Plaintiffs are active-duty members of the military, parents of military personnel, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. They filed a complaint in district court seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from initiating a war against Iraq. They assert that such an action would violate the Constitution. The district court dismissed the suit, and plaintiffs appeal. We affirm the dismissal.On the one hand, good for the First Circuit. On the other hand, why aren't the plaintiffs busy figuring out how they're going to pay the Rule 11 sanctions imposed against them for bringing a frivolous action?
The plaintiffs appropriately disavow the formalistic notion that Congress only authorizes military deployments if it states, "We declare war." This has never been the practice and it was not the understanding of the founders. See J.H. Ely, War and Responsibility 25-26 (1993). Congressional authorization for military action has often been found in the passage of resolutions that lacked these "magic words," or in continued enactments of appropriations or extensions of the draft which were aimed at waging a particular war. See, e.g., Laird, 451 F.2d at 34 ("[I]n a situation of prolonged but undeclared hostilities, where the executive continues to act . . . with steady Congressional support, the Constitution has not been breached."); Orlando, 443 F.2d at 1042-43 ("[T]he test is whether there is any action by the Congress sufficient to authorize or ratify the military activity in question."); see also Ely, supra, at 12-46 (arguing that Congress gave constitutionally sufficient authorization for ground war in Vietnam and Cambodia).Maybe now we'll hear less of this particular argument.
Finally, the history of our dealings with Iraq for the last twelve years is well worth reading:
Tensions between the United States and Iraq have been high at least since Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. In 1991, the United States led an international coalition in the Persian Gulf War, which drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Before that conflict, Congress passed a resolution quite similar to the October Resolution. See Pub. L. No. 102-1, 105 Stat. 3 (1991). As part of the ceasefire ending the Gulf War, Iraq agreed to United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which required that Iraq end the development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, destroy all existing weapons of this sort and their delivery systems, and allow United Nations weapons inspections to confirm its compliance with these terms. See S.C. Res. 687, U.N. SCOR, 46th Sess., 2981st mtg., U.N. Doc. S/RES/687 (1991). Since that time, Iraq has repeatedly been in breach of this agreement by, among other things, blocking inspections and hiding banned weapons. Iraq ended cooperation with the weapons inspection program in 1998. Since 1991, the United States and other nations have enforced a no-fly zone near the Kuwaiti border and on several occasions have launched missile strikes against Iraq. Congress has been engaged in the American response to Iraqi noncompliance throughout this period. It was well-informed about ongoing American military activities, enforcement of the no-fly zone, and the missile strikes. In 1998, Congress passed a joint resolution which chronicled Iraqi noncompliance and declared that "the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations, and therefore the President is urged to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations." Pub. L. No. 105-235, 112 Stat. 1538, 1541 (1998). Later that year, Congress also passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-338, 112 Stat. 3178. This statute authorized assistance, including military equipment and training, for "Iraqi democratic opposition organizations," and declared that it should be United States policy to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. Id. §§ 3, 4, 112 Stat. at 3179.A rush to war, indeed.
The United Nations has also remained engaged in the dispute ever since the Persian Gulf War. It supervised weapons inspections, supported economic sanctions against Iraq, and, through the Security Council, repeatedly passed resolutions declaring that Iraq was not fulfilling the conditions of Resolution 687. On September 12, 2002, President Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly. There he called for a renewed effort to demand Iraqi disarmament and indicated that he thought military force would be necessary if diplomacy continued to fail. In response, Iraq agreed to allow inspectors back into the country, but it has failed to comply fully with the earlier Security Council resolutions.
The week after his September 12 speech at the United Nations, President Bush proposed language for a congressional resolution supporting the use of force against Iraq. Detailed and lengthy negotiations between and among congressional leaders and the Administration hammered out a revised and much narrower version of the resolution. The House of Representatives passed this measure by a vote of 296 to 133 on October 10, 2002; the Senate followed suit on October 11 by a vote of 77 to 23. The full text of the October Resolution is attached as an appendix to this opinion.
On November 8, 2002, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441, which declared that Iraq remained in material breach of its obligations and offered "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations." S.C. Res. 1441, U.N. SCOR, 57th Sess., 4644th mtg., U.N. Doc. S/RES/687 (2002). It also noted that "the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations." Id. In diplomatic parlance, the phrase "serious consequences" generally refers to military action. More than 200,000 United States troops are now deployed around Iraq, preparing for the possibility of an invasion.
THE next seven days will decide the trajectory of British politics for the next seven years. The vote expected in the House of Commons next week will not just be about Iraq, but the entire Blair
project. The Prime Minister is taking on the Labour Party.If Tony Blair fights and wins, he will be unassailable. If he loses next week's vote, he will have little choice but to resign. If he falls, then his lieutenants - Alan Milburn, Charles Clarke, John Reid - will topple like dominoes.
Most staggeringly, it is Mr Blair who wants to bring this to a head. The Prime Minister is being advised not to hold a vote - but wants to take his case to Parliament and actively seek the decision which could end his career. [...]
For the scores of back-benchers who have long resented the Blair project, there has never been a better chance to vote down both him and his entire apparatus. War is the one issue where a Labour MP can defy the party leader without the charge of treason. There are several constituencies in the UK where rebelling MPs would be praised for fidelity to the "Labour movement". [...]
Finally, there is a coherent ideology uniting such rebels with the historic roots of their party. They believe in the state: public services run from the centre under common ownership.
Mr Blair believes in the market. Tuition fees, foundation hospitals, private finance initiative - a trio of policies designed to empower the producer. It is state socialism versus social democracy. [...]
The Prime Minister is choosing conflict over consensus - knowing that, if public service reforms do not go through now, the results will not be available at the next election. [...]
Mr Blair has not stopped at Iraq. He is fighting on all fronts - flying to Northern Ireland last week to hammer down the peace process, urging David Blunkett to deliver an antisocial behaviour bill and imploring
Gerhard Schroeder to reform Germany's economy.To take on so many battles looks like rage. But Mr Blair's strategy runs deeper. Painfully aware of the lack of progress his first term in office represented, this is how he wants it to be from now on.
Margaret Thatcher is the model, in methodology if not in policy. Blairites look back and admire the scope and audaciousness of her reforms - if only Labour's agenda could be implemented with such speed. [...]
To hell with the majority - let's do the right thing, and let those who like it join us. It's the message from the White House over Iraq and the message from Downing Street over public services. [...]
Mr Blair has won so much Tory support because he is showing courage and risking everything. This admiration will outlast the Iraq invasion because risk is Mr Blair's new policy for both international and
domestic issues.It is quite possible such voters will replace those in the Labour Left who tear up their membership cards as he sends troops to war. As Thatcher found out, strength of leadership can be a political party in itself.
Europe has thrown up its hands. Americans abroad say they give "Canadian" as their nationality to avert ugly scenes, and two classy career U.S. diplomats have resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of a policy they say generates hatred and fear. John Brady Kiesling, whose most recent posting was in Athens, wrote an eloquent letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell. A classics scholar, he quoted his reason in Latin, further infuriating the know-nothings who have gone to war against french fries.The letter was seen by a brother officer, John H. Brown, a diplomat's son with a doctorate from Princeton on assignment at Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. He had just about made up his mind to send in his resignation. "I was inspired by it," says Brown.
The Senate voted by a wide margin Thursday to ban a late-term abortion procedure, referred to by critics as partial-birth abortion.The 64-33 vote sent the legislation to the Republican-controlled House, which is expected to pass it this spring. President Bush said he will sign it once it clears Congress.
"Partial-birth abortion is an abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity, and I commend the Senate for passing legislation to ban it," Bush said in a statement. "Today's action is an important step toward building a culture of life in America."
Almost nine-tenths of Vietnam's most important sites for bird conservation are at risk from hunting and trapping, experts say.The warning comes from BirdLife International, a global alliance of ornithologists working in more than 100 countries.
It says the danger comes mainly from a huge rise in the trade in wildlife, and from agricultural pressure.
But BirdLife praises the Vietnamese Government's work to establish protected areas for wildlife.
With the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Hanoi, BirdLife has published a guide, Key Sites for Conservation in Vietnam.
It says 56 of 63 of the most critically important places for bird and biodiversity conservation (88%) are affected by illegal hunting and trapping.
A couple from Derbyshire have escaped from an Australian service station where they were marooned for 17 days.The pair from Buxton were trapped after a river burst its banks, leaving them surrounded by crocodile infested flood waters.
The car park where Alex Mackenzie and Elizabeth Holland had stopped for a break became an island with the man-eating reptiles all around them.
They were eventually airlifted to Darwin by helicopter as it was the only way to escape the area. [...]
Ms Holland said the authorities were reluctant to help them out.
"The main government in Canberra refused to help, and the British government couldn't help and our insurance company refused to help," she said.
"The police didn't get involved and no one seemed to want to help us out."
Prime Minister John Howard today launched a blistering attack on France as he hit the airwaves to sell his case for war against Iraq, a day after his nationally televised address.The Bush administration backed down overnight from its demands that the latest UN resolution on Iraqi disarmament be voted on by tomorrow but Mr Howard supported the move and denied the US was treading water.
Instead, he blamed France for destroying any hope of peacefully disarming Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, echoing the sentiments of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"We won't achieve that peaceful disarmament if we continue to have spoiling tactics from say the French, who appear intent on saying no to everything irrespective of its merit," Mr Howard told the Nine Network.
"I think it's regrettable that the spoiling role some countries have played have made that kind of outcome quite unlikely, next to impossible."
He said France has always regretted the rise of the United States as the pre-eminent world power and the fact that Europe was no longer as powerful in relation to the United States as it used to be.
MORE:
Analysis: Australia's military role in Iraq (Jonathan Marcus, 3/14/03, BBC)
Fiendish Iraqi terrorists are lurking beneath Lake Michigan in one or more mini-submarines, poised to launch a deadly attack on America, a military insider warns."We know they're down there but we don't know exactly where," claims the U.S. Navy source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [...]
Authorities have intercepted transmissions that seem to be coming from the mini-subs, with voices speaking in Arabic. Translators have interpreted the voices saying, "The Iron Fish are ready to bite."
The Bush administration is keeping the crisis under wraps to avoid nationwide panic, the source claims.
"The White House is weighing its options because, at this point, they're not sure how many subs might be down there. There could be dozens of these things," notes the Navy man. "If we start carpet-bombing the Great Lakes with depth charges -- which is what it may take to get these SOBs -- people may feel the war has come to their own back yards."
The spokesman stressed that these subs are too small to carry nuclear weapons, but added, "They could still be smuggling in nuclear materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction right here in the U.S."
Navy SEALS have been searching Lake Michigan, but they've found no sign of any mini-subs so far. But civilian sightings of the subs have continued at an alarming rate.
"I was fishing off my boat early one morning," one local fisherman says, "and I hooked something so big,
I thought maybe I had caught the Lake Michigan monster. I tried to reel it in, but then I saw a periscope come up. You can't even begin to imagine my surprise when I found out I'd hooked a mini-sub."
The fisherman dropped his rod in the water and raced back to shore as fast as his boat would carry him.
"I'm lucky I got out of there alive," he says. "That thing could've blown my boat to smithereens."
AMERICAN hostility to France reached new heights yesterday when the remains of US servicemen buried in Normandy were dragged into the heat of battle over Iraq.A Florida congresswoman introduced a Bill on Capitol Hill that would allow the families of Second World War dead to dig up their bones and take them home.
Ginny Brown-Waite said that her American Heroes Repatriation Act 2003 was a response to constituents' concerns that their fathers and grandfathers were lying in "unpatriotic soil".
Five volunteers who went to Iraq to serve as "human shields," including two Americans, were forced out of the country because they were critical of the government's choice of sites to protect, the head of the group said Wednesday.They had chosen locations "essential to the civilian population," such as food storage warehouses and water and electricity facilities, said Ken O'Keefe, of Haleiwa, Hawaii.
But the Iraqi government wanted the shields in more sensitive locations, he said. He did not elaborate, but some earlier activists have also left Iraq, reportedly after being told they would be posted at potentially strategic targets, such as oil refineries and power plants.
British military commanders in the Gulf warned today that a decision to send their troops into action must be taken within the next few days or not at all.Army planners have told Tony Blair they cannot maintain forces on the ground in a high state of readiness indefinitely.
The warning came as Pentagon sources made it clear that action is now only a few days away and that the British are a vital part of the opening phase of the attack on Iraq.
The US commander, General Tommy Franks, has said that once the Americans start moving out of Kuwait to begin the big push from the south, the British forces will go with them.
British military chiefs have also informed Mr Blair that once he has ordered the Desert Rats, Royal Marines and air assault troops into battle, it will be almost impossible to call them back.
U.S.-European differences on matters of policy and global strategy or governance are certainly nothing new. What is striking today, however, is that some serious observers are starting to conclude that the fundamental cultural and structural basis for a transatlantic alliance is eroding. Author Francis Fukuyama, who 13 years ago was declaring the triumph of common Euro-American values and institutions to be the "end of history," now speaks of the "deep differences" within the Euro-Atlantic community and asserts that the current U.S.-European rift is "not just a transitory problem." Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin -- once a bastion of Atlanticism -- talks about Europe's "pathology" regarding the use of force and argues that U.S. and European views of security are now so different that "the old Alliance holds little promise of figuring prominently in U.S. global strategic thinking." Columnist Charles Krauthammer has not been alone in asserting that NATO -- once the centerpiece of the transatlantic alliance -- is "dead."No one, however, has done more to advance the notion that Americans and Europeans are growing apart than analyst Robert Kagan, who began a summer 2002 article in Policy Review with a bold thesis: "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world." In the long and perceptive analysis that followed, Kagan argued that the disparity in power between the United States and Europe has grown so great that when it comes to "setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies the United States and Europe have parted ways." Kagan's suggestion that "the day could come ... when Americans will no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do the pronouncements of asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] or the Andean Pact" certainly grabbed the Europeans' attention. The article had hardly been printed when it began to be circulated on e-mail lists and cited in dozens or even hundreds of newspaper articles around the world. It was reprinted or excerpted in Le Monde, Die Zeit, the International Herald Tribune, and Commentaire and was even distributed to European Union officials by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. It should perhaps come as no suprise that the article struck a chord, especially in a Europe already led by Bush administration policies to believe that the United States no longer saw Europe as a valued ally. [...]
For all the talk of a transatlantic rift in the post-September 11 world, the fact is that basic American and European values and interests have not diverged -- and the European democracies are certainly closer allies of the United States than the inhabitants of any other region are or are likely to become anytime soon. Although their tactics sometimes differ, Americans and Europeans broadly share the same democratic, liberal aspirations for their societies and for the rest of the world. They have common interests in an open international trading and communications system, ready access to world energy supplies, halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, preventing humanitarian tragedies, and containing a small group of dangerous states that do not respect human rights and are hostile to these common Western values and interests.
Certainly, the Texan George W. Bush and the deeply conservative cabinet members who surround him, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, have little in common with most of their European counterparts. To use Kagan's terms, the Bush team represents a particularly "American" perspective; on issues such as religion, abortion, gun control, missile defense, the use of force, multilateralism, and the environment, they are about as far from "European" positions as Americans get. It thus stands to reason that their ascent to power was read as a step toward an increasingly "American" America, and that their subsequent policies -- given a further boost by the challenge of global terrorism -- have crystallized the apparent differences across the Atlantic.
It is less clear, however, that Bush's election really represented a fundamental shift in American values, or that these values have grown more "American" over time as Europe's have become more "European." After all, Bush's opponent in the last election, Al Gore, won some 540,000 more votes than Bush did, and Gore did so on a platform that was much closer on most issues to the European norm. The 2000 and 2002 congressional elections were also divided right down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, suggesting very little change in America's political and ideological balance, notwithstanding the dramatic change in the national leaders' approach. The point here is not to suggest that the Bush approach to domestic and world affairs is not widely supported in the United States or that most Democrats are not more "American" in their outlook than most Europeans. It is, rather, to underline that the alleged U.S.-European divide today would look very different had Gore polled a few more votes in Florida two years ago or had the Supreme Court taken a different view of the Florida recount. There would still be real differences over the Middle East, the environment, and Iraq, as there were during the Clinton years, but it is hard to believe they would be anywhere nearly as brutal as they are today.
The important thing to recognize though is that there's no reason to be confident that America will resist this brave new world. Mr. Gordon imagines a future where Europe and England might converge once again at a point where Europe would be a significant factor in world affairs. But what's far more likely is that they will converge at a point where America joins Europe in complacent suicide. It is our great good fortuine that George W. Bush is president at this time and that he's forcefully pushing a stunningly retrograde vision of Americanism--lower taxes; privatized entitlement programs; faith-based social programs; military confrontation with anti-Western nations and movements; etc. As Mr. Gordon suggests, things would be much different if Al Gore had prevailed in December 2000. In fact, we'd have significantly higher taxes, almost certainly be permanently locked in to large scale government-run entitlements, and we might well be drifting into the same kind of regime of socialized medicine that the European nations have. There would be no movement to restore a moral dimension to the delivery of social services. And, while Mr. Gore is certainly enough of a patriot that he'd be pursuing al Qaeda, we may never have attacked Afghanistan and would definitely not be extending the war to Iraq, N. Korea, Iran, the Phillipines, Colombia, etc.. And as government spending on ourselves took an ever greater portion of our wealth, it would be less and less feasible to mount a serious military campaign or even to maintain our current defenses.
So the question is: in the years to come will we follow a Bush-like vision of an "American America" or a Gore-like vision of a European America? We know what we'd like to see, but which seems more likely?
Cohen is right that sensible societies shouldn't trust generals to navigate the myriad curvatures of war without civilian oversight. But since he provides no absolute canon to guide ordinary leaders (nor can such a canon really exist), his argument in favor of civilian dominance can easily backfire when politicians fail to grasp their limitations. Cohen effectively leaves his readers with one of two approaches when assessing the wartime legacy of civilian leaders. Readers can either assume that the outcome of a war justified the means used or argue, as Tolstoy did in War and Peace, that since war is a game of infinite variables, leaders are mere cogs in an unfathomable machine. The utilitarian argument is hopelessly biased in favor of the victors; the Tolstoyan outlook explains why strict guidelines of behavior are impossible.Nor does one get much illumination in a chapter titled "Leadership Without Genius." Cohen uses the sorry outcome in Vietnam to conclude that the Johnson administration's management of that war was an example of how civilian leadership shouldn't have acted. He concludes that the problem in Vietnam was not that the civilians tied the military down -- a spurious indictment resurrected by conservatives to rationalize America's defeat -- but that they didn't tie the military down enough to provide the bewildered armed forces with a clear sense of direction and priorities.
This assessment raises a question: If leaders err when failing adequately to counterbalance their military establishments, might not an uninspired leader's excessive prying also bring a military venture to disaster? It is not just the manner of overseeing war that a leader must consider but also the tactical excellence of his oversight. Despite brief involvement in the Blackhawk War, Lincoln wasn't a military man. But he intuitively grasped that the Union’s priority was the destruction of the Confederate army, not the capture of Richmond. In contrast, Hitler's rerouting of two Panzer groups around Moscow in July 1941 delayed a German attack against the Soviet capital, allowing the Red Army to regroup. Cohen provides no overarching rule allowing us to say why Lincoln was right and Hitler wrong, except that one won and the other lost his war. [...]
To be fair, Cohen never assumes infallibility in his subjects. But once one evokes the potential for fallibility, an obvious question arises: How will the book's lessons be applied in the martial age of George W. Bush? In a jacket blurb, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, recommends the president read Cohen's book. What the neocons want Bush to learn is that it’s up to him and his civilian aides, not the brass hats, to set the pace in the Middle East, particularly Iraq.
Fair enough. But the successful civilian wartime leader is the one who has a clear sense of his political objectives. With Bush, the only certainty is his yearning to fight. It's hard to tell what the administration's long-term aims in Iraq might be. Indeed, it is apparent that a possible Iraq war is different things to different officials. Some see it solely as a means of getting rid of Saddam, while others ponder reshaping the entire Middle East. Bush has united his advisers through his vagueness, while also allowing them diverse readings of what should come next in the Gulf, ignoring his own role as the paramount unifier of purpose.
Cohen probably would not accept this abdication as an example of suitable leadership. Bush, in his inability to define persuasive and coherent aims in Iraq for the American public and, perhaps more important, for his own armed forces (who are preparing to elect Tommy Franks as a successor to Saddam), has failed to do what even leaders without genius must.
One is reminded of Ravi Shankar's retort at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh when the public applauded what they thought was a sitar improvisation: "Thank you. If you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you'll enjoy the playing more." Many are applauding Bush's tuning, confusing it with the performance. Yet nothing indicates he really knows the tune in Iraq.
So we turn to Iraq and what is Mr. Bush's goal: regime change. What uncertainty and confusion is Mr. Young talking about?
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., is back in the Senate. He voted against the ban on so-called partial birth abortions this morning and went to the Senate floor to say he'll vote against cloture on the Democratic filibuster on the Estrada nomination.
This has already been a desperate week for Tony Blair. First, his handling of the Iraq crisis was openly denounced as "reckless" by a member of his own cabinet, Clare Short. He then advertised his growing political weakness by failing to sack her, emboldening parliamentary defiance and triggering the first calls by Labour MPs for his replacement. The following day, as Blair was slow handclapped by a television audience, the French president, Jacques Chirac, appeared to close off Blair's last hope of any new UN security council resolution that could be presented as authorising war by declaring: "Whatever the circumstances, France will vote no."Now, most gallingly of all, the prime minister has been stabbed in the back by the very US administration for whom he has put his own leadership on the line. By publicly calling into question Blair's ability to join a US attack on Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was clearly signalling the Pentagon's impatience with the chaotic diplomatic quadrille in New York and letting it be known that Blair's usefulness to his US patrons may be close to being exhausted. Some have suggested the US defence secretary was merely trying to be helpful, but given Downing Street's frenzied reaction and Rumsfeld's unilateralist convictions, that seems deeply implausible.
The two sides were busy talking down the transatlantic rift yesterday, but the worst of the week may not yet be behind Blair. President Bush has insisted there will be a vote on a new security council resolution by the weekend. The terms of the ultimatums being cooked up for it - including a requirement that Saddam Hussein gives a televised confession of his mendacity - make clear it is designed to be rejected by the Iraqi regime and pave the way for an immediate US invasion. And unless Chirac decides to perform a self-defeating volte-face, the expectation must be that the resolution - now mainly being fought for to save Tony Blair's political skin - will be vetoed.
If he sticks with the US none the less, Blair will then find himself at the heart of the political nightmare he has so long hoped to avoid: facing a likely wave of resignations from government, a parliamentary rebellion that might leave him dependent on Tory support, an explosion of mass opposition in the country and the likelihood of a challenge to his position as prime minister. He would also be party to an act of aggression that the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, warned on Monday would be a violation of the UN charter and therefore illegal.Without an explicit UN resolution backing war, Blair will face a choice. He could try to ride out the tide of opposition in the hope that the war would be short, the known casualties relatively few and the military occupation at least initially welcomed on the streets of Iraqi cities. Alternatively, but improbably, he could perform a historic u-turn and refuse to take part in an unlawful at tack opposed by a clear majority of the British people. A third option would be to go for a low profile backup role in a US invasion of the kind floated by Rumsfeld and certainly discussed in Downing Street as a possible fallback position over the past few weeks - though that might seem the worst of both worlds, neither pacifying opponents nor offering full entitlement to the political and commercial spoils.
As the deadline for war inexorably approaches and the national economy hovers on the brink of collapse, we turn -- like so many generations before us -- to sport for escape.We turn to the uplifting, heartwarming story of Harvey the Hound.
Unlike the contrived tension of "reality television," this is a fascinating parable of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong -- a tongue-twister, if you will. It is the tale of man's best friend triumphing over man himself.
Back on Jan. 20, when the world was a more innocent place, the Edmonton Oilers visited the Calgary Flames in a hockey contest that has come to be known as the "Battle of Alberta." Who could have imagined that the greatest mayhem would be waged not on the ice, but behind the Edmonton bench?
It was late in the third period, with the Flames leading 4-0, and Harvey the Hound, Calgary's colorful mascot, was dancing, giddy in the anticipation of victory.
"He comes to the rink, and he cheers our team on," explained Flames' right wing Jarome Iginla. "He does everything by the book. He doesn't try to get on anybody's nerves. He's just out there enjoying himself.
"He was leaning over the glass, trying to see what was going on with the Oilers' bench. And then ..."
"...all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a quick hand grabbed his tongue and just ripped it out," remembered Calgary center Craig Conroy. "It was almost ... it was unspeakable."
Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish, already seething over the Oilers' inept performance, reached up and yanked the tongue right out of Harvey's mouth. After holding it briefly aloft, MacTavish -- wearing a grin that seemed to blur somewhere between triumph and embarrassment -- tossed the tongue into the crowd behind him.
"Certainly, it shocked everyone," said Flames goalie Jamie McLennan. "It was very emotional for everyone. The image was played over and over again. I'm sure it was burned into people's minds. I think it's the responsibility of parents to sit their children down and tell them how these things happen and how they unfold." [...]
Predictably, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were outraged.
"There is never any excuse for cruelty to animals," said Dan Shannon of PETA. "Harvey the Hound was just acting on his instincts as a dog."
Former president Bill Clinton, who has generally supported the Bush administration's Iraq policy in recent remarks, called on his successor yesterday to accept a more relaxed timeline in exchange for support from a majority of U.N. Security Council members. . . .[Emphasis added]Clinton warmly praised British Prime Minister Tony Blair and endorsed his proposal to set five specific benchmarks that Hussein must meet to prove that he is disarming. The former president also said chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix should set the timetable for compliance. "Then I would hope the United States would agree to that amount of time, whatever it is," he said.
They are known as the swinging six and it has nothing to do with wife-swapping. These are the member states holding America to ransom over war on Iraq. You can spot a swinger by the swagger in his gait and the crowd of hysterical journalists surrounding him. The Pakistanis, Chileans, Mexicans, Cameroonians, Angolans and Guineans are visibly basking in the attention, and the gossip is intense. "Am I enjoying being at the UN at this time? Of course. It's fantastic," the Pakistani ambassador, Munir Akram grins.
[S]omeone "upstairs" called them "the bidders" - some cynics think they are out for as much money as they can get in return for support.
[T]he German ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, (strongly anti-war) is smilingly convinced that America will never get the nine votes it needs to make any military action it takes look so much as mildly justified. "I don't see the six as swingers," he smirks. "They are all anti."As he moves across to the enormous bank of television cameras, he stops for a brief chat with a journalist who suggests that their opposition might leave Germany and France isolated in Europe. The notoriously placid Pleuger explodes. "Isolated! Isolated! Who can try and isolate France and Germany in Europe! We'll show them who's isolated!"
Charm, it is widely agreed, is not Washington's forte. The Pakistani ambassador smiles. "Do they actually threaten us? They don't have to. Pressure? We get a lot of, shall we say, delicate phone calls."
There are, apparently, "wimpy fear-ridden intellectuals" who believe Mexico should just get in line behind Big Brother, but the government refuses to play its cards too early. They don't want to "pay the cost of any decision in advance"...
Word at the UN is that Musharaf's position is near-impossible. He faces total opposition to war against another Islamic country at home, but he relies for his own personal and political survival on American support. "America is very helpful to Pakistan," says Ambassador Akram. "It could also be very unhelpful."..."We know exactly what we're doing," [Guinean ambassador Mamady Traore] grins.
"They have no idea what they're doing," says a senior UN official....
"We are not undecided," says Traore, looking undecided. "As president of the Security Council we should not choose any camp. We are trying to create consensus."
Anyone who still believes the U.S. and its allies are "rushing to war" in Iraq should spend a few days here watching the fabled "international community" at work.The word "rush" simply doesn't exist here, in any of the UN's six official languages.
Indeed, apart from the convoy of television news trucks outside this dazzling, Le Corbusier-designed world headquarters on the Hudson, there are few signs this is an institution on the brink of crisis and collapse.
Signs that it's an institution on the brink of irrelevance, however, are everywhere.
But then, the UN has always been other-worldly by design.
Established as an 18-acre chunk of "international territory" smack in the middle of the greatest city in the world, it prides itself on its detachment from the very country and city that allow it to flourish.
I first noticed this on my visit last Sept. 12, when U.S. President George Bush made his landmark speech calling for UN action on Iraq.
When I inquired when and where the president was speaking, UN staff repeatedly gave me blank looks - What president? Of what country? - despite the crush of world media and the fact NYPD and Secret Service types had the place surrounded for a five-block radius.
That same near-perverse detachment is very much in evidence this week, despite the high-tension, last-ditch, world-peace-at-stake issues before the the Security Council. [...]
As the world lurches toward war, the UN has set up a new "peace" display alongside its main-floor exhibitions celebrating its fights against illiteracy, land mines and polio. It is festooned with slogans from schoolkids, ranging from "Dump Bush, not bombs" to "Give peace a chance" to "Someone please kill Saddam Hussein!"
In an institution that too often celebrates moral equivalency, they're fitting - and about as significant as the rantings of many of the diplomats.
Dinesh D'Souza recently wrote an amusing but not terribly helpful book of Letters to a Young Conservative, part of the Basic Books mentoring series. I've mentored more than a few folks over the years as they faced their forbidden conservative urges and eventually came out of the closet to join the VRWC. One of the hardest parts of acknowledging that they feel the tug of the love that dare not speak its name (love of our ancestors and the wisdom and traditions they bequeathed us) seems to be the degree of deviance it requires from social norms. So, in the 60s, if you wanted the US out of the UN and Earl Warren impeached, you were considered wackier than a Hare Krishna. But here's the thing about conservatism, if you just stubbornly cling to the ancient teachings--like no entangling alliances or that the judiciary is the most dangerous branch of government if not restrained--sooner or later other people realize these things to be true.
Now, they'll never acknowledge that conservatives were right all along and that, if only they'd been listened to, much needless damage might have been avoided. However, it does save you from the dizziness that others experience as they follow every trend and fad that comes down the pike, usually driven by some hare-brained pack of intellectuals. And while the pain of watching the society you love perform lethal experiments on itself is sometimes hard to bear, the rewards of knowing you manned one of the few redoubts of resistance compensates in some tiny way. Plus, the spectacle that the experimenters make of themselves confirms you're justifiably low opinion of mankind and, once you accept the inevitability of their having their way, provides endless hours of amusement. This in fact is why comedy is so overwhelmingly (we'd argue exclusively) conservative--for it is conservatives who look at life as a comedy and it is precisely because so many of life's disasters are avoidable that they are so funny.
So, if you're a youngster and you're confused because you've begun to notice: that older people are smarter than you and your peers; that dead white European men seem to understand the world better than your teachers; that Margaret Thatcher has it goin' on; that no matter what they're talking about, Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy make you laugh; that you have this haunting suspicion that whatever it's doing, America is at least trying to do the right thing; that you have the opposite reaction of Gomez Adams when you hear French; that many of the same people who are apoplectic over gay priests think there should be gay Boy Scout leaders; that the only televised news you can tolerate is Fox News; that you're embarrassed that Bill Clinton was ever president of the United States; that you'd rather wake up next to Donna Reed than J-Lo; that it bothers you that nothing has "evolved" in recorded history; that Bob Hope is funnier than Tom Green; that it seems like guys who hunt and fish like Nature better than people who hate SUVs; that it made sense when Peter Parker gave up MJ at the end of Spider-Man; that you wouldn't actually trust anyone who wouldn't say the Pledge of Allegiance; that George W. Bush seems smart enough to be President; that rather than being embarrassed by younger players, Michael Jordan is embarrassing them because he works harder and cares more; that baseball on the radio is better than football on a giant-screen TV; that, whatever PETA says, meat tastes good and that appears to be why God gave us cows, pigs & fowl; that you hear some kid listening to rap and think he's too young for it; that you think young girls ought to cover their navels; etc.; etc.; etc.. Have no fear. Oranges are not the only fruit. Your friends and family may not understand you at first, but God loves you and we do too. You're not mentally ill, you're just a conservative. And the US should get out of the UN, like we've been saying for four decades...
The British government declared open season on France yesterday in retaliation for its threat to veto the proposed UN resolution on Iraq.Tony Blair, after weeks of restraint, openly criticised France in the Commons, as did other ministers. Officials have been told they have been freed by "the highest authority" to lay into the French.
Relations have not been so bad since De Gaulle vetoed Britain's entry to the common market in 1963.
A French foreign ministry spokesman said its position was "perfectly clear and consistent, and has been since the very start of all this.
As for the instant question of Iraq, what would be so wrong if, instead of the all-out smash-and-destroy war the president and his people have planned, the U.S. and Britain simply began to ratchet up the small, quiet war that has been going on for quite a while. The air patrols in the northern and southern no-fly zones could be gradually enlarged until all of Iraq was blanketed with overhead surveillance that could spot and, when necessary, knock out clearly identified weapons installations. Economic sanctions could be tightened as well, with stiffer penalties against those selling contraband to Saddam Hussein.True, this would not bring about a change of regime as swiftly as a blitzkrieg, but over time it would loosen Hussein's grip on power and make change possible.
Several factors recommend this path. For one, some if not most of the nations opposed to the present Bush war plan would have a difficult time rejecting a more modulated, commonsense approach, using techniques already in place. And the damage to Washington's relationship with old allies would be softened.
There would also be significantly less destruction of Iraq's extensive road system, bridges, and other infrastructure, making much easier any nation-building effort to follow.
Finally—and not least—a lot fewer human beings would be killed, including Americans.
Something to think about.
Meanwhile, the plan Mr. Schanberg proposes, while it may involve less actual killing of Iraqis by Americans (though that's not clear, given his willingness to bomb "weapons installations), would surely result in tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of deaths as we essentially tried starving Saddam out of power. What kind of moral derangement is it that leads the Left to countenance millions of deaths so long as they can claim not to have been the killers themselves, rather than accept the responsibility for the few thousand killings that would free a nation and allow us to save hundreds of thousands? How can someone be so shallowly selfish that they'd trade the deaths of others for a "clean conscience" for themself?