The debate about Syria reminds us that a cat can laugh at the King, but the King has the power.

Larry Kummer, Editor

11 years ago

Summary: The debate about Syria shows the weak state of The Republic, the power of the forces building a New America, and the need for urgent action by the American people. We laugh at the antics of the war party, but they seem likely to have the last laugh (again).

“We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of War used by publicists. … War is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.”
— Clausewitz’s On War. Book One, Chapter One, Section 1, paragraph one (1827)

Testimony at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Syria, 3 September 2013:

Secretary of State Kerry: “President Obama is not asking America to go to war, and I say that sitting next to two men, Secretary Hagel and Chairman Dempsey, who know what war is. Senator McCain knows what war is. They know the difference between going to war and what President Obama is requesting now. We all agree there will be no American boots on the ground.

… I just don’t consider that going to war in the classic sense of coming to Congress and asking for a declaration of war and training troops and sending people abroad and putting young Americans in harm’s way. That’s not what the president is asking for here. General, do you want to speak at all to that?”

General Dempsey (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): “No, not really, Secretary. Thank you for offering.”

Got to love the subtle irony of Dempsey’s reply.

“A cat can laugh at a King” – but the King has the power

It is easy to mock the powerful. Ha, ha, ha — silly Secretary of State. But the King has power; the cat does not. That the Secretary of State lies to us so brazenly, so casually, is a display of power and confidence. It’s too soon to conclude that his evaluation is wrong. Only the outcome matters. If Obama does attack Syria, all the fuss being made now merely demonstrates his power.

Approval in Congress (like Iraq) would demonstrates the President’s imperial primacy in foreign affairs.
An attack with no approval (as in Libya) does so even more.
An attack despite explicit disapproval in Congress — passage of a motion against intervention, even if only an advisory (ie, not forbidding spending on an attack) — would in effect declare Obama a tyrant (in the classical sense, as one personally wielding the power of the State).

My guess (emphasis on guess), is that the President will attack no matter what Congress says. President Obama can cite precedents and a legal opinion for such actions. For example, see the Memorandum opinion by the Deputy Counsel to the President, 25 September 2001. That legal opinion is supported by many legal scholars, some of whom (eg, Judge Richard Posner) deem him to have truly imperial powers. On this basis his officials have been preparing us for the next step in the expansion of Presidential power: acting in defiance of Congress (There was no explicit vote by Congress against intervention in Libya. The Senate approved, the House neither approved or forbid action).

Q: Hadn’t the president in essence ceded that leeway {authority to attack Syria} by coming to Congress?

Kerry: “Constitutionally, every president, Republican and Democrat alike, has always reserved to the presidency, to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the right to make a decision with respect to American security,. … Bill Clinton went to Kosovo over the objections of many people and saved lives and managed to make peace because he did something that was critical at the time. Many presidents have done that. Reagan did it. Bush did it. A lot of presidents have made a decision that they have to protect the nation. … the president reserves the right in the presidency to respond as appropriate to protect the security of our nation.”

— SecState Kerry in an interview with Huffington Post on September 5

Each expansion of Presidential power opens a new vein on the Second Republic, often not clear until later. Such as this: “The Senate’s Syria Resolution Has a Huge Secret Giveaway to the President“, Garrett Epps, The Atlantic, 6 September 2013 — “Though Congress plays at narrowing Obama’s authority, the draft authorization could actually give him and future presidents sweeping new powers to intervene overseas.”

Conclusions

If we are to re-take control of the Republic we must accept the weakness of our position — and the strength of the President’s.

Even more important, we must realize that making noise accomplishes little by itself. While instrumental as a means, but only when applied by an organization (coalition, movement) as a phase toward greater goals. In the past decade or so protests are street festivals, the equivalent of the largely futile medieval peasants protests. They support the regime as a mechanism to vent anger without effect on policy. That has been so since the last effective protests, when anti-draft protests created the volunteer army (but didn’t end the war: the last US forces withdrew in March 1973, the draft expired in June 1973).

Our only hope lies in learning from methods that have worked in the past. Events such as Syria are like symptoms of syphilis, manifestations of an underlying disease. We can burn all our energy fighting each expansion of government power, and lose. Or organize to seek structural changes, and have the potential to win.

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