Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Will Saudi Arabia Bail Out Bush Again?


The unspoken – or at least rarely spoken – consensus of establishment scholars holds that presidential “greatness” is made manifest in an aggressive disdain for the Constitution. The “great” men who dominate the presidential pantheon -- tyrants and usurpers like Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR -- ignored the constitutional limits on presidential authority, invoking wartime emergencies to justify centralization of power in the executive.

George W. Bush's accomplishments in this realm may elevate him over those three titans of the post-constitutional presidency. This isn't because he's mastered the Machiavellian subtleties of power, or devised some exotic new rationale for presidential autocracy. Rather, it's because his boundless sense of personal privilege is a perfect fit for the ideologues who surround him – war-obsessed social engineers who understand the evil symbiosis between perpetual war abroad and a dictatorial presidency on the domestic front.

Last Sunday, Secretary of State Rice dropped several gravid hints that in the event Congress seeks to reclaim its war powers – by repealing or modifying its 2002 “authorization” of war against Iraq, by withdrawing funding for the war, or by imposing conditions on the continued deployment of troops to the region -- Bush will simply ignore its enactments.

After condemning Congress for what she called “the worst of micromanagement of military affairs,” Rice was asked on Fox “News” whether Bush would consider himself “bound” by legislation requiring the withdrawal of combat troops within 120 days.

The president is going to, as commander in chief, need to do what the country needs done,” she replied, striving to craft a sentence that was at once clear with respect to the Regime's assertion of presidential power, and opaque regarding the crimes it contemplates against the Constitution.


In setting out its version of the doctrine Rice alluded to, the Organization Book of the German National Socialist Party used more elegant language, insisting that the chief executive, unlike the legislature, embodies the “collective will” of the people, and exercises power that is “independent, all-inclusive, and unlimited,” for which he is accountable “only to his conscience.”


Translated from German into soundbite-ready contemporary English, that's a pretty good summary of the Bush doctrine of executive power.

There is little appetite on Capitol Hill for a face-off on the matter of war powers: The Democrats are content to nibble at the margins of Bush's Iraq policy. And this is pretty much all they can do, since most Democrats in Congress signed off on the 2002 resolution that supposedly authorized the war in Iraq – a measure with no constitutional legitimacy through which Congress abdicated its exclusive power to commit our nation to war.

In addition to vesting the war decision in Congress, the Constitution gives the legislative branch plenary authority over funding and regulating the military. The role assigned to the president is entirely contingent and derivative. Congressional “micro-management” of a war, whatever one thinks of it from a prudential perspective, is entirely appropriate under the Constitution.

Given that the Iraq war was illegitimate from the beginning, the only suitable course of action would be for Congress to de-fund it, and order (yes, order) Bush to bring the troops home.

Were we the moral, Christian nation we advertise ourselves to be, after our troops were back Congress would issue a national apology to Iraq for the unprovoked, unjust war our government launched upon it, and order (yes, order) Bush and his handlers to travel to Baghdad to deliver it in person. It would then enact a measure providing reparations to Iraq, which is the duty of every nation that launches a war of aggression. (Reparations in this case would be a sum sufficient to repair the country's infrastructure and oil industry; this would make it economically viable once again, and would be far less expensive than continuing the war.)

This is a whole lot of ain't-gonna-happen, of course, even though it should.

What could happen, however, if opposition to the war continues to build, might be a version of the conflict that erupted at the end of WWI (described in Thomas Fleming's superb book The Illusion of Victory), when Congress threatened to issue a formal declaration ending the war. Woodrow Wilson, who by that time had descended into a state of self-enraptured megalomania rivaling that of Bush, intended to keep US troops in Europe to use in punitive action against Germany had that nation – already starving and prostrate as the result of a food embargo – resisted any provision of the Versailles Treaty.


Wilson was eventually forced to concede, and “normalcy” was restored. I wouldn't expect that the delusional man-child currently occupying the Oval Office would prove to be as reasonable were Congress to enact a binding measure ending the war.

If Congress were to cut off funding, it's possible that Bush and his cronies, who (as mentioned yesterday) include veterans of the Iran-Contra plot from the mid-1980s, would ignore the legislative branch and turn to Saudi Arabia or other shadowy sources for funds to continue the war.

After all, as Seymour Hersh points out, the Bush regime's covert operations in the Gulf region have been drawing on many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” in the words of a Pentagon consultant. “The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.”

In many of those clandestine operations, Hersh points out, the administration has left “the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.” During a “surprise meeting” in Saudi Arabia last November, King Abdullah warned Dick Cheney “that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw.” In the interest of holding the Shi'ites at bay, one intelligence official told Hersh, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”


Hey, get a room: Bush and Saudi King Abdullah



In the event that Congress were to cut off money for the Iraq war, would it be possible that George W. Bush – whose business career was bailed out by the Saudis – would turn to the Saudis for stopgap funding for his illegal war?

After all of the other crimes he's committed against our Constitution and national independence, why would Bush be reluctant to do this, if the occasion presented itself?


9 comments:

  1. Should it be time for the breakup of the united States of America?

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  2. This may sound awkward or even bizarre at first read, as it waxes philosophical in an esoteric manner, to be sure, but I have to admit that I, like most within the eco-nazi, femi-fascist, and other movements, am a radical or fast becoming one. But my notion of "radical" is premised in complete opposition to their mantras. I'm becoming more of an anti-American precisely because I hate the real direction the country is moving politically, culturally, and philosophically. Whereas, those groups I listed above hate the perceived direction they would yammer that the country is moving politically, culturally, and philosophically (i.e. becoming more Rightist or isolationist, anti-U.N.,anti-government, and/or the commoners continually support less government, etc., ad nauseam). Nonsense, it ain't happenin'.

    Ergo, perhaps our country needs yet another war to accelerate our eventual financial ruin, not to mention enhance the spawning of a bona fide genuine dictatorship domestically. Let everyone share in the misery. Maybe then, finally, folk will wake up to the folly of it all - the cultural sewer, the corrupt politics, the dependency disease, ad nauseam? Of course, the only problem with this mindset is that, by the time the hapless commoners can finally see the forest instead of the trees, it will be much too late to reverse course.

    After all, once a country powers up the totalitarian socialist machine it can only be powered down and the commoners freed from its chain drive by an outside entity, never internally, and even then usually only after near total destruction and ruin by war or simply being conquered outright by an outsider (not necessarily, or even likely, by a foreign military force in America's case) and leaving the infrastructure intact.

    Either way, it's the end of whatever genuine liberty and responsible freedom existed before whatever socialist machine was powered up in the first place. Even then, the new foreign conquerors (America, U.K. and U.S.S.R. after WWII, for example) don't reject socialist machines altogether, oh no, they simply put into place a brand new, "much improved, more efficient" socialist machine to take the old one's place.

    Round the rosie they (and we) go ...

    When one ponders how the Cuban commoners raged hysterically against the Batista machine, only to be handed, what they erroneously perceived in 1959 was their hero and supporter of the "commoner man," the Castro machine and they shaked, rattled, and rock and rolled. But the party quickly fizzled out when reality set in ... too late to remedy, naturally.

    So it also was, to some extent, with the German commoners in 1933 with the dawn of Hitler's machine, as it was with the Russian commoners in 1917 with the rise of Lenin's machine, and so on.

    Anyway, I think it's inevitable at this point that our socialist machine has already been bolted in place and has been chuggin' away, albeit much more slooooowly than for other hapless folk in the aforementioned nations, for decades but in our case the cultural fuel for it is now becoming high-octane and will power the machine even faster. No more mere chuggin', it's howling with horsepower these days.

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  3. You're misinterpreting my utterances here, DrFix. Perhaps, you think I'm pessimistic about the future in general?

    No, not at all. I'm just trying to state the reality within a secular context, as most folk these days have no Christian worldview. I'm "anti-American" by being a radical constitutionalist and Christian.

    Therefore, I actually am personally optimistic about the future when the King of Kings returns to rule and reign on this Earth. IOW, I'm not losing sleep, as apparently some indeed are, over America's direction as I sincerely believe it is destined to become upstaged on the world scene anyway by the EU and become just a province of the NAU (AU) and that being a regional province of the slowly but surely metastasizing world government. We've got the European Union, the North American Union (which I think will eventually in due time encompass the whole of the Americas and become simply the "American Union"),the emerging Central American Union, the African Union, and let's not forget the emerging Asian Union, in which China will probably be the top dog running that regional show.

    The reality is that a one world government is coming, however brief its existence before the War to End All Wars commences. First, it starts with economic integration (no surprise) in the various regions, then eventually a political integration.

    That said, am I really frettin' about the all but obvious demise of our republic? No, since these man-made attempts at regional unification and integration going on worldwide as we speak makes perfect sense eschatologically. Besides, how else could a world leader even attempt to successfully run the world without some sort of superficial, if not outright literal, political integration? He can't.

    I say "attempt" and "superficial" above because a man-made world peace (through attempted or even manifest unification) simply won't work in the end since they ignore the Prince of Peace Himself. Meanwhile, there's that "nuisance" state of Israel in the way of of it all, of course.

    As is a thief is in the night, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. Be ready indeed ;).

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  4. Dixiedog,
    Your comprehension of biblical eschatology is right on target. You've stumbled unto a development that is hugely overlooked today by most Evangelical Christian theologians, pop prophecy icons and pastors, whether emanating from the dispensationalist or covenantalist camps. (I share some viewpoints from both perspectives; however, I thoroughly reject any notion of a two phase Second Coming initiated by a partial, secret return of Christ followed seven years later by His complete return i.e., the pretrib rapture.)

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  5. Are these the prophesied 'Ten Horns'?:
    1) European Union -1993
    2) African Union -2002
    3) Russian Union/Federation
    4) North American Union
    5) South American Union
    (Fox News 12-10-06)
    6) South Asian Union
    (India Daily 2-12-05)
    7) East Asian Union
    (Asia Times 4-7-05)

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  6. (Cont.)
    8) Central Asian Union
    (Kazinform News 9-20-06)
    9) Asian Pacific Union
    (APEC to form APU?)
    10) Middle East Union
    (Free Trade Area of the Middle
    East/FTAME to form MEU?)

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  7. anonymous, this is off-topic here. My response for what it's worth.

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  8. Will, I think I forgot to supply the actual link to my response in that previous post. There it is.

    My apologies ;).

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  9. Dixiedog,
    Yes, I was off topic. Sorry, fellas; I know Pro Libertate is primarily a political blog. After this, I'll post only pertinent comments. Thanks for your input DD. However, I still hold to the historic Premillennial view i.e., the post-trib rapture. Keep your eyes on the 10 'Horns/Kings' regional government development. We may be witnessing a major prophetic event unfolding in our time. Check out the Institute of Biblical Defense for further theological details. God bless.

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