Cross-posted at wisess.org
Back at the beginning of April, I put up a piece which laid out the political/legal basis for why we have witnessed unprecedented arrogance on the part of George W. Bush, and the general feckless response of the then relatively new Democratic majority in Congress.
It argued that the Congress had basically given away its war-powers, and any vestige of leverage over the Bush administration when it voted to authorize the use of force in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 with the 2001 AUMF, and how the AUMF in Oct 2002 (more commonly known as the "Iraq War Vote") was basically political kabuki.
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Yesterday there was a front page piece here on the Daily Kos which picked up on this, and how the White House views the 2001 AUMF as what actually authorized the use of force against Iraq and picks up on the Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo's DoJ paper on this back on September 25, 2001.
This is the metaphorical 800 lbs. gorilla in the living room which slowly more people are beginning to pick up on. However this begs the question of will Congress actually act to address this and reclaim its powers before irreparable damage is done? Of course unprecedented damage has already been done to United States foreign policy and our position in the world, but the damage I am referring to above is the long-term damage being done to our military and our system of checks and balances. This issue goes beyond just liberal/progressive blogs and websites, as it was noted in a front-page article in Monday's Oregonian, with the print edition's headline being another four letter acronym which also starts with an a... AWOL.
While the Oregonian article focuses on the enlisted ranks and combat troops, this is just the surface of the the more systemic and long-term damage being done to the military. Last week I had the privilege to talk at length with someone who until just last year was involved with training Corps level upper-echelon ranks at the DoD, and he was stunned at the level of exodus of the professional Generals over the disaster that is Iraq. This is basically hollowing out our military to a level not seen since just after Vietnam.
And while I am one who thinks that such a degradation of capabilities in our military could have some possible tertiary positive silver-linings, such as it might cause us as a nation to rethink our entire military posture (and realize we have no need for such a vast military expenditure), it bodes ill if we ever truly need our military to be competent and functioning. Not in the more obvious idea that we will no longer invade a country or can no longer engage in set-piece battle scenarios, but rather it might be that under a more progressive administration in 2009 or beyond, the open question will be can we count on being able to deploy our military assets in something legitimate, say stopping genocide in Darfur for example?
These are the more troubling and often overlooked long-term consequences this disaster called Iraq has in store for us, beyond the more obvious and immediate negative consequences in creating more threats than it eliminates, roils the entire region violence, to say nothing of the immediate human costs both Iraqi and American. It also does not touch at all on the more ominous question of how many future Timothy McVeigh's are being bred in the pressure cookers of Baghdad, Fallujah or Kabul and the myriad other locales in Iraq and Afghanistan?