Nixon's contempt for the norms of our judicial system had already become apparent at his first appearance in court as a freshly minted lawyer many years before, when the judge in the case thought that he should be disbarred. And yet this devious and unprincipled man was allowed to rise to the level of the Presidency, there to proclaim legal immunity.
Then came Ronald Reagan. The Reagan campaign knee-capped President Carter's re-election effort by secretly interfering with his negotiations for the Iran hostages. They were released on the stroke of Reagan's inauguration, in recognition of his promises to the Iranian regime. Yet another case of treason against our country, and against the norm of an honest election. During his tenure in the White House, George H.W. Bush was persuaded by William Barr to pardon the miscreants in the Iran-Contra scandal, which crashed the case being brought against them by the Special Counsel, Lawrence Walsh. William Barr had struck another blow for the imperial Presidency.
Then came Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America. He was determined to discredit the Democratic Party permanently as a governing party. At this point, the Republican Party became an insurrectionist party, one that no longer felt bound by constitutional norms. If the objective is an Imperial Presidency, one also has to assure that the office will never be occupied by a Democrat. And so we had the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which was followed by the installation of George Bush as president by action of the Supreme Court, quite possibly its single worst decision in history. "Get over it," said the normally articulate Antonin Scalia. There was no legitimacy to such an action.
The Supreme Court scandal was then followed by the theft of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio, handing George Bush his second term. Remarkably, the Democratic Party did not make an issue of this heist. Calling electoral integrity into question would have had the perverse effect of diminishing voter engagement even further.
The Republican Party was blind-sided by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and it became necessary to see to it that his administration would be a failure, so that the nation would learn its lesson. Party over country had become the rule of the day. Having done their best to hobble the President, the Party was totally unprepared for his re-election. In consequence, there was massive resistance to Presidential appointments to judgeships in the second term. Delegitimization of the Democratic Presidency was proceeding in the full light of day.
Once again, a minority that considered itself threatened by permanent minority status managed to maneuver itself into dominance. How was this possible? The best explanation may well be the one that augurs most poorly for our future. Language is the currency of politics, and in recent decades it has been badly devalued. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to such devaluation. Noble principles provide protective coloration for the worst of scoundrels.
Under Ronald Reagan, policy discussions were reduced to sloganeering (e.g.,"welfare queens"). Robert Hughes said of Reagan: "He cut the sinews of connectivity between ideas, and thus fostered the defeat of thought." But it got worse. With his Star Wars program, Reagan clearly violated the ABM Treaty. The treaty proscribed development of any 'components' of an anti-missile system. We got around that troublesome provision by simply calling them sub-components. First of all, this term was not then in use within the engineering professions. Secondly, everything that would normally be considered a component of an ABM system was now in active development under the rubric of 'sub-component.' Words had lost their meaning. We were now the ones who disdained adhering the spirit as well as the letter of the law.
The Bush/Gore election campaign was marred by the "three lies" of which Al Gore was accused relating to the Internet, to Love Canal, and to the book Love Story. These lies were deemed to be disqualifying. All three charges were readily countered, but that appeared to have no effect. For the first time we confronted Zombie charges that facts were unable to rebut. Many of us found that deeply troubling at the time. Facts were losing their power to persuade.
In that light, consider soberly for a moment the arguments offered by Bush-Cheney for the Iraq war. What if there had indeed been inquiries into yellow cake with Niger? Do we not know (from Iran's and Korea's experience, if nothing else) just how many years it takes to get from mined uranium oxide to fissionable material in quantity? And what about those aluminum tubes? Having them is not the critical part. It is machining them to the highest tolerances. And aluminum tubes aren't even the critical item in centrifuges. It's the ball bearings.
Further, no country builds nuclear weapons without access to a research reactor. Israel had put a stop to Iraq's prior attempt to build one. So the alarm about a nuclear threat was a crock from beginning to end. No one in government at the time can credibly claim ignorance, or sputter nonsense about being misled. The American public was being lied to with every utterance on the matter, but no one in officialdom should have been fooled. Finally, what about the chemical weapons? Even under the worst assumption that Saddam Hussein had succeeded in hiding them from us, they posed no threat to us because Iraq had no delivery capability.
Finally, what if a contact had in fact occurred with an emissary from Al Qaeda? The Iraq regime was not in the tank for Al Qaeda. There was no valid cause for launching hostilities. This was Tonkin Gulf all over again. We initiated a war of aggression, and thus committed what we ourselves had labeled the war crime above all others. The Nuremberg laws had become victor's justice, fitting for those Germans but not applicable to us, the good guys.
So how did we get railroaded into the war in Iraq? As the late Uri Avneri has observed, this was yet another case of a threatened polity securing its interests. The settler community in Israel felt itself under existential threat from the 'two-state solution,' so in first instance it had to establish de facto control over the Israeli government, which in turn had to establish de facto control over the American foreign policy apparatus with respect to Israel's interests.
The Project for the new American Century had Israel's fingerprints all over it. With its policy of 'Let's you and him fight,' Israel got us committed to its priorities one after another: Iraq, Syria, Libya, and above all, Iran. Facts on the ground had nothing to do with it. Sheldon Adelson kept the Republican Party on a short leash, and Haim Saban did the same for Hillary ('My first call will be to Bibi') Clinton. At another level, AIPAC held our government's feet to the fire. Netanyahu could claim support from all of the US Congress, which placed him at an advantage with respect to the US President, who could claim support from only about half.
The point is that the rhetoric around the war policy had little to do with the realities driving events. When a nation aspires to empire, its people effectively live in service to that cause. But to be recruited into that cause, they have to be mobilized by fear.
Once the war started going sideways, there came the torture memos of John Yoo. There is one human right above all others, and that is the right not to be tortured by your own government or any other. This right is enshrined in the Geneva Convention on Torture. "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever." Torture was defined as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person-- And just to make things utterly clear, torture was surrounded by sentinels that could leave no doubt as to what was intended here: Article16 requires parties to prevent "other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1."
There couldn't be any drawing of fine lines as to what did or did not constitute torture: no form of coercion was allowed against a person in custody. There was no window of opportunity to redefine torture for the convenience of the American government. And yet that is what we did. Torture was now to be limited to injury so severe as to risk organ failure. Asked whether the President could have someone's testicles crushed, John Yoo said it would depend on the circumstances.
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