Tom Engelhardt: Will Iraq Become the Democrats' War?
Nothing reminds us more of how much the American constitutional system has been transformed, of just how extreme the "imperial presidency" has become, than Congress's generally woeful record in the second half of the last century and in the first years of this one to exert any significant control over or brakes on White House wars abroad. On such issues, Congress has generally lagged well behind public opinion -- as in Vietnam, where its greatest power, the power of the purse, led to partially successful defunding efforts only in 1973 after all U.S. combat forces had been withdrawn and as the American war was limping toward its end.
Congress has been weak even at its moments of relative strength, as with the War Powers Resolution of 1973; and ineffective when it has actually moved, as in the Boland Amendment's attempt to restrict the Reagan administration from funding and arming Nicaragua's Contra movement in the early 1980s, which resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair, a remarkably effective set of quasi-legal and utterly illegal evasions of Congress's funding and arming strictures -- until finally revealed in 1986. (And, of course, so many key figures in Iran-Contra returned to the Bush administration in 2001 in triumph and, as Seymour Hersh relates in his most recent New Yorker piece, two years ago they even convened a meeting, headed by Iran-Contra alumnus and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams, to consider the "lessons" of the Affair and essentially plot a new version of Iran-Contra to be run out of the Vice-President's office.)
The imperial presidency has regularly run circles around an ever weaker Congress. Now, once again, we find ourselves at a moment where the public seems increasingly eager for Congress to rein in an out-of-control White House and its increasingly catastrophic policies, this time in the Middle East. Below, David Swanson explores these questions: What might the new Democratic Congress be willing to do when it comes to Iraq? What is it actually capable of doing? If it does manage to act in any half-significant way, will the Bush White House simply ignore it?
[Click on the SOURCE link above to read Swanson's essay.]
Read entire article at Tomdispatch.com
Congress has been weak even at its moments of relative strength, as with the War Powers Resolution of 1973; and ineffective when it has actually moved, as in the Boland Amendment's attempt to restrict the Reagan administration from funding and arming Nicaragua's Contra movement in the early 1980s, which resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair, a remarkably effective set of quasi-legal and utterly illegal evasions of Congress's funding and arming strictures -- until finally revealed in 1986. (And, of course, so many key figures in Iran-Contra returned to the Bush administration in 2001 in triumph and, as Seymour Hersh relates in his most recent New Yorker piece, two years ago they even convened a meeting, headed by Iran-Contra alumnus and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams, to consider the "lessons" of the Affair and essentially plot a new version of Iran-Contra to be run out of the Vice-President's office.)
The imperial presidency has regularly run circles around an ever weaker Congress. Now, once again, we find ourselves at a moment where the public seems increasingly eager for Congress to rein in an out-of-control White House and its increasingly catastrophic policies, this time in the Middle East. Below, David Swanson explores these questions: What might the new Democratic Congress be willing to do when it comes to Iraq? What is it actually capable of doing? If it does manage to act in any half-significant way, will the Bush White House simply ignore it?
[Click on the SOURCE link above to read Swanson's essay.]