It would have been a minor change. But Sen. Jim Webb's amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill called for giving US troops one year of "dwell" time for every year in the war zone.
Currently, stop-loss requirements can force troops to stay as long as 15 months and reduces the period of rest between war zone duty.
There is no doubt that this Bush administration policy, fueled by the failure to recruit new people to fight a war in Iraq, is seriously harming troops in much larger numbers than Pentagon casualty reports indicate.
Between 2001 and the first half of 2007, about 180,000 veterans have filed disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. 180,000.
Publicized Pentagon casualty reports suggest that only 32,000 people have been killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though less public statistics put the total number of people medically evacuated at about 65,000.
So Webb's amendment is about giving troops some time to heal.
Those who still carry water for the Bush administration (such as this blogger) have called Webb's troop readiness amendment "dangerous."
They are afraid that a humane and medically sound treatment of US troops will force the military to draw down forces in Iraq.
Regardless of the Republicans' cynical, and one should say typical, repulsion for the people who actually do the dying in the wars they have started, the Webb amendment was seen as the first of four legislative efforts to come up in the next several days that will require the Bush administration to change its war policy.
That 7 Republicans voted for it suggests they are feeling enormous pressure from their constituents to stop the unquestioning support for the war in Iraq they have so far displayed.
They have started to actually understand what the fact that more than 7 in 10 Americans who support withdrawing from Iraq in the next 9 months means for their future job prospects.
This amendment was a tiny step. But 56 votes is very close to the 60 needed to end Republican filibusters. It is closer to the 67 needed to override Bush vetoes.
The 7 Republicans did not include Sens. Richard Lugar (IN) and George Voinovich (OH), who led a small tidal wave of Republicans breaking with Bush over the war (including Sens. Olympia Snowe and John Warner) over the last two weeks or so.
The 7 also did not include Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) who has broken with Bush and his party on a number of issues, and has even sharply criticized the administration's abuse of civil liberties and for scandals over the firing of US attorneys. Specter may still be smarting from the Pennsylvania Bushies' effort to dump him in the 2004 Republican primary.
But only 3 Republicans of these questionable 10 have publicly announced they will vote for an amendment that would order a troop withdrawal beginning within 120 days of passage offered by Sens. Carl Levin and Jack Reed (RI).
So perhaps all of this "breaking with Bush" is little more than a stunt to give voters the impression that their Senators aren't the Bush clones their voting records will bear out.
The opinions, views, thoughts, and ramblings of editors of PoliticalAffairs.net – and other stuff worth reading or viewing.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MAO (9)
MAO: A LIFE by Philip Short, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2000. 782pp. [Part 9]
Reviewed by Thomas Riggins
This is an important work and the editor's blog is a good place to discuss it as a preliminary to a review article for PA. Over the next few weeks I will be making entries one chapter at a time (there are sixteen). Comments are invited, especially from anyone who has read the book and wants to critique my take on a chapter, but anyone is welcome to comment.
Chapter 10 "In Search of the Grey Dragon: the Long March North"
After the GMD had forced the CPC and the Red Army out of their base area in Jiangxi the nationalists thought that the communist movement was finally overcome.
January 1935 found the communist HQ at Zunyi in Guizhou. Short says it was at this time that Mao first attained "a dominant position in the Party." The loss of the base area and retreat of the Red Army had finally convinced a majority of the top leaders that Mao's ideas had been right all along and it was a mistake to have excluded him from military affairs for so long.
When the Red army halted at Zunyi it was about 30,000 strong-- having lost 50,000 men in the three months since the base area was abandoned. Morale wasn't exactly high.
By Spring of 1935 Short says, the Red Army was once again the "Zhu- Mao Army." Chiang was breathing down the Red Army's neck and by deft strategy Mao was able to extricate the army from certain destruction, escape across the Upper Yangtse, and find a safe haven in the town of Huili in Sichuan (May, 1935).
The army had been reduced to 20,00 men but Mao had saved it and from then on he was never challenged again by the military leaders or the Party leaders with the army.
We have talking about this army unit as if it were the only communist army in the field. That really wasn't the case. This unit was officially called the First Front Army. We have concentrated on it because it was the one associated with Mao. But in the north of Sichuan was the Fourth Front Army led by Zhang Guotao (1897-1979 in Canada, defected to GMD in 1938).
The March to the West now became the Long March as Mao's forces set off from Huili to link up with Zhang Guotao. But Chiang's forces were now in hot pursuit. To escape the Red Army made a forced march to a town called Luding on the Dadu River which was in flood. The only way to cross the river was at this town.
The town was taken by assault and the Red Army crossed over to the east bank of the Dadu River and thus, once again, escaped from Chiang's forces. Short says this battle and crossing became legendary. "Failure would have meant the Red Army's annihilation."
After heroic efforts Mao's troops finally linked up with the Fourth Front Army (June, 1935). Now the problem was, who is going to run the show: Mao or Zhang? Mao wanted to go north to Ganzu, Zhang wanted to go west. The PB worked out compromises that seemed to settle the rivalry in Mao's favor and the combined armies started moving north. But, Short says, "The stage was slowly being set for what Mao would call, years later, 'the darkest moment of my life.'"
The biggest problem in going north was getting thru a large swampy grassland. Mao's group, after much suffering, made it through, but Zhang and his Fourth Front Army turned back and headed south. So the Red Army (First Front Army) was on its own again. It now had only 10,000 troops left.
On September 21, 1935 the army reached Hadapu, in Gansu, and they learned that there was a communist controlled area in nearby Shensi province. The army decided to march east towards Shensi. The Long March finally ended when they reached Wuqi in Shensi (October, 1935). Many had perished, the army was now down to 5000. And, Short writes, in this area "Mao would spend the next twelve years."
Meanwhile, Japan had intensified its conquests in China. Chiang and the GMD did not seem to be doing enough to oppose the Japanese. Mao was also thinking about Japan and the struggle that would have to be waged against it. Short quotes a poem he wrote around this time:
High on the crest of Liupan Mountain,
Our banners flap idly in the western breeze.
Today we hold fast the long cord,
When shall we bind the Grey Dragon [Japan]?
In December 1935 the PB met at Wayaobu in the new base area and devised a new political action plan, abandoning the leftism of the Returned Students for more pragmatic policies. This was in line with the Comintern's new polices of the united front.
The new policies were designed to appeal to a broader mass of the Chinese people. "The 'Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Soviet Republic,'" Short says, "would be renamed 'the Soviet People's Republic', to signify that all citizens had a place in it."
Instead of a "closed door" policy towards other classes, an "open door" policy would be implemented. Mao said "Closed doorism just 'drives the fish into deep waters and the sparrows into the thickets', and it will drive the millions upon millions of the masses ... over to the enemy's side."
Now Mao entered into a semi "United Front" with a nearby GMD army led by Zhang Xueliang (the Young Marshal, he was in his 30s), the North-East Army. This alliance was possible because Mao convinced Zhang that they should be fighting the Japanese invaders not each other. Zhang would not openly defy Chiang but would help the Red Army as best he could.
This allowed Mao to go on a military expedition to recruit more troops. He was able to get his army back up to 20,000 men. But "Zhang Guotao was still in Sichuan, and the bulk of the Red Army was with him."
In the summer of 1936 Zhang's Fourth Front Army was joined by another Red Army unit, the Second Front Army which had formed in 1935 in Hunan. Zhang did not want to unite with Mao's forces. He even set up a rival CPC leadership and expected Mao and the PB that was with him to be subservient to his new leadership.
Unfortunately for Zhang, Chiang's forces caught up with him and he was pulverized. He finally gave in to the legitimate PB and brought what was left of his army North to merge with Mao's First Front Army. (December 1936). But Zhang was finished as a major leader.
While on the one hand, Mao had been dealing with Zhang, on the other he and the CPC had also been trying to get Chiang to agree to an anti- Japanese front. Throughout China, as well as within the GMD, people were objecting to Chiang's policy of "internal pacification first, resistance to Japan second."
Short points out, that by April 1936, Mao was pushing a new line: Japan and Chiang were no longer equal enemies. Mao now maintained, as quoted by Short, "Our stand is to oppose Japan and stop the civil war. Opposing Chiang Kai-shek is secondary."
In June 1936 the Red Army had to give up Wayaobu and retreat to Bao'an, an even more remote area. For the rest of 1936, the CPC agitated for united resistance to Japan. In December Chaing gave his answer. It was to be a Sixth Encirclement effort to wipe out the Red Army.
Zhang Xueliang pleaded with Chiang to allow the North-East Army to fight Japan instead. Chiang, now with his HQ in Xian in Shensi province, said no. Then, the unthinkable happened. Zhang used his men to arrest Chiang and hold him prisoner at the HQ of the North-East Army.
The CPC thought Chiang should be put on trial for starting the civil war and for not fighting the Japanese. But this was not Zhang's plan. He only wanted to get Chiang to drop the civil war and unite all the patriotic forces (including the communists) against Japan.
Meanwhile, in Chiang's capital, Nanjing, the sentiment was for a peaceful solution. Zhou Enlai was sent to Xian to explain the CPC's position to Zhang: a trial and the establishment of a big unified anti-Japanese base in the north east, and a united front government in Nanjing.
Eventually a deal was cut for a united front between the CPC, Chiang, Zhang and the government in Nanjing. But it was illusory. Zhang went back to Nanjing with Chiang (he ended up in prison and then house arrest from which he was only freed in his 90's on Taiwan).
Back in Nanjing, Chiang resumed his plans to wipe out the Red Army. He only abandoned those plans in July 1937 when the Japanese attacked in force taking Beijing, and attacking Shanghai. Events forced Chiang to cooperate with the CPC.
The Red Army got a new name: "Eighth Route Army of the [GMD] National Revolutionary Army." The party "was back on centre stage," legal, and, Short says, "For Mao, the highroad to power was open." Mao was now 43 years old.
Reviewed by Thomas Riggins
This is an important work and the editor's blog is a good place to discuss it as a preliminary to a review article for PA. Over the next few weeks I will be making entries one chapter at a time (there are sixteen). Comments are invited, especially from anyone who has read the book and wants to critique my take on a chapter, but anyone is welcome to comment.
Chapter 10 "In Search of the Grey Dragon: the Long March North"
After the GMD had forced the CPC and the Red Army out of their base area in Jiangxi the nationalists thought that the communist movement was finally overcome.
January 1935 found the communist HQ at Zunyi in Guizhou. Short says it was at this time that Mao first attained "a dominant position in the Party." The loss of the base area and retreat of the Red Army had finally convinced a majority of the top leaders that Mao's ideas had been right all along and it was a mistake to have excluded him from military affairs for so long.
When the Red army halted at Zunyi it was about 30,000 strong-- having lost 50,000 men in the three months since the base area was abandoned. Morale wasn't exactly high.
By Spring of 1935 Short says, the Red Army was once again the "Zhu- Mao Army." Chiang was breathing down the Red Army's neck and by deft strategy Mao was able to extricate the army from certain destruction, escape across the Upper Yangtse, and find a safe haven in the town of Huili in Sichuan (May, 1935).
The army had been reduced to 20,00 men but Mao had saved it and from then on he was never challenged again by the military leaders or the Party leaders with the army.
We have talking about this army unit as if it were the only communist army in the field. That really wasn't the case. This unit was officially called the First Front Army. We have concentrated on it because it was the one associated with Mao. But in the north of Sichuan was the Fourth Front Army led by Zhang Guotao (1897-1979 in Canada, defected to GMD in 1938).
The March to the West now became the Long March as Mao's forces set off from Huili to link up with Zhang Guotao. But Chiang's forces were now in hot pursuit. To escape the Red Army made a forced march to a town called Luding on the Dadu River which was in flood. The only way to cross the river was at this town.
The town was taken by assault and the Red Army crossed over to the east bank of the Dadu River and thus, once again, escaped from Chiang's forces. Short says this battle and crossing became legendary. "Failure would have meant the Red Army's annihilation."
After heroic efforts Mao's troops finally linked up with the Fourth Front Army (June, 1935). Now the problem was, who is going to run the show: Mao or Zhang? Mao wanted to go north to Ganzu, Zhang wanted to go west. The PB worked out compromises that seemed to settle the rivalry in Mao's favor and the combined armies started moving north. But, Short says, "The stage was slowly being set for what Mao would call, years later, 'the darkest moment of my life.'"
The biggest problem in going north was getting thru a large swampy grassland. Mao's group, after much suffering, made it through, but Zhang and his Fourth Front Army turned back and headed south. So the Red Army (First Front Army) was on its own again. It now had only 10,000 troops left.
On September 21, 1935 the army reached Hadapu, in Gansu, and they learned that there was a communist controlled area in nearby Shensi province. The army decided to march east towards Shensi. The Long March finally ended when they reached Wuqi in Shensi (October, 1935). Many had perished, the army was now down to 5000. And, Short writes, in this area "Mao would spend the next twelve years."
Meanwhile, Japan had intensified its conquests in China. Chiang and the GMD did not seem to be doing enough to oppose the Japanese. Mao was also thinking about Japan and the struggle that would have to be waged against it. Short quotes a poem he wrote around this time:
High on the crest of Liupan Mountain,
Our banners flap idly in the western breeze.
Today we hold fast the long cord,
When shall we bind the Grey Dragon [Japan]?
In December 1935 the PB met at Wayaobu in the new base area and devised a new political action plan, abandoning the leftism of the Returned Students for more pragmatic policies. This was in line with the Comintern's new polices of the united front.
The new policies were designed to appeal to a broader mass of the Chinese people. "The 'Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Soviet Republic,'" Short says, "would be renamed 'the Soviet People's Republic', to signify that all citizens had a place in it."
Instead of a "closed door" policy towards other classes, an "open door" policy would be implemented. Mao said "Closed doorism just 'drives the fish into deep waters and the sparrows into the thickets', and it will drive the millions upon millions of the masses ... over to the enemy's side."
Now Mao entered into a semi "United Front" with a nearby GMD army led by Zhang Xueliang (the Young Marshal, he was in his 30s), the North-East Army. This alliance was possible because Mao convinced Zhang that they should be fighting the Japanese invaders not each other. Zhang would not openly defy Chiang but would help the Red Army as best he could.
This allowed Mao to go on a military expedition to recruit more troops. He was able to get his army back up to 20,000 men. But "Zhang Guotao was still in Sichuan, and the bulk of the Red Army was with him."
In the summer of 1936 Zhang's Fourth Front Army was joined by another Red Army unit, the Second Front Army which had formed in 1935 in Hunan. Zhang did not want to unite with Mao's forces. He even set up a rival CPC leadership and expected Mao and the PB that was with him to be subservient to his new leadership.
Unfortunately for Zhang, Chiang's forces caught up with him and he was pulverized. He finally gave in to the legitimate PB and brought what was left of his army North to merge with Mao's First Front Army. (December 1936). But Zhang was finished as a major leader.
While on the one hand, Mao had been dealing with Zhang, on the other he and the CPC had also been trying to get Chiang to agree to an anti- Japanese front. Throughout China, as well as within the GMD, people were objecting to Chiang's policy of "internal pacification first, resistance to Japan second."
Short points out, that by April 1936, Mao was pushing a new line: Japan and Chiang were no longer equal enemies. Mao now maintained, as quoted by Short, "Our stand is to oppose Japan and stop the civil war. Opposing Chiang Kai-shek is secondary."
In June 1936 the Red Army had to give up Wayaobu and retreat to Bao'an, an even more remote area. For the rest of 1936, the CPC agitated for united resistance to Japan. In December Chaing gave his answer. It was to be a Sixth Encirclement effort to wipe out the Red Army.
Zhang Xueliang pleaded with Chiang to allow the North-East Army to fight Japan instead. Chiang, now with his HQ in Xian in Shensi province, said no. Then, the unthinkable happened. Zhang used his men to arrest Chiang and hold him prisoner at the HQ of the North-East Army.
The CPC thought Chiang should be put on trial for starting the civil war and for not fighting the Japanese. But this was not Zhang's plan. He only wanted to get Chiang to drop the civil war and unite all the patriotic forces (including the communists) against Japan.
Meanwhile, in Chiang's capital, Nanjing, the sentiment was for a peaceful solution. Zhou Enlai was sent to Xian to explain the CPC's position to Zhang: a trial and the establishment of a big unified anti-Japanese base in the north east, and a united front government in Nanjing.
Eventually a deal was cut for a united front between the CPC, Chiang, Zhang and the government in Nanjing. But it was illusory. Zhang went back to Nanjing with Chiang (he ended up in prison and then house arrest from which he was only freed in his 90's on Taiwan).
Back in Nanjing, Chiang resumed his plans to wipe out the Red Army. He only abandoned those plans in July 1937 when the Japanese attacked in force taking Beijing, and attacking Shanghai. Events forced Chiang to cooperate with the CPC.
The Red Army got a new name: "Eighth Route Army of the [GMD] National Revolutionary Army." The party "was back on centre stage," legal, and, Short says, "For Mao, the highroad to power was open." Mao was now 43 years old.
Terror, Terror, Terror: Chertoff's "Gut Feeling" and the Old Shell Game
"We have to fight them in Iraq, so that we won't have to fight them over here," say Bush and every one of his supporters in order to justify the war in Iraq.
Well that argument appears to no longer be operative. Because according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's most recent gut feeling, Al Qaeda – who wasn't in Iraq until we got there – is coming.
Well, OK. Chertoff doesn't have any evidence of this. And shouting "terror, terror, terror" may be excessive. According to the LA Times, Chertoff said that he was talking "not of a specific threat but of increased vulnerability."
Of course the Bush administration's refusal to implement recommendations in the 9/11 report may have something to do with "increased vulnerability."
So why do they bring this up? Well there are a couple of reasons: Bush's approval rating has sunk to approximate Nixon's; a report to Congress on "progress" in Iraq will show that none has been made; and Congress is again debating how quickly we should get out of Iraq.
For the Bushies the familiar mantra of terror, terror, terror is a preferred topic of conversation. Why are these guys still in power?
Well that argument appears to no longer be operative. Because according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's most recent gut feeling, Al Qaeda – who wasn't in Iraq until we got there – is coming.
Well, OK. Chertoff doesn't have any evidence of this. And shouting "terror, terror, terror" may be excessive. According to the LA Times, Chertoff said that he was talking "not of a specific threat but of increased vulnerability."
Of course the Bush administration's refusal to implement recommendations in the 9/11 report may have something to do with "increased vulnerability."
So why do they bring this up? Well there are a couple of reasons: Bush's approval rating has sunk to approximate Nixon's; a report to Congress on "progress" in Iraq will show that none has been made; and Congress is again debating how quickly we should get out of Iraq.
For the Bushies the familiar mantra of terror, terror, terror is a preferred topic of conversation. Why are these guys still in power?
World Tyranny: The Basics of the Killing Machine
The founding fathers of the American nation could not imagine that what they were proclaiming at that time, as any other historical society, was carrying within it the seeds of its own transformation.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Senate Republicans Filibuster "Troop Readiness" Amendment
Senate Republicans just filibustered an amendment to provide for troop readiness by allowing troops deployed in combat zone an equal amount of "dwell" time back home with their families.
The amendment, offered by Sen. Jim Webb, simply states that that active duty troops should have as much time home as they had on deployment, and that National Guard and Reserve troops should have three years at home after their one-year deployment.
Currently, the Pentagon has deployed and redeployed troops to Iraq for 15 month cycles, sometimes over and over again.
Critics of the Bush administration's policies point out that stop-loss deployments have irreparably harmed troops even when they haven't been physically wounded. Extended deployments have been blamed for high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illness afflicting returning veterans.
The Webb amendment is one of four amendments to the Defense Authorization Act being debated in the Senate related to the Iraq war. All four amendments are designed to force a change in the Bush administration's war policy.
In his remarks, presidential hopeful Republican Sen. John McCain, blamed Democrats for the filibuster, ironically. McCain, who has relied on his staunch support for the war as his main campaign talking point, but has seen his campaign falter in funding and several campaign managers flee, argued that Senators should put off Iraq debate until September and that a bill to fund the Department of Defense was no place to debate the war.
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama accused the supporters of the Webb Amendment, which is a concept fueled both by public outrage over the treatment of US troops and a demand that Iraq war policy change, of "flip-flopping." Sessions essentially implied that public opposition to the war policy and and anger over treatment of the troops is "flip-flopping" and an effort to weaken the nation.
When are the Republicans going to stop with the divisive and disgusting rhetoric that people who disagree with them are somehow un-patriotic?
The amendment, offered by Sen. Jim Webb, simply states that that active duty troops should have as much time home as they had on deployment, and that National Guard and Reserve troops should have three years at home after their one-year deployment.
Currently, the Pentagon has deployed and redeployed troops to Iraq for 15 month cycles, sometimes over and over again.
Critics of the Bush administration's policies point out that stop-loss deployments have irreparably harmed troops even when they haven't been physically wounded. Extended deployments have been blamed for high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illness afflicting returning veterans.
The Webb amendment is one of four amendments to the Defense Authorization Act being debated in the Senate related to the Iraq war. All four amendments are designed to force a change in the Bush administration's war policy.
In his remarks, presidential hopeful Republican Sen. John McCain, blamed Democrats for the filibuster, ironically. McCain, who has relied on his staunch support for the war as his main campaign talking point, but has seen his campaign falter in funding and several campaign managers flee, argued that Senators should put off Iraq debate until September and that a bill to fund the Department of Defense was no place to debate the war.
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama accused the supporters of the Webb Amendment, which is a concept fueled both by public outrage over the treatment of US troops and a demand that Iraq war policy change, of "flip-flopping." Sessions essentially implied that public opposition to the war policy and and anger over treatment of the troops is "flip-flopping" and an effort to weaken the nation.
When are the Republicans going to stop with the divisive and disgusting rhetoric that people who disagree with them are somehow un-patriotic?
Video: FOX News and the Global Warming Denial Industry
From FoxAttacks.com
Hit 'em where it hurts – in the pocketbook. Tell companies to stop advertising on FOX.
Hit 'em where it hurts – in the pocketbook. Tell companies to stop advertising on FOX.
South African Strike Action Enters Second Day
As delegates gathered at in Port Elizabeth for Congress of the South African Communist Party, the strike of 260,00 metal workers entered its second day. Strike leaders report that over 70 percent heeded the strike call, making it an overwhelming success. Large enterprises were particularly effected with company officials marking "between 50 and 90 percent absentee rates. Rallies across the country were reported to be well attended, militant and exuberant, with metal workers dancing in the streets. In a unrelated economic action workers at the world famous Kruger national park are on strike demanding union recognition.
On the eve of the Congress bourgeois newspapers continue speculation around internal leadership strife ignoring the pressing political economic and social concerns of delegates. However, aside from a few articles, there is little attention being paid to Congress developments in the mass media as compared to previous years. Television so far has been particularly lacking in this regard. In the opinion of one delegate from Johanesburg, representing the mine workers union, one big issue before the Congress is whether the SACP will field its own candidates in future elections on separate list from the ANC, describing it as "contending for state power." As of this writing, it is doubtful whether such a move would be accepted by the Congress with many SACP leaders viewing such a move as premature. As part of alliance of the ANC, COSATU and the SACP, all run for office as members of the ANC.
The Congress is due to open on Wednesday and will feature panels on international developments one of which will focus on Latin America. The main business of the event will occur on Thursday.
joe sims
China's Action on Water Pollution Crisis
The State Council's decision to revise the water pollution law is an overdue response to the water quality crisis surfacing nationwide.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, July 9, 2007
Executive Privilege ala Bush
The Bush administration is claiming "executive privilege" in denying
Congress the right to subpoena two former white house political
advisors(including Harriet Miers, whom Bush earlier sought to appoint
to the Supreme Court) to testify under oath in Congress's attempt to
investigate the firing of nine federal prosecutors. Bush has offered to
let these two and other aides, most importantly the administration's
key political operative, Karl Rove, be interviewed by Congressional
investigators with the proviso that the "interviews" be unofficial,
with no written or electronic record made of them.
There are a number of issues here. The first concerns
executive privilege in general. The Truman administration, for example,
invoked executive privilege in an attempt to protect itself from the
House-American Activities Committee, which was not engaged in serious
investigations of anything but undertaking political witch-hunts aimed
directly at Communists organized labor, and the broad left in the
Sciences and Professions and indirectly but pointedly at the New Deal or
liberal wing of the Democratic party. Richard Nixon, an old HUAC
member who denigrated Truman's attempts to invoke Executive Privilege,
claimed "executive privilege" himself a generation later in an attempt
to prevent Congressional Committees from investigating far-reaching
criminal acts that went to the heart of constitutional government in the
Watergate conspiracy. There are other examples also, but "executive
privilege," whether legitimate or illegitimate, has usually been used to
protect documents or in Nixon's case tapes in presidential files from
being released.
Here the administration is denying Congress the right to subpoena
members of the executive branch to testify under oath, even though
members of the executive branch of the government, secretaries,
undersecretaries, and various others who are presidential appointees
testify openly before congressional committees routinely and are often
asked probing questions that the president finds embarrassing.
First of all, this is a very legitimate investigation. Congress has
not only a right but a responsibility to determine whether or not these
prosecutors were fired in order to thwart prosecutions of the
administration's friends in federal cases, which by the way would be
very much of an impeachable offense if it could be traced back to the
president. Congress also has the right and the responsibility to
ascertain whether ideological criteria were being applied to these
prosecutors, meaning the White House had them fired because they were
not prosecuting violations of federal law on the political principles
that the administration wanted. If that were true, it would deeply
compromise the Justice Department, whose function under the constitution
has always been is to apply federal laws in a fair manner, not to twist
law to suit the ideological positions of a specific President, even if
the Attorney General is his appointee.
The investigation that Congressional Democrats are attempting to launch
is neither a witch-hunt nor a fishing expedition. It is a legitimate
and necessary investigation into what may end up being important
violations of law by the Executive Branch, and the claim of Executive
Privilege by the Bush administration should be seen as illegitimate and
potentially at least an obstruction of justice.
But there is another question here that deserves to be
addressed: the arrogant deeply anti-democratic argument made by the
President's legal counsel, Fred Fielding in denying Congress's right to
call the two former presidential advisors.
Fielding contended that this assertion of executive privilege was
"intended to protect a fundamental interest of the presidency; the
necessity that a president receive candid advice from his advisors and
that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the
president." Fielding also added that in the dismissal of federal
prosecutors "the institutional interest of the executive branch is very
strong."
Congress the right to subpoena two former white house political
advisors(including Harriet Miers, whom Bush earlier sought to appoint
to the Supreme Court) to testify under oath in Congress's attempt to
investigate the firing of nine federal prosecutors. Bush has offered to
let these two and other aides, most importantly the administration's
key political operative, Karl Rove, be interviewed by Congressional
investigators with the proviso that the "interviews" be unofficial,
with no written or electronic record made of them.
There are a number of issues here. The first concerns
executive privilege in general. The Truman administration, for example,
invoked executive privilege in an attempt to protect itself from the
House-American Activities Committee, which was not engaged in serious
investigations of anything but undertaking political witch-hunts aimed
directly at Communists organized labor, and the broad left in the
Sciences and Professions and indirectly but pointedly at the New Deal or
liberal wing of the Democratic party. Richard Nixon, an old HUAC
member who denigrated Truman's attempts to invoke Executive Privilege,
claimed "executive privilege" himself a generation later in an attempt
to prevent Congressional Committees from investigating far-reaching
criminal acts that went to the heart of constitutional government in the
Watergate conspiracy. There are other examples also, but "executive
privilege," whether legitimate or illegitimate, has usually been used to
protect documents or in Nixon's case tapes in presidential files from
being released.
Here the administration is denying Congress the right to subpoena
members of the executive branch to testify under oath, even though
members of the executive branch of the government, secretaries,
undersecretaries, and various others who are presidential appointees
testify openly before congressional committees routinely and are often
asked probing questions that the president finds embarrassing.
First of all, this is a very legitimate investigation. Congress has
not only a right but a responsibility to determine whether or not these
prosecutors were fired in order to thwart prosecutions of the
administration's friends in federal cases, which by the way would be
very much of an impeachable offense if it could be traced back to the
president. Congress also has the right and the responsibility to
ascertain whether ideological criteria were being applied to these
prosecutors, meaning the White House had them fired because they were
not prosecuting violations of federal law on the political principles
that the administration wanted. If that were true, it would deeply
compromise the Justice Department, whose function under the constitution
has always been is to apply federal laws in a fair manner, not to twist
law to suit the ideological positions of a specific President, even if
the Attorney General is his appointee.
The investigation that Congressional Democrats are attempting to launch
is neither a witch-hunt nor a fishing expedition. It is a legitimate
and necessary investigation into what may end up being important
violations of law by the Executive Branch, and the claim of Executive
Privilege by the Bush administration should be seen as illegitimate and
potentially at least an obstruction of justice.
But there is another question here that deserves to be
addressed: the arrogant deeply anti-democratic argument made by the
President's legal counsel, Fred Fielding in denying Congress's right to
call the two former presidential advisors.
Fielding contended that this assertion of executive privilege was
"intended to protect a fundamental interest of the presidency; the
necessity that a president receive candid advice from his advisors and
that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the
president." Fielding also added that in the dismissal of federal
prosecutors "the institutional interest of the executive branch is very
strong."
First the Executive Branch and the office of the presidency are
not the same thing. The modern office of the presidency was the
creation of the Presidential Reorganization Act of 1939 and the great
expansion of presidential power which WWII and especially the cold war
institutionalized. Presidential aides are no more immune from
testifying before congressional committees than assistant secretaries in
the Department of Defense or, for that matter, a clerk in the Department
of Defense. In this case, also, unlike many others in the past, no one
is invoking "national security" as a reason to prevent these aides from
testifying.
Does the president have the right to prevent advisors who may
have advised him to violate federal laws or were in effect told by him
to engage in actions that violate federal law(as Richard Nixon in effect
told his advisors in the Watergate investigation) to prevent Congress
from requiring those officials to testify.
If he can, then those officials won't have to make the choice that
John Dean did in 1973 not to "stonewall it" for Nixon and turn states
evidence in exchange for a lighter prison. The president's men or women
will be able to function as a palace guard outside the established
channels of the executive branch, maneuvering around cabinet departments
and agencies and violating laws to do the bidding of and protect the
president and other high executive officers.
Moreover, Fielding seems to be saying that the President and the
Executive Branch are one and the same. The Attorney General is the
executive officer in charge of the Justice Department, which contains
large numbers of employees, both Civil Service and political. The
presidential of course has the power to dismiss Attorney General, or
accept his resignation, but what happens when political operatives in
the office of the president in effect work as a sort of internal
political police, interfering in the Justice Department's work when that
work conflicts with its political maneuvering or threatens his political
and financial backers.
The constitution was written largely to establish a government that
would be both effective and, through separation of powers and checks and
balances as free as possible of tyranny and corruption, which the
leaders of the American revolution saw as re-enforcing each other.
More and More Americans see this administration as committed to the
establishment of a dictatorial presidency above Congress, the courts,
the federal civil service, and the Departments of the Federal
Government executive federal law, which is the principle role of the
executive branch. It is importantly that all progressive people and
organizations call upon Senator Leahy and Congressman Conyers, the
chairs of the committees who today received this outrageous, to resist
this latest attempt by Bush to put himself and his advisors above the
constitution and the law.
Norman Markowitz
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