The Triangle

Issue date: 1/11/08 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: Leila Fadel MCT Gen. David Petraeus (left), Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, gets briefed by Col. Rick Gibbs before walking through the Dora Market in Baghdad, Iraq.

When the imperial history of the United States is written, that is, when we have joined Athens and Rome on the scrap-heap of republics destroyed by empire, 2007 will be seen as a pivotal year. It was the year when we could have, but did not, withdraw from Iraq. And it was the year when a Congress elected to bring an overweening president to heel and restore a semblance of constitutional integrity became his fawning enabler instead.

Iraq is no longer George W. Bush's war. It belongs to all of us now.

What doesn't belong to us, anymore, is our country.

The founding fathers built several safeguards into the government they devised to ward off the presidential tyranny many of them feared. The most important were the powers of the purse, war and peace, and impeachment.

The first power was meant to guarantee that no president could enjoy any revenue not granted him by Congress, or use such revenues except as mandated. The second was meant to keep him from arbitrarily engaging the nation in military conflict by requiring a declaration of war from congress, or ending it except by congressionally-ratified treaty. The third was the ultimate fail-safe in the system.

It provided for the impeachment of the president by a majority of the members of the house of representatives, and his removal from office by two-thirds of the senate.

Although early observers of the republic, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, thought that Congress had the upper hand constitutionally, strong-willed presidents including Adams, Jefferson, and Jackson had already stretched executive prerogative in alarming ways, particularly with regard to war and peace.

America has engaged in five major wars since 1950, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, and twice in Iraq, without a congressional declaration of war. This power may now be regarded as atrophied within our constitution.

The last declaration of war authorized war with Japan in 1941.

What tends to be overlooked is that the terms of peace for that war were set not by Congress but in a unilateral declaration by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that America would cease fighting only upon the unconditional surrender of its adversaries.

Continued...

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