Does the decider decide on war?

by Patrick J. Buchanan
May 29, 2007

Has Congress given George Bush a green light to attack Iran?

For he is surely behaving as though it is his call alone. And evidence is mounting that we are on a collision course for war.

-- Iran has detained several Iranian-Americans, seemingly in retaliation for our continuing to hold five Iranians in Iraq.

-- The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says Iran is making progress in the enrichment of uranium and denying it access to Iran's nuclear sites.

-- Bush is calling on Russia and China to toughen sanctions.

-- A flotilla of U.S. warships, including the carriers Stennis and Nimitz, has passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf.

-- U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell has told CNN there is "very credible intelligence" Iran is funding Sunni extremists engaged in the roadside bombing of U.S. troops.

-- CBS reports the United States has engaged in the industrial sabotage of Iran's nuclear program by making the equipment Iran acquires on the black market unusable or destructive.

-- ABC reports that Bush has authorized the CIA to mount a "black" operation to destabilize Iran, using "non-lethal" means. The absence of White House outrage over the leak suggests it may have wanted the information out.

-- ABC.com reports U.S. officials are supporting a militant group, Jundallah, in the "tri-border region" of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jundallah, a Sunni Islamist group seeking independence for Baluchistan, claims to have killed hundreds of Iranians.

While U.S.-Iran discussions have begun, there are reports Vice President Cheney and the neo-con remnant, along with the Israelis, are opposed to talks and believe that the only solution to Iran's nuclear program is military. Whether this is part of a good-cop, bad-cop routine to convince Tehran to suspend enrichment, we do not know.

But this much is sure. If the U.S. government is aiding Islamic militants who are killing Iranians, and Iran is providing roadside bombs to Iraqi militants, Sunni or Shia, to kill Americans, we are in a proxy war. And it could explode into a major war.

So the questions come. Where is the Congress, which alone has the power to take us to war? Why are the Democratic candidates parroting the "all-options-are-on-the-table!" mantra, when as ex-Sen. Mike Gravel noted in the first Democratic debate, this means George W. Bush is authorized to attack Iran.

Why does Congress not enact the resolution Nancy Pelosi pulled down, which declares that nothing in present law authorizes President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike or preventive war on Iran -- and before launching any such attack, he must get prior approval from both houses of Congress?

If we are going to war, is it not imperative that, this time, we know exactly why we must go to war, what exactly the threat is from Iran, what are the likely consequences of a U.S. attack on a third Islamic country and what are the alternatives to war?

For there are arguments against war, as well as for war -- and the former are not receiving a hearing, as both parties compete in their fulminations against Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler of the Middle East.

What are those arguments?

On Iran's nuclear progress, there is a real question as to whether they are producing purified uranium. Iran's refusal to let the IAEA see what it is doing suggests it may be covering up failure.

Second, though Iranians sound bellicose, Iran has not started a single war since the revolution of 1979. Indeed, Iran was the victim of a war launched by Saddam Hussein, whom we secretly supported. Not within living memory has Iran invaded or attacked another country.

But in the last 110 years, peace-loving Americans have fought Spain, Germany twice, Austria-Hungary, Japan, Italy, North Korea, North Vietnam, Iraq twice and Serbia. We have intervened militarily in the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Lebanon and Grenada. We bombed Libya. Now, a case can be made for most of these wars, whose fallen we honor on Memorial Day.

But the point is this. Why would Iran, with no air force or navy that can stand up 24 hours against us, no missile that can reach us, no atom bomb, and no ability to withstand U.S. air and sea attack, want a war with us that could mean the end of Iran as a modern nation and possible breakup of the country, as Iraq is breaking up?

Whether one is pro-war or antiwar, ought we not -- if we are going into another war -- do it the right way, the constitutional way, with Congress declaring war? Or does the Democratic Congress think that what is best for America is to let "the decider" decide?

Because that is what George Bush is doing right now.

TIME: I am sure, I have never been in such total agreement with Pat.

Have a good
Memorial Day
(weekend)




Unfortunately, one of the sacrifices soldiers have to make; is to die for the stupidity and lies of their leaders. It has been that way forever, not just since President Bush.

That's why it's so important that we (citizens) hold our leaders to account for their decisions.

What do we do if we have spoken and our leaders still act against our wishes?

Being a good citizen, is more than just voting. Civic responsibility is more than just looking out for what's good for ourselves, but what's good for the whole country. The idea that "special interest" groups hold so much power over our representatives; shows just how much we are failing to do our jobs, as citizens.

If we see ourselves as the defender of liberty in the world, then we have to think of the world, not just our country.

If we commit violence in the name of national security, is that to actually protect our people and land, or to protect some commodity we are addicted to? When we talk about our national security interests in the Middle East, lets be clear, we are talking about securing a flow of oil. The life blood of our economy, without which our economy would certainly crumble. It is not only essential to us, but essential to the world, that America have a healthy economy.

So is it moral to defend a necessary commodity to us, with deadly force? To me, not if we have other means at our disposal to replace that commodity. Laziness, or a refusal to invest the needed money to produce those resources, is not an excuse to substitute offensive violence, and death. Wouldn't it have been more moral to invade and end the genocide in Darfur?

Would Islamic terrorists be attacking us, if it were not for our policies and behavior through the last century towards them, to protect our flow of Arab oil? It is to late to change what we have done in the past, so we must face this violence for years to come.

To want to dominate the world, with any one political philosophy, is insane. So we must question if it is best for us to force democracy throughout the world. If free elections bring socialism to South America, do we invade South America? If free elections bring communism to Russia, do we invade Russia? Are these truly free elections? Did we have a truly free election in 2000?

The President has decided that we need a violent offense, to defend ourselves. This is a policy change for America. We watched England be bombed for years, we saw China raped, France fell, but we didn't enter WWII until we were attacked. The League of Nations, the United Nations, both attempts to remind us that we do have a responsibility to the world, and must engage to ensure our own security.

To equate killing with honor, is immoral. I suppose we need to entice young people somehow, to do our killing for us. Is there such thing as a good war? NO. Are there times when it is necessary to fight and kill? YES.

The troops have honor in the courage they show, willing to put their lives on the line for their fellow citizens.

It is our mistake if we, or our leaders make the wrong decision about which situation calls for the sacrifice and death of our young people.

Everyone jumps on the band wagon of praising our soldiers for their courage and sacrifice. Yet, we cut Veterans benefits, refuse to pay what it takes for them to have the best equipment and supplies, they have to fight the red tape just to get needed medical care, private citizens pay for bullet proof vests, private citizens pay for a military burn unit in Arizona, and on, and on, and on.

We are hypocrites en mass on this issue. It's time to put our money where our mouths are! The political debate ends when it comes to taking care of our troops.

Support the troops - with your money!!

No new taxes! Quite a line to attract voters. No one wants to pay more taxes. We have to decide what kind of society we want and how much we are willing to pay for that society.

Support ALL Veterans!!

TIME: Seems a good time to restate some of the things you have heard me say before.

Dobbs: A call to the faithful

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The separation of church and state in this country is narrowing. And it is the church, not the state that is encroaching. Our Constitution protects religion from the intrusion or coercion of the state. But we have precious little protection against the political adventurism of all manner of churches and religious organizations.

The leadership of the Catholic Church and many Protestant churches, as well as Jewish and even Muslim religious organizations, are driving that political adventurism as those leaders conflate religion and politics. And while there is a narrowing of the separation between church and state, there is a widening schism between the leadership of churches and religious organizations and their followers and members.

Conservative evangelical leader James Dobson recently said actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson wasn't Christian enough to be president. He instead chose to commend Newt Gingrich, who has been married three times and recently admitted to an extramarital affair. Five evangelical Christian leaders signed the "Land Letter" to President Bush in 2002 affirming a Christian theological basis to invade Iraq.

This week the head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, basically threatened his faithful with denial of heaven if they don't support amnesty for illegal aliens. The good Cardinal said: "Anything that tears down one group of people or one person, anything that is a negative in our community, disqualifies us from being part of the eternal city."

The nation's religious leaders seem hell-bent on ignoring the separation of church and state when it comes to the politically charged issue of illegal immigration. A new coalition called Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform Wednesday will begin lobbying lawmakers with a new advertising and direct mail campaign on behalf of amnesty for illegal aliens.

The Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine put it this way: "If given the choice on this issue between Jesus and Lou Dobbs, I choose my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

But before the faithful acquiesce in the false choice offered by the good Reverend, perhaps he and his followers should consult Romans 13, where it is written: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

There is a more obvious and immediate judgment offered by the followers and members of both the Protestant and Catholic Churches. A Zogby poll last year asked churchgoers if they supported the House bill that would make illegal aliens return home and reduce future illegal immigration by securing the border and performing checks on illegal employers. Seventy-five percent of Protestants responded that was a good or very good idea, 77 percent of born-again Christians also agreed, and 66 percent of Catholics also backed tougher enforcement measures.

This schism between our church leaders and church members is just as broad and deep as that between our elected officials and their constituents across the country. Neither the state nor the church is exhibiting wisdom or fidelity to our national values in permitting the widening of that divide.

Time: I'm with Mr. Dobbs on this issue. No other issue has so many hypocrites claiming to have the "moral high ground" on religious correctness, and how people must live their lives.

deezelboy - What role does violence play in the past/current/future evolution of man?

This was originally going to be a comment to the original post, but I'm afraid it grew to the point that I considered it large enough to warrant a seperate post (apologies if I have offended anyone here). I take a somewhat different approach than Fitz and Bill Megatron, and view violence as playing a very minimal role in human evolution, both genetic and social, although it is mainly devolutional when concerned with the social eveolution of mankind.

What role does violence play in the past/current/future evolution of man?

Well, it depends on what kind of evolution we are talking about, although both types lead to the same conclusion. I’d also point out that pretty much all animals are violent, being unable to manufacture resources out of sunlight and thin air as plants do. Therefore in order to live, animals must take those resources and be able to defend them. Yet we mainly apply the concept of violence to interspecies attacks – human against human – and this is the focus of this response.

Genetic Evolution

From the genetic standpoint of human evolution, I suspect that being violent has played a far lesser role than being a convincing liar, or being in love. To illustrate my point, I think we should separate violence into two categories: violence against competitors (men against men) and violence against mates (men against women).

Violence against Competitors
The Pitcairn islanders illustrate the first category. When the 9 male mutineers arrived off the HMS Bounty, they joined an island population of 6 male and 13 female Polynesians. 18 years later, 10 women were left but only one man – one had committed suicide, another had died naturally, the other twelve had been murdered. The imbalance between men and women, added with the polygamous nature of the colony, had lead to a wave of jealousy between the men with violent consequences. The islanders then adopted monogamy, which quelled the violence and lead to the colony growing rather than its previous decline.

This is a very small scale example, but the point here is that from a genetic standpoint two important conclusions can be reached. For the last man standing, violence had played a major role in the diffusion of his genes: he (or rather his genes) had gained a massive short term advantage through the acquisition of a harem of ten women. From a long term perspective… Well, you can guess. A dwindling gene pool leading to a rise in the infectiousness of nasty stuff like disease and parasites; a gamble that the sole surving male could be wiped out, leading to a sterile and thus dead colony; an inability to expand; an insane waste of resources. All evidence points to the preliterate, polygamous and patriachial societies that we have recently been in contact with experiencing a high amount of fratricidal and internecine warfare for the acquisition of females.

But the point still stands: if you wipe out every single male on this planet, your genes dominate. It’s what your genes would want. We should all go out now and start devising viruses to wipe out every other male on this planet, or at least sterilise them if you want to bring a modicum of conscience and planning into the equation. This would effectively end human evolution and the human species, so we should be thankful that our genetics also allow us the ability to love others, to cooperate, and to have an innate concept of fairness. Violence plays a much lesser role in human evolution than some of the more positive attributes we are blessed with. Hence social systems to prevent a global replay of Pitcairn.

Violence against Mates
Well, women really, and we generally call it rape rather than violence. Men are a lot more aggressive than women, and for good reason: they’re not the ones who carry the offspring for so long. Male commitment can last for thirty seconds – hence violence – whereas female commitment will last for at least a decade before the offspring reach a reproductive capability.

Much like as the Pitcairners found, our genes are selfish and are interested only in the short-term. You would have thought that a very good short-term policy to ensure your genes are passed on is to have a career as a serial rapist, and to be honest there are many animals that employ this strategy, although they are necessarily solitary rather than social species.

Being mammals, human females are able to conceive only during oestrus: about one week in four, for human females. A rather nice touch in human evolution is that unusually in mammalian species, the human male has absolutely no inherent way to detect when a potential mate is in oestrus. I believe that this is beneficial – it prevents the serial rapist’s genes from being passed on in any great numbers.

An incredibly virile serial rapist would therefore only be able to impregnate 25% of his victims. And this is the easiest part of the struggle – there is absolutely no guarantee that the victim will keep the offspring until it reaches a reproductive age (hence the beneficial part). While women have historically been the major providers of food, if the victim has a partner he is as unlikely to protect and nurture a cuckoo in the nest and if not she is more unlikely to get a partner. The rapist’s offspring are therefore at a serious disadvantage.

A far better evolutionary strategy is to become a convincing liar – and bear in mind that the most convincing liars are those that are unaware that they are lying. If a man can convince a woman that he will stick with her and provide and protect the family unit he is intending to build, he is able to conduct affairs (as is his partner) – preferably with women who are also partnered up (as the woman’s partner will provide resources for the adulterers’ offspring).

Social Evolution

From the view of human social evolution, violence has played an extremely detrimental role. Bill Megatron gave the example of the Roman Empire – through violent expansion they gave survivors of their conquered countries a much improved quality of life, although this could have equally been carried out through trade or alliances. What has not been mentioned is that the violent collapse of the Roman Empire threw Europe into the Dark Ages, and it would take a thousand years to crawl their way back to the height of Rome.

The library of Alexandria was put to the torch: we will never know what was lost, but at least another millennia of Human knowledge is suspected to have disappeared within a night. The violent feudalism of Mediaeval Europe produced little of any real worth – at the same time, the centuries of relative peace within the Middle East after the Islamic conquest lead to a wealth of knowledge which we still use today, on a daily basis. The Hundred Years War set Europe back at least another century, allowing Britain in a period of relative peace to storm ahead in its affairs.

We may make the mistake of associating empire building with violence, but essentially what an empire does is goad separate countries into working together as a coherent entity. The initial violence that causes a country to be subsumed into the empire wrecks it – the fact it can no longer fight for its survival as an individual entity is testimony to this. The empire then goes about rebuilding the newly acquired country, and it lives in an area of relative peace. It is the peace that leads to the evolution of human societies – violence produces a devolutionary effect, as testified by the Dark Ages or the burning of Alexandria. It can set you back millennia, and has done so, repeatedly. 100,000 years ago we had the same capability for intelligence as we have now, and yet we have a collective identity going back only about 6,000 years. Violence has stunted us as a species: we are far away from our true potential.

Future Evolution
Genetically, I haven’t got a clue. Human genetic diversity is quite limited as compared to other species – we went through a bottleneck about 70,000 years ago – so we don’t really lose too much when we go genocidal. We also have the capability to adapt our environment than wait for natural selection to adapt us to it, so there’s not that much evolution going on with us. The only one I know of is the gene for lactose tolerance, though presumably there are more.

There’s always the sexual selection thing going on, which is pretty cool. At the moment the major factors seem to be nubility for men and status for women, and as violence is one way to get status, it plays a contributory role. If you can’t become a Bill Gates or a Bill Clinton you try for Scarface or the King of New York!

If we’re talking about social evolution, then we can expect to lose quite a lot periodically. When mass violence occurs, it tends to wipe out cities which leads to a loss of information. So I don’t think it’s unrealistic to assume that we will have many more dark ages, and a limited view of our past, throughout the course of our history.