It Is Amazing To Him That

The Democrats are blinking and taking out of proposed legislation a provision that would have forbidden Bush to take military action against Iran without coming to the Congress first (i.e. without acting in accordance with the Constitution). I'm not sure why you need a statute, anyway, to ensure that the Constitution is followed . . . Except that it has been so long since presidents have paid much attention to the Constitution. The Imperial Presidency has overshadowed it, just as Emperor Augustus overshadowed the Roman Republic. Those who said that such a provision would take the military option off the table with regard to Iran are simply wrong. It just required that the president make the case for a war to the legislature, which declares war. The option was still there if the legislature wanted it to be. But after the Iraq fiasco it is amazing to me that Washington is still talking about going to war against Middle Eastern countries that pose no threat to the US mainland. The US got where it is after World War II by mostly avoiding direct military campaigns and occupations. The US does not have the resources to occupy two Middle Eastern oil states, and trying to do so will break it as surely as imperial overstretch broke its predecessors among the great powers. Those who think all this is good for Israel are being short-sighted. If the US spirals down into a non-entity over the next 30 years as a result of over-stretch, Israel will be left without a great power patron and might well not survive. The Europeans are fed up with its militarism and itchy trigger finger, and it hasn't made any friends in its own region.

The news story that amazes Don Juan does begin in a slightly remarkable fashion,

Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war. Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran. Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

But then it continues with reassuringly familiar boilerplate from the Boy-'n'-Party crew:

The White House has issued a veto threat against the bill, and Vice President Dick Cheney attacked its supporters in a speech, declaring they "are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out." House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement that said Democrats shouldn't count on any help passing their legislation. "Republicans will continue to stand united in this debate, and will oppose efforts by Democrats to undermine the ability of General Petraeus and our troops to achieve victory in the Global War on Terror," he said.

That sort of clowning or grandstanding over across the aisle may irritate Prof. Cole, perhaps, but there is no reason it should amaze him or anybody else. They have been playing that game ever since Mr. Lincoln's War. No, we would be amazed, was we Informed Opinion, that "Washington" still has not learned not to go "to war against Middle Eastern countries that pose no threat to the US mainland."

The Ann Arbour fortune cookie sounds like it was deliberately worded to suggest that even the bombing of Pearl Harbor only qualified as caasus belli because Japan happened not to be located in the Middle East. Perhaps I misunderstand those double-barreled restrictive clauses, however, and JC considers preëmptive retaliation perfectly in order against all attackers of Uncle Sam's non-contiguous states and territories except those who come from his own area of Area Studies? His formulation is so peculiar that it would be amazing indeed, should one single human being have learned that particular lesson. (Don Juan himself does not count, because presumably he already knew that rule in February 2002, even if he did not mention it out loud.)

If we asssume he means what he says and says what he means, there is little to discuss apart from asking for a clarification about the status of non-Levantines who commit peripheral attacks.[A] For the sake of argument, then, let us relax the weird Colean restrictions and wonder instead why "Washington" (or rather, why we Democrats) have not learned the lesson that aggression -- a Crawford-like contempt for internationally recognized and Uncle-Sam-recognized lines on the map -- is bad policy in general, without any special references to mainlands or Middle Easts. If that broader topic does not interest Prof. Cole, he need not address it.

There is a bit more in the AP story that does more or less bear on it:

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state. "It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," she said of the now-abandoned provision. "I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way," said Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York. Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran.

Most of the nonlearners of the broader lesson in our own donkey ranks think like that, and although their position is intellectually and ethically unacceptable at the end of the day, I'm incapable of being amazed by their refractoriness. It is one thing to expect clarity of thought and strictness of wording from ourselves or from a Don Juan Tenurado, but to demand the same of practical pols like Ms. Berkley or Mr. Ackerman is unreasonable. Getting reëlected (and that in New York!) positively requires a certain looseness of thought and vagueness of speech of them. If we maintain that such laxity should disqualify them for reëlection, we would have to discuss whether Democracy in America was a good idea in the first place, so let us agree to skip that preliminary item, please.

The "trouble" with Berkleys and Ackermans in a lofty conceptual matter like this one is that they hardly ever "recur to First Principles" as pre- and non-democratic statespersons are expected to, they always begin in the middle somewhere with an assortment of mere facts and make up their principles on the fly. The facts selected tend to be skewed towards their own reëlection, no doubt, but even if that were not the case, their tentative and merely practical principles are not likely to bear much looking into. For instance, tomorrow's practical principles may not be reconcilable with yesterday's practical principles.

Meanwhile the principe du jour is that when negotiating with unnormalized barbarians, as Representative Ackerman would phrase it, anything goes. Or rather, everything must be permitted to go. Unless we are seen to stick at nothing, the fiends will bury us! Not having gone around the bend altogether, B&A do not propose that we should really stick at nothing, only that we should make the bad guys think that we don't. How else to deal with faith-basers who don't mind blowing themselves up for political ends, if not by conveying a clear impression that we should not at all mind blowing them up, even if we have to break every rule in our own book in order to do so?

It won't do as logic, of course, and even worse, it won't do as a serious aggression and invasion policy either. THEY may not know "us" very well, but even so, it is quite impossible to hope to get away with that preposterous bluff. I daresay B&A rather like the Lone Cowboy side of Mr. Bush and his extremist Party, as possibly tending to lend substance to their bluff: who knows, maybe The Boy really is crazy? Didn't Mr. Hoagland of the Washington Post just assure us that certain unnamed gentry of "Washington," probably diplomatic, seriously think so in the case of Richard Bruce Cheney?

Ann Arbour may wish to scold B&A for not having learned the lesson that this sort of tomfoolery cannot work, but they can scarcely be expected to learn that from the GOP aggression of March 2003, which was not a bluff at all. One would have to look back to the Cold War for a proper parallel, and that is as as remote as Sennacherib and Tiglath-Pileser for the likes of Berkley and Ackerman -- "a week is a long time in politics." The appropriateness of the parallel is not unquestionable also, for would it really constitute "mutual assured destruction" if the faith-basers were to be destroyed physically, and ourselves only "destroyed" ethically and legally and constitutionally? Still, MAD was basically a bluff, and since we are still around to say so, one can maintain primâ facie that the bluff worked. I don't suppose for a moment that B&A are deliberately drawing any such lesson from early mediaeval history, but if they were, there would be nothing in that to be amazed about.

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[A] Don Juan Tenurado is not quite letter-perfect in another matter also. The term "war" wobbles back and forth between signifying (1) a certain formal relationship with foreign states that only Congress is authorized to establish, and (2) the sort of human events that we classify under "military history."