Broken

It took exactly ten seconds last night for the talking (air)heads on The President’s Megaphone NetworkFox News to totally ratchet my chain. First the timer in the corner of the screen that was counting the minutes until a Democrat response to the President’s address, as well as the caption “President proposes Iraq strategy, where are the Democrats?” This was obviously in reference to the line in the speech where Bush says, “And all involved have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed.” Normally, I would agree, but let’s be clear… this is more like a guy pulling the pin out of a grenade, releasing the spoon, trying (and failing) to put the pin back in, shrugging and saying “I’m going to keep trying to put this pin back in because I *know* it’s the right thing to do, so shut up unless you have a better idea.” Of course, the better idea is to distance oneself from a live grenade, but that would be cutting and running, wouldn’t it?

The thing that really fired me up though, was the line by which ever windbag-infotainer-of-the-moment that was denigrating those critical of the President’s policy and plan, “The founding father’s were very clear that there is only supposed to be one Commander-In-Chief, not 535 Commanders-In-Chief.” True… and in the interest of being very clear about the intent of the founding father, and in the interest of not slandering their actions or legacy, let’s take a look at that good ol’ Constitution. Specifically, Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;” … “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;”

Congress has the power to declare war, not the Commander-In-Chief. And yes, I know that the US hasn’t actually declared war on any nation since WWII… that doesn’t excuse or justify the actions of the current or any previous President.

As time goes on, I worry about how far we’ve drifted from the intent of the framers of the Constitution, and from the Amendments which secured for us our rights as citizens.

Where the buck stops

I’m not sure exactly why so many people try so hard to defend Bush when things have gone so badly in Iraq. As the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, the responsibility for the results of his orders must be placed squarely on his shoulders. The way I see it, there are only two possibilities for the current situation… either he acted on incorrect, tenuous information, or he had good information and simply chose to deceive the American people with regard to the motivation for military action. If the former is the case, then the deaths of over 3000 American troops (with how many more permanently disabled or wounded?) are due to incompetence. If the latter is true, then it is crimial dereliction of duty. Either way, I don’t see how the person giving the orders can escape the responsibility for the outcome.