I’ve recently read The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder by Vincent Bugliosi. It was an interesting read, and the evidence should make any human with a heart and a brain be highly displeased with Bush’s conduct. But I’m not sure that a murder prosecution against Bush will succeed. Our country has a history of backbreaking deference to the executive in times of war which makes it seem unlikely that Bush could be successfully prosecuted.
In all likelyhood, Bush will never suffer any consequences for all the suffering he has caused. So what I’d like to talk about is the future.
How can we prevent future presidents from leading us into pointless wars? Impeachment doesn’t seem sufficient punishment for thousands of deaths, and the opposing party will reflexively oppose it anyway. And the fear of history giving you a bad legacy doesn’t seem a fitting deterrant either. We need a statutory framework in place that balances our legitimate need for national security with our need to prevent wars of aggression. There needs to be a tangible, real world, criminal punishment that a President will experience if he tries to pull a repeat of the 2003 Iraq War fiasco.
Congress could have been more skeptical in the build up to war, this is true. And they could impeach. But I still deem this to be insufficient. Even if Congress does impeach and convict, the disgraced ex-president is still free to live his life. I think a President contemplating engaging in this type of conduct should fear being put behind bars into a Federal “pound me in the ass” prison.
What do you suppose the real world effect of such draconian measures would be? Do you envision a time that the US might just need to use it’s military in the future? If not then I suppose your measures would be reasonable since if they were enacted we’d never be able to use our military again for the practical reason that no President could or would ever be sure if they would be prosecuted if the war went badly and sufficient popular support dipped below some arbitrary level…or if the other party ever got sufficient strength to us party politics against them.
Why do people always think the system needs to be ‘fixed’ with some kind of special powers…and why don’t they ever think that the shoe may one day be on the other foot and their pet party may be in power…and have the enemy party breathing down their necks when the fickle public will has turned against them?
Why? The President received Congressional approval for our invasion of Iraq. Not only that but he was friggin re-elected. What you want is some kind of special power for when you don’t agree with something the government has done and also dislike the party in power, right? Though let me guess…it would be uncool if the other party used it against you and your party in the future, ehe?
Yeah…I disagree. That’s what we have a Constitution for. That’s what Congress is for. And that’s what the people are for. There are plenty of checks on the Executive branch…and what we don’t need is some knee jerk special powers to yank up a President when what he’s done is unpopular. That’s what re-election is for…and what Congress is for if he really fucks up.
The only president that I know of (in modern times, at least) who did this was LBJ, with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
I’ve heard a lot of - hell, way too many - people whine about “Bush lied, people died”. I have yet to hear anyone show any conclusive proof that Bush lied. Lots of supposition, lots of theory, none of it stands up.
We were lied into the Spanish-American War, though it can certainly be argued that it was Hearst that did the lying. Wilson promised in 1916 to keep us out of WWI - we were fighting it a year later.
FDR never came clean in his lifetime about how much he knew about Japanese preparations for war. Dean Acheson left Korea out of a speech spelling out America’s defense perimeter in the Pacific in 1950 - many have speculated that this helped provoke a North Korean attack. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is pretty well known, and opponents of the first Gulf War could point to April Glaspie.
If you want to make this illegal, you’d have grounds to throw every wartime president into the slammer. Every one. And while I wouldn’t want to defend all of this, it must be pointed out that something everyone does shouldn’t be criminalized. That leads to selective prosecution and an overall disregard for the law.
History uncovered most of these incidents - major and minor both. I’m content to let its judgment be the penalty as well.
If Bush himself presented you with a signed confession, no doubt your rationalization would be that the man’s an admitted liar and why should you believe any claims he makes about being guilty.
Bush’s crime wasn’t lying about the war. As Moto pointed out, lots of Presidents have lied about the reasons for going to war. (You left out Polk and the Mexican War and Jefferson and the War of 1812.)
Bush’s crime was losing the war. Maybe losing two wars. And like Johnson, he’ll be found guilty of that by history.
Popularity has absolutely nothing to do with it. Whether we “win” has nothing to do with it. What I’m proposing is a specific criminal law against a President deceiving Congress to give him permission to go to war. If he violates that law he is liable to criminal prosecution. Hell, you can even throw in a “neccesity” defense if a President can prove that he needed to lie for our own good.
Look, feel free to believe that Bush acted in good faith. The focus of this thread is about what we should do, if anything, to prevent future Presidents from deceiving us into wars. I don’t want this thread to get sidetracked.
Saying that “other Presidents did it too!” doesn’t seem like a very good argument against my proposed law. If anything, it should be an argument for it.
Of course it does. Had Bush’s little war gone exactly as he planned it wouldn’t be an issue today except with the way out loony left. It only gets any traction at all because it has been such a rough ride and popular opinion has shifted…and with it there has been a shift in the political power structure in this country.
Why do we need any additional laws? Congress already has the impeachment option. We The People have the option to not re-elect a president we do not wish in power. Even assuming your assertion is true and Bush somehow deceived the Congress (who would still be culpable since that would mean they weren’t paying attention or for other politically oriented reasons), why do we need a new special law for it when we already have a process to deal with this possibility? Because it’s not being done when you think it should be?
And further complicate the situation? What you would essentially do is tie up the government even more than it already is and make the political infighting that much more vicious and partisan…on the off chance any future president would actually attempt to ever do anything at all. Why stop at lies concerning war only after all? Why not all lies?
I can imagine legitimate reasons for a President to lie. Such as national security. And a President lying about his personal life is also irrelevant. I don’t care if he’s deceived us about a blowjob, or even his penchant for ten hooker gangbangs. Nobody has gotten hurt over that.
What concerns me is lies that cause people to die for no good reason. Material lies, that, if Congress were instead informed of the truth, would have caused them to make a different decision. How can Congress truly act as a Co-Equal branch, invested by the Constitution to declare war, if they are deceived and given disinformation by the Executive?
Who decides what is a ‘legitimate reason’ and what isn’t? Since our current system isn’t adequate in your estimation, who would decide when a Presidents lie is worthy and when not? How would you write a law to ensure there was no political abuse of this new shiny law?
BTW, what makes you think that Congress wasn’t aware of the reasons we went to war in Iraq? They (or at least several of the sub-committees) had access to the same information Bush did and seemingly agreed with his assessment at the time…or do you really think the President has the power to completely fool Congress? If so, wouldn’t that be a better place to start?
(Not that I agree, mind…I think Congress had essentially the same data Bush did and still approved the war in Iraq. I don’t let them off the hook as seemingly most others around here do…I think they are as much to blame. And I don’t let the current congress off the hook either…if indeed Bush did all these crimes, yadda yadda yadda, then I actually blame the new congress MORE for letting this slide. Oh yeah…and I hold the citizens, including myself though I didn’t vote for Bush, to blame as well…we COULD have gotten rid of him in 2004 after all)
Congress has all the power it could possibly need. The President needs their permission to start a war. And Congress can impeach a President but not vice versa. If Congress can’t control a President, it’s willpower that’s needed not a law.
If he needs to lie to protect the american people from harm, that is a legitimate defense. Who decides whether it’s legitimate or not? A Jury of 12 ordinary citizens.
Who would preside over the trial? Who would decide if there should be a trial or not? What would be the decision process for figuring out that a president lied to get us into war and that it was not a just (or whatever) war and thus is ‘illegal’? Who all would be involved in the decision process to go to war in your future system…since the current system is somehow inadequate?
What would the purpose of the Congress and Senate be? Should we just get rid of them?
A little snarky here, are we? Especially considering that you know me better than that.
My statement stands. No proof has yet been presented that Bush lied. Operative word there being yet. Perhaps he did, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, perhaps history will uncover that fact. But until such proof is shown, the correct point of view is that he hasn’t - innocent until proven guilty.
And it seems to be the trend these days that if person A disagrees with person B, then person A immediately says that B is lying. I think there is a lot of that going on here.