Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A graduate of the US Military Academy, he received his PhD in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. He has taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University. His latest book is
Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. At Moyers & Company, he writes
Obama’s ISIL War Request Is an “Extraordinary Opportunity” for Congress:
Try this thought experiment. Pretend that it’s the spring of 1970. President Richard Nixon has just sent US troops into Cambodia. He thereby expands the Vietnam War, a costly undertaking already ongoing for years with no sign of victory in sight.
Now imagine further that Nixon sends a message to Congress asking that it authorize him to do what he has already done (while simultaneously insisting that even without legislative approval he already has the necessary authority).
This essentially describes the present-day position of the Obama administration, requesting ex post facto congressional approval of the military campaign against the Islamic State that it launched several months ago.
The president emphasizes that the Cambodian operation is not really a big deal. He has no intention of US troops maintaining an “enduring” presence there. Even so, he’d like Congress to approve a three-year grant of authority, not only to attack North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, but also “associated persons or forces” aiding the North Vietnamese or “any closely-related successor entity” posing a threat to the United States.
This essentially describes the present-day position of the Obama administration, requesting ex post facto congressional approval of the military campaign against the Islamic State that it launched several months ago.
Now, let’s take the thought experiment one step further. Imagine that Congress takes up Nixon’s request and debates whether or not to give its consent to what he has already done. What would be the tenor of that debate? Would members of Congress confine their inquiry to the specific question Nixon had posed: Whether or not to okay the Cambodian invasion? Or would the Cambodian issue open the door to a more searching examination of the premises and conduct of the Vietnam War and indeed of the Cold War itself?
We can’t know, of course, but it seems likely that members of Congress would have seized the opportunity to look beyond the matter immediately at hand. In all likelihood, a debate over whether or not to give Nixon the go-ahead in Cambodia would have become a debate about the several decades of policy decisions that had culminated in the Cambodian invasion.
How did we arrive at this predicament? Where exactly are we headed? What is the overall aim? How will we know when we have succeeded? What further costs will the perpetuation of the enterprise entail?
Back in 1970, when the predicament was the Vietnam War, those questions demanded urgent attention. Today, the enterprise once known as the Global War on Terrorism, now informally referred to as the Long War or the Forever War or (my personal preference) America’s War for the Greater Middle East, defines our predicament. But the questions remain the same as they were when Cambodia rather than the Islamic State represented the issue of the moment.
So President Obama’s requested Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) could not have come at a more propitious moment. The proposed AUMF presents the Congress with an extraordinary opportunity — not to rubber stamp actions already taken, but to take stock of an undertaking that already exceeds the Vietnam War in length while showing not the slightest sign of ending in success.
The US military effort to stabilize or pacify or dominate or democratize the Greater Middle East has failed irrevocably. Trying harder, whether with air strikes or special operations raids or even “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” will not yield a different result.
The people await the appearance of political leaders who can summon up the courage to acknowledge that failure and to initiate the long overdue discussion of how to chart a different course.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—Cheney drank before shooting his pal:
E&P:
In an exclusive interview with Fox News' Brit Hume this afternoon, Vice President Dick Cheney took full responsibility for shooting his hunting companion, who has until now been pictured as the guilty party. The interview will not aired in full until 6 p.m. but according to Hume, in summarizing the contents, the vice president remained "totally unapologetic" about the long lag in reporting the shooting to the public—and also said that he had consumed one beer at lunch that day. |
Cheney must consume a virtual cocktail of drugs every day because of his heart condition. I wonder what kind of reaction throwing alcohol into the mix might have.
Any doctors in the house?
Update: Here's of Hume talking about his interview with Cheney. You see, according to Cheney, they drank beer but no one drank beer:
HUME: He said he had a beer at lunch and that had been many hours earlier. And it was dusk, around 5:00 p.m., when this incident happened. And he said that, you know, they had lunch out in the field, a barbecue, and he had a beer. But you said you don’t hunt with people who have been drinking. He said no one was drinking. He said they went back to the ranch afterwards, took a break after that, and went out about 3:00 and so you’re four or five hours distanced from the last alcohol that he consumed. And he said no one was drinking, not he nor anyone else.
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today's Kagro in the Morning show:
Greg Dworkin rounds up news on the "constitutional carry" campaign in TX, early state polling updates, the Bush-Schiavo story catching fire, KS going to hell but cutting its handbasket budget, What ISIS Really Wants, the weekend in measles, vax & science denialism. Herd immunity & labor unions. 10th child under 15 accidentally shot & killed this year. How did the legal system handle last year's 10th child? The year's 1st gun show accident.
Armando discusses some Rick Perry derp, terrible vaccine reporting, MoDo FAIL, and the reexamining of the Libya aftermath. No one could have predicted: gun fired in a fraternity fight at the U. of GA.
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