Two of the top five books on the New York Times Best Seller List are about the War in Iraq. By now, the failure of Bush's policy, either from the point of view of the mis-connection of Iraq with weapons of mass destruction and the September 11th attack or from the point of view of the lack of an exit strategy or control over the corruption that prevents rebuilding, is pretty well documented.
Where do we go from here? The answer lies in another question: How can we prevent other military adventures predicated not on national defense bases but on political and ideological usefulness and prejudice? The devil is in our political structure. In the potential for grandeur and power that rests in the pinnacle of the Executive--not only our executive, but in the executive leadership of all nations. Every political leader knows, Make a War, See Your Popularity Rise. Go down in history. Be an important President (or any other title). War Makes the Man.
Certainly, there is a risk to adventures taken for power, as Lyndon Johnson knew and now G.W. Bush knows. But few leaders fear the future. There are few leaders reticent to throw the dice to gain their place in history. Few leaders at the peak admit of pessimism. George Bush the First should be admired for his reticence to enlarge his war in Iraq (though the stupid diplomacy that got him into that invasion is not to be admired). But he will not be remembered in history for anything, certainly not for wise reticence.
All the books about Iraq, whether on the New York Times Bestseller List or not, demonstrate one thing: the outsize power and incredible independence of a President and the claque around him. Since the Cold War, we have become too used to this monstrous centering of power. And now with the creation of that indefinable and unending concept (which is not just a concept but also a mechanism for power) The War on Terror we have added to the impulse to power and violence generated by the Cold War.
This is all to explain why I am in every instance for the reduction of power of the president. There is an immense current in the opposite direction, I know. Just these past weeks have increased the president's power in wire taps and secret imprisonments. In accepting these assaults on freedom there is a strange paradox of optimism that, no, an American executive will not take these new powers to an extreme, that we are not, cannot be (since we live in America) on the threshhold of a totalitarian administration without the leather straps, boots, music and symbols of Fascism--but nevertheless a sever reduction in freedoms other than choosing music to listen to on an Ipod.
There are very few things that I agree with in the thought of President Eisenhower or Senator barry Goldwater--they were much too elitist for me--but one thing I have in common with them is their commitment (prescient on their part) to limitation on the power of the President.
Every moment in history is a "crucial" moment, since history is a connected chain of events. It is just that in a moment, such as the one we live in, the beginning of the 21st century, we are better situated to see the structural crisis facing us. The "War on Terror" has a reality, to be sure, but it also is a concept whose definition, as we have seen, is up for grabs and whose application seems to be infinite in time and space. It provides the Executive Branch, the branch linked to war with an infinite resource to aggrandize power. The only reason the President and those around him will be willing to limit their power is if they are threatened to lose more power if they don't accept limits.
In the cycles of politics there are times when each branch of the government become the saviour of the republic. And there are times when each branch becomes a threat to the republic. The reality today is that the Executive is the threat, Congress can become a saviour (and this is a desperate appeal to that provincial and corruption-laden body), and the Supreme Court already corrupted by Executive appointments has the potential, if it studies the law and the Constitution to lend a hand to recreate a balance.
