Why Gulf War II Disgusts Me. (03/19/03).

This war disgusts me and the real shooting hasn't even begun yet. Yes, I know this essay makes me sound like a raving wacko. Or maybe I am merely stating the already well-known. But I gotta let it all out nonetheless...

I have never doubted the vileness of Saddam Hussein, but in the eyes of most of the planet America has zero moral authority in speeding into this mad dash to violence. Zero.

For more than a year, our government has been hell-bent on invasion. No matter what.

Oh, Saddam will certainly be annihilated- but our national credibility will be wrecked for a decade.

This war violates international law. Even with an elaborate mix of threats and bribes, the Americans have not been able to persuade the UN Security Council to vote in its favor. Not surprising, seeing as how we all have been witnessing what has to be the most oafish, ham-fisted diplomatic campaign in our national history. All the incompetent arrogance and insults and bullying has turned once-friendly states against us and delivered new recruits to our enemies. (Japan's Koizumi, unfortunately, has chosen to support the Bush position because he is nervous about the threat of North Korea. This is in spite of the fact that about 80% of the Japanese public is against war with Iraq according to most polls. He has acted contrary to the wishes of his voters.)

Under the UN Charter, it is a crime for any member state to create war, except in self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council. Yes, Gulf War II flagrantly violates the UN Charter. The very same UN Charter that the United States helped to write. But I'll put that fact aside because Americans clearly don't care about the UN any more. Regardless of how nonsensical and blatantly hypocritical the national policies are.

Sod the UN, they're a debate club who only exist to prevent the US of A from doing God's good work.

Yes, Bush and his advisors might very well be indicted in the Hague for war crimes. But they will be damn difficult to arrest.

UN aside, I wish to point-out one oft-overlooked bit of context on Gulf War II. That would be Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. You know, that long-forgotten bit where it says that only Congress can declare war. This has been forgotten since the Korean War in 1950.

Congress never bothered to declare war on Iraq. Oh sure, they voted to give the president the authority to use military force against Iraq, but it's not the same thing as a declaration of war. (By the way- to all you meatheads in Congress who approved this war-making authority: nice fucking job! You are a pack of failures! Incompetents! Appeasers! Cowards! Worms!)

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act. This was designed to reign-in the war-making powers of the Executive branch in the midst of the Vietnam War. It states that the Executive branch must "consult" Congress before making a deployment of troops for a limited amount of time. But...

Since the Congress is prohibited from doing anything which is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, Congress can not delegate the power to initiate war to the President. Doing so would require a constitutional amendment. The 1973 War Powers Act was not an amendment. But that didn't matter... it was never really enforced.

Soon after the War Powers Act was passed, Gerald Ford violated it in May of 1975 when, without "consulting" Congress, he ordered a military assault on Cambodia in retaliation for the detention of American merchant seamen on the ship Mayaguez. He had several aides make phone calls to eighteen Congressmen to inform them the assault was already under way. (Aside note: the assault was bungled. 41 American marines were killed, 23 of whom died in a helicopter accident while en route to the battle zone. One-third of the military force ended-up dead or wounded during the Mayaguez affair; a higher casualty rate than the World War II battle for Iwo Jima. There were 39 seamen aboard the Mayaguez, they were unharmed by the Cambodians and were already on the way home when the assault force hit the beach. The boat on which the sailors were traveling was strafed by an American warplane-- a "necessary risk", commented Henry Kissinger in an interview shortly afterwards. Plus, the US State Department had received news fourteen hours before the assault that the sailors were safe and were going to be released soon. Oops!)

Congress did not challenge this action because after the fresh embarrassment of Vietnam, they were anxious to make a unified show of strength to the world. Their behavior followed previous patterns: once the bombs are dropped, Congress closes-ranks around the President like a flock of sheep.

This is entirely contrary to the wishes of the Founding Fathers: they did not want to give the president a blank check to declare war. They were very unambiguous about it. No foreign 'entanglements' and all that. They didn't want another King George.

In the past, antiwar legal activists have challenged the constitutionality of undeclared wars in federal circuit courts... the higher-level courts refused to hear their cases. Even justices who pride themselves on being constitutional 'constructionists' defer to the President on matters of foreign policy.

Here is a sick Catch-22: some would argue that bits of the Constitution actually don't apply during a time of war like this. But how can we be in a time of 'war' when war has never been declared?

And there is the argument that the President doesn't have time to get a declaration of war in an age where ICBMs can reach the US in minutes... but Iraq does not possess such ICBMs. I don't see how that argument is applicable in this case. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is inapplicable in this case.

But of course, this new war is all part of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. Ooh, a new doctrine! That justifies everything! Anything which can be justified is right! We shouldn't have to absorb an attack if we can see it coming. Yeah, that sounds like a persuasive argument for giving the White House plenty of leeway to bomb whomever they please, but it is a recipe for unprovoked aggression.

Call me cynical, but occasionally governments- even our own- abuse the leeway they are given. If you aren't suspicious of our Executive branch by now, think of it this way: this administration is the one which conducts secret detentions and scrutinizes Muslim charities with a magnifying glass-- while it simultaneously shrugged-off a corporate crime-wave(!)

Face it- Large Swaths of the Constitution Are Dead

Back in October of 2002 I thought that military action against the Taliban should've been formally-declared, too.

Wow, quite the stickler for the rule of law, aren't I?

You bet your ass I am!

Government belongs on the end of a short, tight constitutional leash. The Executive branch is presently unchecked and drunk with power. Contrary to what the more patriotic types believe, this is actually not a good thing!

But since 9/11, Americans have been subjected to what has to be the most intense propaganda campaign from their government since World War I. It is some of the worst yellow, jingoist stuff in the history of American journalism.

And the vision of remaking Iraq in our image? All the cant about democracy, human rights and regional stability is the same brand of hustle used by the 19th century imperialists who claimed they were carving-up the world to bring the benefits of Christianity and commerce to savages. They called it the White Man's Burden, Rayonnement de France, Manifest Destiny. If you paint a happy-face on a crap-pile, it's still a crap-pile. Crap-piles aside, this war is about restructuring the Near East in a way that suits America. This is about maneuvering nations and ethnic groups like pieces on a goddamn chessboard. This is about showing-off a shiny new generation of advanced weaponry and demonstrating to the planet who's boss.

This is about getting a hammerlock on Iraq's the planet's energy supply.

And who gives a damn about how many generations of Iraqis will have to suffer? They don't speak English, so who really cares?

Who really gives a damn about the UN Charter? Who gives a damn about the Constitution? Who gives a damn about the US taxpayers who will have to foot the bill for the occupation? Already, the costs of this war and its aftermath effects are being calculated in the trillions of dollars. That's trillion with a 'T'. Furthermore, the next Pentagon budget for 2004 promises to crowd-out funding for the most fundamental needs of medical care, housing, infrastructure, public safety, environmental protection and education. In the 2004 budget, the $379 billion military cost exceeds the sum of all other non-mandatory items in the federal budget. Half the discretionary budget is being lavished on weapons, soldiers and maintaining a military presence in over a hundred countries.

But a handful of large contractors sure profit handsomely from this largess... So let's go blow a couple o' huge craters in the world!

Very soon, perhaps within 72 or even 24 hours of me posting this, the ballyhooed "Shock and Awe" plan will go into effect. Something like 700 cruise missiles and maybe 3,000 other pieces of exploding ordinance will rain-down on Baghdad and its environs. And there will possibly be some kind of super-gee-whiz microwave gizmo that will shut down the power and communications grids. There are 5 million people currently living the area around Baghdad. Civilian casualties are guaranteed.

The planners of this war know it. That would make them accessories to murder.

Reporters from Al-Jazeera and other news services will start to broadcast images of hundreds of broken, bleeding, decapitated, dismembered Iraqi people. Lying sprawled in the streets, wailing in bloodcurdling screams of pain. There might even be attempts by our side to jam or stop these broadcasts, but some images will nonetheless leak-out. The Muslim world will be further enraged.

Oilfields will be set ablaze. Ecological disaster will ensue. Terrorist reprisals are guaranteed. A few moderate Arab regimes might even get overthrown. There will be more expanded police powers at home, more fear.

We could very well be plunging into an open-ended period of perpetual war and paranoia. Buckle your seatbelts.

Oh yes, and ethnic strife in Iraq will explode after Saddam is out of the way- people have been saying that for years. I have a feeling that a year from now, there will be headlines on the cover of Newsweek: "Gulf War II: What Went Wrong?"

As if those problems had never been foreseen in the first place!

God, this'll be splendid...

Watch-out for Consent-Manufacturing Garbage

The first casualty of war is the Truth. Keep an eye-out for slick news coverage: the presentation studio in the military's spanking-new media center in Qatar has been, in part, designed by a Hollywood art director. That is a completely creepy synergy right there. And the reporters working there will be getting a free buffet before every press briefing. Nothing like a belly full of shrimp cocktail and Yorkshire pudding to make you feel all content and lazy and warm to your hosts.

Internal CNN documents have reminded and re-reminded its reporters that all scripts must be submitted to Atlanta for approval. That is to say, someone sitting at a desk in Atlanta will decide the spin of a story being sent from Kuwait. Anything which portrays the US military action in a negative light will get squashed. The official word will be the final word. All civilian casualties caused by American forces will be qualified with 'alleged'. The carnage will be sanitized from the imagery.

A Gulf War vet once showed me a photo he took back in 1991. It depicted a trio of Iraqi soldiers who had been hit by some kind of horrible weapon, I don't know what weapon exactly. The photo showed what looked like three pieces of human-shaped charcoal lying all supine- but the heads were intact. Their eyes were closed like they were asleep. But every inch of their bodies looked like something you'd find in the bottom of a barbecue pit. It was gross. It made me want to vomit. He described the insects which swarmed over the scene- all fat and bloated. They'd been feasting on human blood for days.

You'd never be shown someone's shredded head on the evening news. They'd never show you a video of people getting chopped in half with machine-gun fire. They'd never show you a cadaver-shaped hunk of crispy, blackened, burnt flesh that once walked and breathed just like you. No, you will instead see grainy black and white footage of smart bombs flying through windows. You won't see someone's head getting ripped-off by the same bomb.

No, here is what they will definitely show you: post-invasion footage of Saddam's torture rooms. Rape chambers. Electrical thingies that clip-on to the testicles. Proof of Saddam's brutality. And we will find hidden weapons of mass destruction. Or we will at least find their secret storage areas, and the media will be barred from entering. For safety's sake, naturally. These are all easy predictions.

You want to know one of the most misleading pieces of media folderol I've ever heard? The phrase "support our troops".

Do you support our troops? Well, of course you do. You certainly don't not support them.

It's a non-question! It's like asking "do you support people in Vermont?" "Do you support subway drivers?" It is a dishonest, misleading rhetorical ploy. A load of folderol.

And the people in the media know it's a load of folderol, yet they continue to circulate it!

Do I support our troops? That is not the right question to ask!

Yes I do support our troops, but I do not support their commander-in-chief! I do support the troops, but I do not support the unconstitutional military act that they have been ordered to participate in!

I support the troops. That is why I want them out of the line of fire. That is why I question the motives behind their commanders. If you truly support the troops, you'd want them to come home.

Hell, I support the troops more than the President does!

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"Of course the people don't want war... But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering. Nuremberg trials. April 18, 1946.

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