HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------If I Were President
August 15, 2002
by Joe Sobran
If, my fellow Americans, you should see fit to elect
me your president in 2004, I will take office with one
thought uppermost: No man on earth should have this much
power. No man should be able to determine the fate of
millions. In particular, no man should have the life-and-
death power to plunge the United States into war.
President Bush has proved this. Not because he is an
evil man, but because, like all other men, he has his
oddities. His judgment is highly questionable. He knows
little of history, geography, or foreign cultures. Worse
yet, he seems not to realize his shortcomings. Let me
recall an old saying: "He who is unaware of his ignorance
will be only misled by his knowledge." Why should the
lives of thousands, or even millions, be at the mercy of
one man's idiosyncrasies?
In other words, if I had his power, I wouldn't use
it. I would remind Congress that the authority to declare
war belongs to it, not to the president. And I'd make it
clear that I think going to war is generally a terrible
course to take; in the case of Iraq, surely imprudent and
very likely disastrous -- as well as criminal.
I would refuse to prosecute such a war, even if
Congress declared it. If I were impeached for this, so be
it. Declaring war should not mean making an arbitrary
decision to attack a foreign country, but recognizing
that a state of war already exists, requiring, in the
plain English of the Constitution, "the common defense of
the United States."
The whole principle of American government is, or
used to be, quite simple: DIVIDE POWER. The founders of
this republic often said that the very definition of
tyranny was "the concentration of all power into a few,
or the same hands." Bush seems to think that's the
definition of democracy.
There is nothing defensive about Bush's proposed war
on Iraq. Iraq poses no threat to us. Even its neighbors,
who ought to feel threatened by Saddam Hussein if anyone
does, are begging Bush not to attack Iraq! Iraq's chief
regional enemy is Israel, which is always quick to
respond to a perceived (or even suspected) threat; yet
the Israelis aren't preparing to attack Iraq. The
governments of Europe are virtually unanimous, and
passionate, in their opposition to Bush's war. And they
are much closer to the Middle East than we are.
Because it's so obvious that Iraq has no intention
of attacking us, Bush has cobbled the excuse that if not
stopped now, it may attack us in the remote future, when
it has acquired "weapons of mass destruction." He also
charges, without credible evidence, that Iraq was somehow
complicit with the terrorists who attacked this country
last year. For good measure, he calls Saddam Hussein a
mass murderer of his own people, as if this fact somehow
fortifies his other reasons for war. It doesn't. And
besides, one good reason would be enough. Three feeble
excuses don't add up to a single good reason for this
oddball war.
So Bush insists that the war is defensive in the
sense that it is "pre-emptive." That is nothing more than
a very strained euphemism for "aggressive." It could be
used to justify attacking almost any foreign country.
In fact, by Bush's logic, the Japanese were
justified in launching a "pre-emptive" strike against
Pearl Harbor in 1941. After all, the United States had
its own designs in the Far East, posed a danger to
Japanese ambitions in the region, and was clearly hostile
to Japan. Better to cripple the U.S. Navy sooner than
allow it to dominate the Far East later.
But Japan's pre-emptive strike not only failed, it
backfired. Not only was the U.S. Navy quickly rebuilt and
immensely increased; the United States also built an air
force that ruthlessly annihilated the civilian
populations of Japan's great cities.
And in the greatest and most instructive irony of
all, from today's perspective, the United States soon
developed "weapons of mass destruction" and used them to
destroy two cities, even after the war was essentially
won. So the seemingly prudent "pre-emptive" strike turned
out not to be such a bright idea.
War is not only evil, it's supremely unpredictable.
A wise critic summed up the great tragic lesson of
Shakespeare's tragedies: "that men may set off a course
of events which they can neither calculate nor control."
This is also the eternal lesson of war.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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http://www.sobran.com/columns/020815.shtml
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