Democracy itself is in grave danger, Part 2,

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/24/gore_speech/index1.html

 

 

 

" Democracy itself is in grave danger " | Part 2,

 

 

 

In more recent decades, the emergence of new weapons that virtually eliminate

the period of time between the decision to go to war and the waging of war have

naturally led to a reconsideration of the exact nature of the executive's

war-making power. But the practicalities of modern warfare which necessarily

increase the war powers of the president at the expense of Congress do not

render moot the concerns our founders had so long ago that the making of war by

the president -- when added to his other powers -- carries with it the potential

for unbalancing the careful design of our Constitution, and in the process,

threatening our liberty.

 

 

They were greatly influenced -- far more than we can imagine -- by a careful

reading of the history and human dramas surrounding the democracies of ancient

Greece and the Roman republic. They knew, for example, that democracy

disappeared in Rome when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of the Senate's

long prohibition against a returning general entering the city while still in

command of military forces. Though the Senate lingered in form and was humored

for decades, when Caesar impoliticly combined his military commander role with

his chief executive role, the Senate -- and with it the Republic -- withered

away. And then for all intents and purposes, the great dream of democracy

disappeared from the face of the Earth for 17 centuries, until its rebirth in

our land.

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Symbolically, President Bush has been attempting to conflate his commander in

chief role and his head of government role to maximize the power people are

eager to give those who promise to defend them against active threats. But as he

does so, we are witnessing some serious erosion of the checks and balances that

have always maintained a healthy democracy in America.

 

 

In Justice Jackson's famous concurring opinion in the Youngstown Steel case in

the 1950s, the single most important Supreme Court case on the subject of what

powers are inherent to the commander in chief in a time of war, he wrote, " The

example of such unlimited executive power that must have most impressed the

forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of

its evils in the declaration of independence leads me to doubt that they created

their new Executive in their image ... and if we seek instruction from our own

times, we can match it only from the Executive governments we disparagingly

describe as totalitarian. "

 

I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest

challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism,

and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our

freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in

grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to

rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the

judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has

come back into " the city " and declared that our nation is now in a permanent

state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution

in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts,

and every individual citizen.

 

We must surrender some of our traditional American freedoms, he tells us, so

that he may have sufficient power to protect us against those who would do us

harm. Public fear remains at an unusually high level almost three years after we

were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. In response to those devastating attacks, the

president properly assumed his role as commander in chief and directed a

military invasion of the land in which our attackers built their training camps,

were harbored and planned their assault. But just as the tide of battle was

shifting decisively in our favor, the commander in chief made a controversial

decision to divert a major portion of our army to invade another country that,

according to the best evidence compiled in a new, exhaustive, bipartisan study,

posed no imminent threat to us and had nothing to do with the attack against us.

 

As the main body of our troops were redeployed for the new invasion, those who

organized the attacks against us escaped and many of them are still at large.

Indeed, their overall numbers seem to have grown considerably because our

invasion of the country that did not pose any imminent threat to us was

perceived in their part of the world as a gross injustice, and the way in which

we have conducted that war further fueled a sense of rage against the United

States in those lands and, according to several studies, has stimulated a wave

of new recruits for the terrorist group that attacked us and still wishes us

harm.

 

A little over a year ago, when we launched the war against this second country,

Iraq, President Bush repeatedly gave our people the clear impression that Iraq

was an ally and partner to the terrorist group that attacked us, al-Qaida, and

not only provided a geographic base for them but was also close to providing

them weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. But now the extensive

independent investigation by the bipartisan commission formed to study the 9/11

attacks has just reported that there was no meaningful relationship between Iraq

and al-Qaida of any kind. And, of course, over the course of this past year we

had previously found out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So now, the president and the vice president are arguing with this commission,

and they are insisting that the commission is wrong and they are right, and that

there actually was a working cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida.

 

The problem for the president is that he doesn't have any credible evidence to

support his claim, and yet, in spite of that, he persists in making that claim

vigorously. So I would like to pause for a moment to address the curious

question of why President Bush continues to make this claim that most people

know is wrong. And I think it's particularly important because it is closely

connected to the questions of constitutional power with which I began this

speech, and will profoundly affect how that power is distributed among our three

branches of government.

 

To begin with, our founders wouldn't be the least bit surprised at what the

modern public opinion polls all tell us about why it's so important particularly

for President Bush to keep the American people from discovering that what he

told them about the linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida isn't true. Among these

Americans who still believe there is a linkage, there remains very strong

support for the president's decision to invade Iraq. But among those who accept

the commission's detailed finding that there is no connection, support for the

war in Iraq dries up pretty quickly.

 

And that's understandable, because if Iraq had nothing to do with the attack or

the organization that attacked us, then that means the president took us to war

when he didn't have to. Almost 900 of our soldiers have been killed, and almost

5,000 have been wounded.

 

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