Press Isn't Asking Right Questions About Iraq
Tom Wicker on the Power to Wage War
By Tom Wicker
Guest Opinion in E&P
Bush administration spokesmen have made several cases for waging war
against Iraq, and the U.S. press has tended to present all those cases to
the public as if they were gospel. Does this mean that administration
arguments are indisputable? Or does it mean that the right questions have
not been asked often or loudly enough?
One such question: Will al-Qaida be damaged by an American attack on an
Islamic nation? If not, how does a war on Iraq help the so-called war on
terror, against al-Qaida? Which is of the greater concern to Americans?
The administration insists that Iraq and al-Qaida are, in fact, linked
and that Washington has the evidence to prove it. But that evidence can't
be revealed, lest it disclose how we know and from whom we know
it.
That may be true, as it often is with secret intelligence information,
but this argument raises at least two questions: What kind of democracy
allows its leaders to take it into war without fully specifying the
reasons? And should a "watchdog" press present the supposed
link between Iraq and al-Qaida as if it had been demonstrated, because
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell say so, or point out
that it hasn't really been proven, even at the United Nations?
The battle in the Turkish parliament over whether the United States might
use bases in Turkey to make war on Iraq was covered intensively in the
American press, but rather like an Olympic event -- Us versus Them. Could
the United States swing the votes to get its way? After the first
setback, could there be a second try, for U.S. goals to be met?
Other pertinent questions could have been raised. Why was the United
States willing to pay such enormous sums to Turkey to win permission to
use military bases? Wasn't the Turkish government, in effect,
blackmailing Uncle Sam? If so, who's more to be condemned -- the seller
or the buyer? Besides, if Washington wants democracy in the Middle East,
wasn't that Turkish parliament vote a good example?
As for stationing U.S. bombers where they can "take out" that
troublesome North Korean nuclear reactor -- it shows administration
concern about a problem that appears, on its face, as threatening as, and
more immediate than, Iraq's quest for nuclear weapons. But if the United
States tries a "pinpoint" air attack, might not the North
Korean army swarm down on South Korea, probably setting off a bigger war
than now contemplated in Iraq?
Perhaps the least-informed public assumption, encouraged by a lack of
press probing, is that President Bush has the right to decide whether or
not to wage war on Iraq. And perhaps the most important unasked question
is whether he really does have that power, despite Senate approval and
some backing in the U.N. Security Council.
Abraham Lincoln, a great war president and one of our keenest
constitutional analysts, thought not. More than 150 years ago, Lincoln
responded sharply to a letter from William H. Herndon, his former law
partner. Herndon had asserted -- as Lincoln rephrased the proposition --
"that if it shall become necessary, to repel invasion, the President
may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line, and invade
the territory of another country; and that whether such necessity exists
in any given case, the President is to be the sole judge."
It would be difficult to improve on Lincoln's prescience in refuting
Herndon's thesis -- the core of which is Bush's basic rationale for the
proposed war on Iraq. Lincoln replied: "Allow the President to
invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel
an invasion [or, in this case, theoretical use of weapons of mass
destruction], and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he
deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at
pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this
respect. ... If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to
invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you
stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British
invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent, I see it, if you
don't.'"
Whether or not the United States wages war on Iraq, this may be the most
important question, not just for now but in the future: Does a U.S.
president really have the power "to make war at
pleasure"?
That question is seldom being asked by an American press that seems
sometimes to be playing on the administration team rather than pursuing
the necessary search for truth, wherever it may lead.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1834529
