Herbert, excellent writer that he is, provides an answer as he perceives it. He begins with the obvious:
In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the U.S., where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.
He continues with "the so-called war on terror" where we now see Al Qaeda regrouping in the tribal regions of Pakistan from which it may hell have the ability to again launch attacks against us and those supporting us, against things and place that matter to us. He reminds us the 2,711 who died almost 7 years ago represent a larger death toll than on December 7 1941, and yet those responsible for that attack are as yet unconquered, mainly because of our obsession with Iraq, which increasingly seems primarily about oil, with resources like predators diverted from the tribal regions where they would of great value because they are being used in Iraq, which remains unstable and dangerous because of how we have dealt with it.
Herbert attempts to sum up the price we are paying:
Who knows how long it will be before the U.S. disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.
Yet even that summary is insufficient. Yes, it represents the core of an argument that can be used to counter the position of the McCains and Liebermans of why we must remain in Iraq, to "win." But it also represents an incomplete portrayal. Consider the following list of "achievements" of the Bush administration offered by Andrew Bacevich in the Boston Globe:
Defined the contemporary era as an "age of terror" with an open-ended "global war" as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;
Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;
Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;
Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, "defense is not a budget item";
Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;
Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising "global leadership";
Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.
Bacevich is a conservative, A West Point grad and professor of international relations, who turned against this administration even before his son was needlessly killed in Iraq. And that list reminds us of part of the price we have paid. But it too is incomplete.
Jackson and Bacevich fail to remind us that we have surrendered many of the civil liberties that were basic to our way of thinking of ourselves as a democratic republic:
We now have a court precedent in a case involving Brett Bursey, charged for being at a Bush event and holding a sing that said "No war for Oil," that the Secret Service can restrict us to "speech zones" under a provision of USC Title 18 Section 1752(a)(1)(ii), which enables the Secret Service to charge s with a federal misdemeanor for "entering or remaining in an area the Secret Service has restricted for he security of the president of he United States". And in 2005 Arlen Specter made a technical adjustment to the USA Patriot Act which would make being caught in a restricted zone a felony, punishable by a fine and a year in jail, and that such restricted zones will
include National Special Security Events - such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and an one of President Ronald Reagan's many funerals. The zones - themselves designated as protectees - can be shut down for days before and after the president's arrival
The material about Bursey and Specter appear in a book by Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose entitled Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, something that I consider mandatory reading to help us understand how great has been the diminution of our basic rights. I have only read part of the book, and glance ahead a bit, but I know this is a book we all should read.
This administration has time and again fought to avoid being responsive to the other two branches, obeying only those court decisions in its favor, ignoring subpoenas from the Congress, moving prisoners to avoid losing court decisions, and so on. IF Congress has banned Pointdexter's "Total Information Awareness" program, the administration simply breaks it into segments and implements it anyhow perhaps under the leadership of the Secretary of Defense. Ir argues that despite the clear words of the Constitution limiting restriction of habeas corpus that we do not necessarily have a right to habeas.
What we have lost is the ability to assume that ANY of the rights supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution and its Amendments has any meaning beyond that the administration is prepared to grudgingly grant us. We in fact find ourselves attempting to argue in the face of rhetoric which frames things in terms of ticking bomb securities, which criticizes opponents of the administration as wanting to make us less safe from terrorists and that such criticism weakens the nation, gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Thus we see Congress unwilling to challenge the administration on continued funding of the war, or on the decimation of civil liberties in the proposed FISA rewrite. Surely that should lead us to ask "At what price" should it not?
Bacevich provides a possible lens through which we can consider and argue the issues. He writes
The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.
By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration's entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.
But that task does not belong just to Obama. It belongs to all of us. we have been watching as the depredation of our liberties in the name of supposed greater security have been promulgated by this administration at least since the attacks nearly 7 years ago. In not speaking up more forcefully then, we are complicit in what has happened since. We have been the frog in the water whose temperature has slowly been increasing as we are being boiled to death.
The American people seem willing to listen to a different way of doing things. They are looking for leadership that will challenge them to something beyond surrendering the liberties that define this nation to an American version of the man on the white horse. There seems to be a palpable hunger for being asked to come together for a common purpose, gto thing beyond our basic needs and our fears.
At the end of the column by Bob Herbert, he asks a question, short and simple, of when we will realize the price we are paying for the continuation of the debacle in Iraq. That statement reads
How long will it take before that finally sinks in?
I think that is too verbose. And perhaps inaccurate, because I think many of the American people have had the economic impact of Iraq sink in to their perception of their own lives.
But the cost is more than economic. It is moral, it is spiritual, it is political. It is costing us our basic humanity and a government that Lincoln once described as "last best hope of earth." Lincoln wrote to the Congress a month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and struggled mightily over the words he offered. His final paragraph is pertinent to where we now find ourselves:
The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Lincoln wrote of assuring freedom to the free. This administration argues that we cannot afford freedoms, that security trumps all else, and that we must trust them, not even allowing courts or the Congress to see ALL of what they are doing. To acquiesce in that is to acquiesce in tyranny. Keep that in mind, during this political campaign to be sure, but also in the ongoing conflict within the Congress and the Courts, and in our conversations with one another and those others we may encounter in our day to day existence.
Perhaps there is a partial answer that we all know, words offered more than a century ago by Wendell Phillips:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
We must be vigilant and watch carefully what those whom we empower do ostensibly in our name and on our behalf. If we do not, then we may no longer be able to ask the question which I think should be used to challenge what has been happening, is now happening, and will continue to happen if we do not speak up and demand accountability.
At what price?
Peace.
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