What Kind Of America?

by Robert Borosage

Co-Director of the Campaign For America's Future

The feckless vote on the Bush budget this week displayed both the contempt the Bush White House holds for the Congress, and the congressional servility that invites that contempt. President Bush regally insisted that Congress vote on his budget -- with its record deficits and large top-end tax cuts -- without any estimate, much less any adjustment, for the cost of a war that has already begun and that renders the budget obsolete. The White House simply stonewalled its estimates until Republican leaders forced a vote on its tax cuts. In meekly playing their part in this farce, the craven Republican congressional leadership -- Frist, Hastert and DeLay -- despoiled the institution that they purport to lead.

This public indignity illustrates the challenge Americans will face after Iraq's defeat. The administration's attention is belatedly turning to what kind of Iraq the United States will build after the war. But for Americans, the hard question is what kind of America we will build after the war.

We can honor the sacrifice and courage of the young men and women who put their lives at risk for this country, and still recognize how preposterous the president's description of Saddam Hussein as a "threat to the world" was. Like little boys with flies, the most powerful military in the history of mankind is swatting away what's left of an Iraqi force crippled by dictatorship, demoralized by defeat and debilitated by a decade of embargo, air occupation, inspection and weapons dismantlement. The real "shock and awe" in Iraq is the radical nature of the propositions the Bush administration now trumpets.

1. The doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive war.

By launching the war without U.N. approval, the Bush administration made Iraq the test of its commitment to use military force unilaterally -- unconstrained by law, international approval or allied support -- against potential threats, in the president's words, "before they emerge." This represents a flagrant and conscious defiance for international law as defined by the U.N. charter, and a stark departure from the post-World War II bipartisan tradition of building strong alliances, supporting international institutions and paying tribute to the rule of law, even when we were trampling it. When the war ends, Americans must decide if the United States is to police the world alone or if, sobered by the real costs of this little war -- in resources, global hostility, disruption of alliances and in the perils of occupation amid civil strife -- we abandon the Bush doctrine and invest once more in international cooperation.

2. A revived imperial presidency.

"Go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," John Quincy Adams presciently warned us over 150 years ago, or America might find herself "dictatress of the world," but not longer "the ruler of her own soul." The Bush administration accompanies its preemptive war doctrine with a reassertion of the imperial presidency. The White House disdainfully truncated the congressional debate on this "war of choice." The president made it clear that he did not believe that Congress had any choice to make; he alone could and would decide the question of war or peace. Congress was invited only to applaud -- and it supinely accepted that bit part. The "Iraq crisis" was "rolled out" for the election season last fall, with a popular post-9/11 president and loyal Republican leadership demanding congressional endorsement of a blank check for the use of force. The White House, most notably in South Dakota, showed that it was willing to assail the patriotism of any who got in the way. Too many legislators in both parties were too cowed to require hearings and a considered debate -- either before the election or after, thus depriving the American people and the legislators of any serious opportunity to probe the president's case. And now the president has blithely launched the war without seeking congressional funding to support it. The Congress will be given the bill only after the engagement of the troops has insured it will pick up the tab.

3. The revival of the internal security state.

Days after 9/11, the administration stampeded Congress into giving it unprecedented license for political surveillance. John Ashcroft's Justice Department now asserts the right to surveil Americans without probable cause, to arrest and hold them without charges, to detain them indefinitely, to deprive them of access to counsel and to try them before military tribunals. The administration then shields its practices behind an unprecedented screen of secrecy. For this, it receives only sporadic criticism from a Congress and people shaken by real terrorist threats that the administration's wars are likely to proliferate. The chilling effect on speech is reinforced by a right-wing media claque that sets upon the mildest dissent with ravenous fury, and a remarkably quiescent establishment media that has largely failed to expose the administration's falsehoods, challenge its secrecy or criticize its excesses.

4. The triumph of military priorities.

To pursue this policy, the Bush administration calls for a core annual military budget of $400 billion and growing, a budget above that of the Cold War years when the United States faced a global adversary. And, of course, actual use of the military in the war on terrorism or Iraq costs extra. As befits a global cop, the Pentagon is assuming an ever more pre-eminent role in intelligence assessment, covert operations and assertive diplomacy. In the wake of 9/11, the administration's energy policy features not a concerted drive for energy independence, but the construction of a formidable base structure throughout the Gulf region. We devote most of our foreign aid, and most of our federal research and development to weaponry. Nations do most what they do best, and we do guns. The more we spend on the military, the more capacity we have to go places and do things. The more we go places and do things, the more the military needs. The price is paid, inevitably, by America's most vulnerable as child care and housing and health care are cut, promises on education investment are broken and college loans and grants fail to keep up with college costs. Faced with the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, states and localities raise taxes and slash budgets for police and schools. Yet the administration's "emergency supplemental" budget request seeks funds only for the wars on terrorism and Iraq.

Will Americans accept that one man may rush us into wars of his choosing against countries that pose no imminent threat, contrary to the intent of the Founders, the design of the Constitution and the charter of the United Nations? Will we relinquish our liberties in order to secure them? Is there a residue of institutional pride in the Congress that would lead even some in the Republican majority to challenge a leadership that casts them as court jesters?

These are the challenges that must now inform the agenda of the remarkable citizen movement that spread across the nation and the globe to oppose the president's course. Now that movement faces the hard task of translating political protest into a powerful political force that can educate Americans about alternative policies and priorities that will better serve their security. And then citizens of conscience must challenge the imperial president and the craven congressional majority at the voting booth. The Bush administration's radical posture is clear. It will require a regime change in America to alter it.

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