal investigation, although it’s not clear what federal or state laws, if any, he has violated. (The Law Against Lowlifes in Politics?) It appears the agency is searching for that law. (The country’s journalists are incapable of writing a news lead, much less properly fleshing out a story.)

Foley, like Debra LaFave, another paragon of the public-sector, claimed one of those bogus illnesses: alcoholism (at the root of the diseasing of behavior is the eradication of good and bad). To quickly establish the presence of mitigating factors, Foley checked himself into a rehab facility. However, he doesn’t have slut appeal; so it probably won’t work.

If Democrats weren’t so dumb, they’d comment tersely on this sordid affair, and then move on post haste to the real corruption: Iraq. (Condi Rice—as fleet of foot as ever in evading responsibility for anything, really—has used the distraction to deny her contribution to the lack of preparedness for the 9/11 onslaught. She’s resurrecting the same excuses I deconstructed in “Hold their Feet to the Fire.”)

The Republicans don’t deserve to govern because of Iraq (and immigration), not Foley. But neither do the Democrats (a pox on both their houses). As for traditional conservatives, (as opposed establishment Republicans), at the very least, they ought to consider President Bush’s positions on mass immigration and the national identity, the debt, and the growth in the size and power of government inimical to conservatism. However, they rarely pipe up these days about the accretion of the state under Bush. If only their concept of good government extended beyond pious homilies to family values, faith and fetuses.

When Wrong is Still Right

Bush, Iraq, Islam, War

In reply to James Huggins’ letter, posted here, whose stance has been to consistently bash those of us on the Right who opposed the war in Iraq for daring to be right (there’s a nice quote about that tactic. Someone please find it): Now that Iraq is broken, as we said it would be, these individuals continue to heap scorn on us. “What are ya gonna do; let’s be pragmatic. What’s done is done, so unless you have something constructive to say, shut up and let’s get on with the job.”

What job? Does it not occur to you that sometimes things are irreparably broken? Do you really think we can solve the problem of Iraq? Are there no limits to hubristic and delusional thinking? Are there no limits to the defiance of the laws of nature, such as that central planning has NEVER worked; freedom must rise from the roots, it cannot be imposed from the tree tops? Violate rules a school child learns on the playground, and you’ll come up shortalways. And is it worth losing one more American life to the Iraq Moloch? Oh, I forget, we only value fetuses, not fully grown human beings, thousands of whom are hobbling around on prosthetic limbs, lives ruined. Cicero said, “The first law of history is to tell the truth.” Let Huggins and the rest quit the Hussein-equals-Hitler inanities and admit that, while he was by no means a pleasant fellow, he kept Iraq as together as it will ever be. The trains ran on time and Shia and Sunni lived in relative peace in THE SAME NEIGHBORHOODS. There was no civil war (or “civil strife,” as the euphemism goes). In fact, the Iraqis I had met before the war were generally well-educated and had their act together. That simple thing comes from having an infrastructure: law and order, schools, universities, electricity, potable water, hospitals. Mark my words: this war, over which I am constantly castigated, will be responsible for the loss of a generation of young Iraqis. Mark my words (you heard it here first), in a few years time, the lost Iraqi generation will be a topic for discussion among the talking titmice.

Ibn Saud said: “It may be accepted as an incontrovertible fact that it will be impossible to manage the people of Iraq except by strong means and military force.” A prescription Saddam had mastered. The Sultan of Najd (born in 1876; died in 1953) knew of what he spoke.