Posted July 11, 2002

War Power

[Regarding Joseph Stromberg's column, "Show is the 'War Power'!"]

Kathleen W.: I respect your views and your ability to explain them in a fair and even manner. How should it be if it is not the way it is now? Somebody has to lead and make tough decisions, sometimes on very short notice. Is that not what the president's cabinet is there to assist him in doing?

Joseph R. Stromberg: The president can take steps to repel an actual armed invasion, for example, from Canada or Mexico (foreign powers). In the course of dealing with a rather different question, Lincoln invented what I think was a bad doctrine (inherent presidential "war powers" not found in the Constitution) and set a large number of bad precedents.

KW: The more I read about the War between the States, the more I am convinced Lincoln acted defensively to save the Union. Washington was surrounded on all sides by Southern sympathizers who would have gladly crushed the Union given the opportunity. Even Chief Justice Taney was a Southern sympathizer. So what should Lincoln do? He could roll over (which former presidents appear to have done) or he could fight for the Union, which the majority of the people in the United States wanted saved.

JS: Lincoln was faced with a crisis over the nature of the union. He thought that a state could not secede and that he had power to coerce a state. I think he was wrong on both counts. But, again, my point was not to re-fight that war, but to suggest that Lincoln set the Constitution aside in pursuit of his goals. If you can set the Constitution aside, then it must not amount to much.

No one set out to crush the union. The Gulf states and South Carolina had withdrawn, as they saw it, from the union. They had no reason to do anything at all to the remaining union. If the union invaded them, they believed they had a right to resist.

Taney was a nationalist of the school of Andrew Jackson, in whose administration he had served. This is why he remained on the union's Supreme Court. His decisions reflected his belief that Lincoln was doing serious damage to the Constitution, not any desire to aid the Confederate States.

It is hard to tell what a "majority" wanted. Lincoln kept a large part of his army in the North precisely to keep Northerners from expressing opposition to his war. The 15,000 people arrested and confined without being charged testify to that. This is precisely the sort of constitutional problem I was trying to raise.

KW: The country had already fallen apart by the time he took office. The South was the aggressor. Inter Arma Silent Leges.

JS: If the laws are silent in wartime, then they aren't of much use to us.

KW: Your columns are very good. But I would rather go to war than suffer America being taken over by terrorists. And I wish we had another president besides George Bush to lead us. I believe the country is being run by the Cold Warriors from the first Bush administration. Same old, same old.

JS: There is no prospect of American being taken over by terrorists. There is a real danger of America being taken over by its "protectors."

Thank you for your comments.

Skepticism

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column, "9/11 – Revised Edition":]

Thank you for your meticulously researched and documented pro-peace-and-liberty editorials, written in full-force from the heart. Whether or not you consider yourself to be a Spirit-inspired person, I can see no other explanation for your timely and courageous leadership in the media.

Regarding your comments on Cynthia McKinney et al's visceral anti-Americanism in "9/11: Revised Edition," perhaps a little benefit of the doubt could be extended to the many people around the world -- Americans included -- who are uncomfortable with the untimely juxtaposition of the war in Afghanistan with the hasty postwar (if there is such as thing as "postwar" in the current climate) reaping of the region's natural resources largely for our own consumption. One gets the impression from the international media that America's critics are not so much critical of American citizens -- the true heart and soul of the country -- but of our non-isolationist institutions. Perhaps it is just so much coincidence that the liaison appointed by the Bush administration to Afghanistan is a former public relations representative of the company building the oil pipeline, but surely it is asking much of the national and international public not to scrutinize the rapid sequence of events of the past year in that area and draw inferences suggested by such sequence, however circumstantial they may be. The vacuum left to us by Congress and the media would seem to leave little other choice.

Perhaps those Americans who are most critical of the behavior of bureaucratic and corporate America are quite the opposite of being anti-American: after all, the ideals which engendered this country would seem largely to be vested in its individual citizenry, rather than in its institutions. It would seem to follow, then, that it is not only acceptable for rank-and-file citizens to be critical of bureaucratic and corporate America, but it is also their ... duty. In answer to those who would marginalize the so-called self-destruction conspiracy theory, which may be described more accurately as a theory of wayward American institutions at least passively and complicity writing off a few thousand souls to a utilitarian end, in view of all of the information coming out and the questions not being answered, wouldn't skepticism of the demand for skepticism make more sense? And the focus on moles in our administration as engineering 9/11 seems not to counter this perception; after all, a domestic institution corrupted by a foreign source is just as much a national liability as one corrupted by treason. The institution is still out of our control, either way, and the damage is still wrought by persons endowed with the public trust, and possibly even on the public payroll.

And if national embarrassment is anti-American, on an individual level, personal shame over one's own misdeeds is a healthy emotion, to the extent that it helps us to rise above the behavior. Why then, would the shame of individual citizens over American institutions which are beyond our control, but which would claim to represent America to the world and which increasingly would seem to be trespassing into our personal lives not also be a healthy emotion with the potential for healthy change?

~ Lori Cabirac

Settlement / Resettlement

[Regarding Ran HaCohen's column, "How Jews Can Support Israel":]

Jews, and all peaceful people for that matter, should be allowed to live anywhere in the Middle East and the world. If there are Jews who no longer want to live in the settlements they should be allowed and helped to leave with financial assistance. And, I believe it is not unreasonable for the United Jewish Communities of North America to help those requesting assistance. I have heard that the settlement-town of Efrat has such a program. According to their Chief Rabbi, however, none have left since its implementation.

I think a better idea and one more likely to be executed is for Jews and the international community to use their money to support Palestinian refugees the right to resettle in Jordan or Egypt etc. 'You do not have to be a dove to support a people's right not to live in the middle of a battlefield' ruled by a selfish despot and terrorized by Islamic zealots. Sums and conditions can be negotiated.

The advantages of such an initiative are numerous.

• On a human level, it respects the free and legitimate will of refugees who wish to leave the camps for a better and safer life.
• On a moral level, it provides stable housing and living conditions to many generations of refugees.
• Most of the homicide bombers originate from the refugee camps. Giving them a better choice than suicide or religious zealotry is a moral imperative.
• It respects the attitudes of both Arabs and Jews who seem to believe that they can not live side by side on this small plot of the globe but must be separated.
• It provides for religious settlers to practice their religious beliefs and to celebrate their love of that land without fear of terrorism.
• On a practical level, many of the current Arabs (especially the older generations) living in the West Bank and Gaza originate from other Arab countries (Arafat included). There is plenty of open space in these countries. They should be freely allowed to return to their native and/or cultural lands- outside of refugee camps and without fear of any "retribution".
• On a financial level, Palestinians have been strangled long enough by the corrupt financially unaccountable PA led by the despotic totalitarian Arafat whose infrastructure seems to consist only of police stations.
• A Palestinian majority in a Palestinian Jordan with free elections is probably inevitable in the near future, anyway.
• This program can be implemented by the entire international community and not just the United Jewish Communities of North America who all want to see a better life for the suffering Palestinians.

~ JS

Ruppert

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column, "9/11 – Revised Edition":]

I have been reading your [Justin Raimondo's] columns ever since the 911 tragedy and have always found them perceptive and informed.

It is truly encouraging to see people like yourself talking the truth in what has become a society where such action can be legally construed as "treason" or "un-American".

I am an Irishman living in France and heard of the 911 events on satellite TV on holidays in Greece.

As an Irishman I have been used to a reasonably open press at home, (even though they are spoon-fed the official line form CNN etc.) certainly not the cynical, mind bogglingly insulting coverage as seen on the major US media outlets. Thus, yourselves and several other organisations in the US are deeply appreciated for bringing out the truth of what really goes on over there. ...

In your column today, you referred to Michael C. Ruppert thus "and Michael Ruppert, who similarly and idiotically avers that we did it to ourselves."

Mr. Ruppert has always insisted on relying on verified facts and will not speculate on anything that he cannot verify; he is one of the most reasonable writers I have come across in 10 years of seeking alternative news on the web, starting with the antics of the Clinton Administration.

To quote his own methodology, look at the evidence he has accumulated on www.fromthewilderness.com and make up your own mind.

The timeline assembled there is made up of well documented data and when taken together certainly leads one to believe that the Bush Administration did indeed have advance knowledge that the tragedy of 911 was going to happen. Even looking at the Jared Israel research on www.tenc.com into the timeline of fighter scrambling on the fatal day is enough to make you wonder. The thing that crunched it for me was actually seeing Bush's reaction to Andrew Card informing him of the second plane hitting the Trade Towers.

My point here ... is that it is very unprofessional of you to dismiss Mr. Ruppert in so offhand a manner without first debating the content of his assertions. It's not that he says that "We did it to ourselves", his assertion is that it was done to the American people. ...

Keep up the great work you are doing over there and continue to give the rest of the world hope that free speech and thought are not dead in the USA. ...

~ Andy H.

Mighty Pen

If the pen is truly mightier than the sword, perhaps words such as contained in N. Malic's "Bosnia As Chump Change" (July 4) will eventually beat back all the cluster bombs, humvees and general corruption the Empire can deliver. Keep the pressure on, Nebojsa!

~ Ron K., Bethel, Ohio

No Blessing

Though I am not a very religious man there are certain quotations in the Bible that one can find very fitting for today's political situation.

...There are statements against such: "Blessed are peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God."

As hard as I search there seems to be no blessing for war mongers. Perhaps, the only admonition on that side is Matthew 4, verses 8 though 10.

~ Phil Schediwy, Apple Valley, California

Scenarios

Justin's attempts to dismiss any and all possible 9- 11 conspiracy scenarios save his favorite Israeli one grow more and more frenzied and disingenuous. Now, in an effort to paint the leadership as "caught completely off guard on 9/11, and forced to flee for their lives when it became apparent that the terrorists had somehow penetrated the security of their inner sanctum" ("9-11 - Revised Edition," July 8, 2002), he falls back on none other than disinformation point man William Safire of the New York Times, who was used as a conduit for an absurd White House fabrication on Sept. 13 in an effort to dismiss criticism of Bush for abandoning his post and scurrying from one bunker to another following the attack on the Pentagon. Justin then adds his own comments, just in case the reader fails to perceive the deadly implications, which of course point to the same high-level conspiracy that he attributes to the agents of the mysterious Middle Eastern country....

Well, let's turn to one of Antiwar.com's occasional sources, which Justin no doubt reads in mining the web for supporting information for his pet theories: in an article titled "White House lied about threat to Air Force One", which appeared on September 28, 2001 on the World Socialist Web Site, Jerry White writes that "Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call 'simply never happened.'" ...

I'm not going to repeat the arguments for believing the White House knew of the pending attack and let it happen, which I've already addressed twice in Backtalk ("Unfortunate," May 13, and "First Rule of Journalism," May 25), and which have also been brought to his attention by several other readers (Alex Nagel, May 13; Despina Douglas, May 14; Edward H. and Dimitri O., both May 21; and Rocky E., June 4, among possibly others I may have overlooked); I will only observe that it evidently is not a question of who are the credible researchers and who are the "wackos" and "idiotic" "nutball" "leftie" "wild" "viscerally anti-American" purveyors of "whack-jobs"; it's merely a question, as ever, of whose ox is being gored. ...

~ Ron Reed, Dillingham, Alaska