Over at "Once Upon a Time . . .", Arthur Silber has written this piece pointing out the refusal of ridiculously stupid and wrong Peter Beinart to admit he was wrong in order to rescue himself from the intellectual and moral sink into which he has descended. I recommend it highly, as I do all Arthur writes. I want to take issue with something he writes, something echoed by Glenn Greenwald in his comment on a recent story about the Vice President. While I accept the VP does not believe, nor has this Administration acted as if it believed, there is or should be any legal or Constitutional check on Presidential power; while I believe the administration will fight to the end of its inglorious reign (can January, 2009 come soon enough?) any attempt by Congress to investigate, legislate, and of the judiciary to adjudicate against its gross usurpation of power; while I accept that there may be some in the Administration who wish to expand our military role to Iran and Syria - they are certainly making the same noises about Iran they made about Iraq throughout 2002; I refuse to accept as given that any military action will take place, because that may just provoke the kind of public constitutional crisis we have avoided since the Civil War, i.e., elements of the military, perhaps even at the highest levels, could mutiny against civilian authority.
This is a nightmare scenario even greater than the on-going constitutional crisis between Congress and the Executive over authority in the arena of foreign policy. What would happen if the President ordered strikes against Iran, and senior military officials refused? What if those senior military officials were replaced by more pliant ones, but lower ranks refused? I cannot imagine anything worse for us as a nation. The military is stretched beyond the breaking point by Iraq as it is; our fiscal policy is in a shambles because of a combination of Iraq, Afghanistan (which we never should have abandoned), and abysmal tax policy; the American people are certianly in no mood for expanding military action unless the threat is immediate, clear, and well-defined. I believe it is fear-mongering on the part of those who distrust this Administration (I include myself in that number, by the way) to insist that, regardless of elections and a clear public repudiation of the warmongering of the Bush Administration, that it will take us on a path that can only lead to disaster. There are no neo-cons left with any credibility (outside a media still numb from an election that rejected pretty much everything they wanted to tell us was real); conservatives in general and Republicans in particular are in such disarray, embracing a failed leadership to take them into a 110th Congress that will certainly be hostile to any mention of expanded military action absent a direct attack in US soil by a defined enemy; and no one in the country either believes or trusts the President.
We are ill-served by those who continue to spread the omnipotence of Cheney and the evil designs of those who share his disdain for democratic and legal processes. These were some of the same people who insisted that Rove would pull a rabbit out of the election hat. That never transpired, and Rove is now seen as a ridiculous figure who can't even do his own math. It is much better to humanize these pathetic figures, and consider the implications of what they are saying - expanding the war is courting a disaster of far-greater proportion than our current nightmare in Iraq. I do not absolutely discount the possibility that they would be so insanely stupid as to court a tragedy such as military mutiny and a threat to the Constitution such a blanket mutiny would mean; I just don't see it happening because the election means something, whether Cheney or others want to admit it or not. We need to remember that.
Virtual Tin Cup
