Houston Chronicle January 5, 1991 Patrick J. Buchanan
FOR five months, America has been on the brink of war. For five months, the issue of war now, war later, or war never, to recapture Kuwait, has dominated editorial pages, radio and TV talk shows, and arguments from the corner barroom to the corporate boardroom.
The U.N. Security Council, Zaire and Ethiopia concurring, China abstaining, has said, yes, America can go to war against Iraq after Jan. 15, if Saddam Hussein is not out of Kuwait.
The debate has been full and open, and virtually every American has made his view known.
Except, that is, for the one institution charged by the Founding Fathers with responsibility for deciding whether or not to go to war - the Congress of the United States.
Less than two weeks remain before the expiration date of the ultimatum President Bush has given the largest army in the Arab world. Still, Congress has not acted. Two months have elapsed since Bush ordered U.S. armored divisions in Germany down to the Persian Gulf to prepare for offensive operations. Still, Congress has not acted.
This congressional dereliction of duty, this abdication of its constitutional responsibility, is of historic dimension. No wonder support for a constitutional limit on the terms of congressmen is the most popular cause in the country.
Last week, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt , D-Mo., warned that if Bush dares to go to war without congressional approval, Congress may exercise its power of the purse and cut off funding for the war effort. The mocking laughter has not died down yet.
That an elected body that has spent five months shirking its duty would, when U.S. Marines are locked in combat, come storming out from under the bed to cut off their ammunition is a joke. If Gephardt and his colleagues who oppose a war in the gulf were serious men, they would vote to deny the president the authority to wage it, then tell him he faces impeachment if he launches it.
Anyone think Capitol Hill has that kind of guts?
Well, they were ready to impeach Richard Nixon, defenders of Congress say in rebuttal. Sure, they were, after 18 months of savage press attacks and a recession had destroyed Nixon's base to where even his own party wanted him out.
Well, they passed the War Powers Act, supporters of Congress assert. Sure, they did. But, the measure was not passed until the Nixon presidency was broken; and presidents since, including Bush, have routinely ignored it.
So low is the regard in which Congress is held that one wag suggests Bush may attach a war declaration to a new congressional pay raise, to guarantee favorable action before sundown.
Whether one agrees or not that expulsion of the Iraqi army from Kuwait justifies war, Bush is acting as a strong president. His men assert that the Constitution gives him complete authority to start shooting in the gulf. The craven hand-wringing on Capitol Hill only underscores presidential primacy.
Members of Congress say they don't want to debate war now because that would be "divisive." It might send Saddam the signal America is not united. But Saddam gets Cable News Network; he knows Americans are divided on whether or not to attack him.
In the absence of a Pearl Harbor, Americans have always been divided on the wisdom of war. There were hawks and doves before and during the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the War Between the States, the Spanish-American War, World War I, Korea and Vietnam.
A few Capitol Hill liberals, playing schoolyard wimp, have "run to sister," i.e., gone to court to get a judge to tell Bush not to do what Bush says he intends to do: Go to war, if his demands are not met. The court tossed the ball back. In constitutional struggles, the branch of government that fails to defend its turf loses its turf.
Why does Congress dither? Because Congress is corrupt. Not in the sense that its members are dishonest. They are, pound for pound, probably more honest than their predecessors. Congress is corrupt in the sense that, like our criminal justice system, our public schools, our churches, it has lost the courage and capacity to perform the great role that belongs to it by right and so attempts to poach on other terrain and usurp other roles.
Thus, a criminal justice system that can no longer protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens celebrates how well it protects the rights of criminal defendants. Public schools that can no longer make children literate in English, math and science, teach them how to use condoms. Churches that no longer offer their congregations spiritual sustenance take over the local food stamp program.
Congress is paralyzed because Congress is a coward. It is terrified of taking the power to wage war away from Bush, and then having Bush charge it with appeasement of Saddam, and equally terrified of giving Bush power to launch a war, then have the war turn into a debacle with Congress forced to defend its decision to an enraged nation.
What the Congress wants is to be able to share in the glory if Bush wins a six-day victory, and, if the war is a bloodbath, to be able to say, "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for it."
Dante wrote that there was a special place in hell set aside for those who, in a time of moral crisis, refuse to take a stand. Maybe that's where we ought to tell Congress to go.
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