Of course, the real problem here is that it's widely admitted that, were this treaty subjected to referendum in the other EU nations, it would have been rejected there, as well. The other governments uniformly chose to ratify by legislation because they didn't want their citizens to have a say in the matter, Ireland's constitution didn't give it's government that choice.

Speak not of the "desires of the rest of the continent" in this case. The desires of the continent's political elite, perhaps...
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

The Eurpoeans are not a single people with a common heritage. They are a collection of nation states with long independent histories.

Another thing the EU could learn from the US Constitution is to keep it simple and keep it federal.

The EU constitution is a bureaucratic nightmare. The simpler the constitution, the fewer points of possible contention.

Also, a federal constitution leaving most powers to the individual states will go a long way toward smoothing over nationalistic differences. The problem is that the Germans and French want to run the EU through its central bureaucracy.
 

"bereft" isn't the word you want.
you want maybe "distraught".

"bereft" means "deprived of something".
sure, we often use "bereft" to mean "upset" or "anguished", but only when the anguish is caused by the person's being deprived of something (e.g. 'he was bereft by the death of his goldfish').

look it up.
 

Bart De Palma wrote:-

The EU constitution is a bureaucratic nightmare. The simpler the constitution, the fewer points of possible contention.

Dear Bart,

Apart from the fact that the EU is a treaty based organisation and does not have a constitution, I would not have thought that your argument that “short = fewer disputes” is exactly borne out by the difficulties experienced with interpretation of the US Constitution!

More generally, on the topic:-

We will hear quite a lot about the Irish referendum hiccup over the next few months. The last time this happened the Irish had a 2nd referendum a few months later and it went the other way.

There is an institutional problem - and that is the tendency of national politicians to blame Brussels for everything - it is a convenient scapegoat. I think there is a similar tendency in the US States to blame Washington - although over the last 8 years it has probably been with more justification.

We generally find a way round these institutional problems eventually for the very good reason that the EU is a success: we are now the word’s biggest trade bloc with a population of 492 millions in 27 member states compared to the US 300 millions.

In the year 2006, exports of EU goods to the US amounted to € 269 billion, while imports from the US amounted to €178 billion. In services, EU exports to the US amounted to € 123 billion in 2004 while EU imports from the US amounted to € 116 billion. Our trade surplus with the US has grown from €31 billions in 2000 to €90 billions in 2006.

The Euro is gaining ground as a reserve currency since its creation in 1999 (now accounting for some 30% of other states’ reserves) and has now overtaken the US dollar in the international bond market.

We provide more foreign aid to less developed third countries than the USA does.

We benefit from longer holidays, a shorter working week, more comprehensive health and social care and have better adult and infant mortality statistics than the USA.

No institution created by humans is perfect, neither the USA nor the EU, but we can fairly say that we have done rather better over the last 50 years than we dared hope when the original six signed the Treaty of Rome.
 

Frankly, I have always thought of the EU as a sort of Tower of Babel. And the proposed EU constitution seems more like a code than a constitution. Historical animosities continue. In comparison, America was a tabula rasa when it considered its Articles of Confederation and Constitution. In the EU, will nationalism in time erode efforts at unity? Perhaps EU can successfully compete economically with the rest of the world; but can its component nations accept each other without too many intra-competing interests? Consider, e.g., France and its Terroir claims for the exclusive naming of certain of its products. Perhaps the EU is more of a confederation than a union. Imagine America if the Articles of Confederation had not been replaced with the Constitution.

By the way, regarding North Carolina and Rhode Island, take a look at the comment I put up on a post by Stephen Griffin with the commentary back in 1955 of my late ConLaw Prof. Thomas Reed Powell.
 

Shag from Brookline wrote:-

Frankly, I have always thought of the EU as a sort of Tower of Babel.

Actually, Shag, it’s not so much a Tower of Babel but a Tower of “Eurospeak”. There are 23 official languages in the EU. That arises because every citizen of the Union has the right to write to the EU institutions in his own language and have a reply in the same language. Likewise, all the principal legal texts have to be translated into all the official languages.

In practice, the working language of the EU institutions is now English (it used to be French) because that is the language which is most common among all the participants.

Emma Wagner of the Commission’s translation service explains the problem:

Eurospeak

and the guide to which she refers is here:
Fight the Fog


We have something of the same problem with the English and American variants of English. When Walter Annenberg was US Ambassador to the UK, he was filmed at Buckingham Palace speaking with the Queen:

Queen: I understand you are not in the Embassy Residence yet ?
Annenberg: Yes, Ma’am, it is undergoing elements of refurbishment.
Queen: Ah! You’ve got the builders in!

On some of the other issues you raise, I think you may have to be careful about what is publicised in the US press – there are some powerful interests, including most emphatically the Bush Administration, which do not like the progress we are making in Europe. It has effects which US industry and government does not like.

For example, in the environmental and product safety fields: the EU is implementing a Directive which requires manufacturers to demonstrate the safety of chemicals used in their products rather than the US approach where the approach is to allow use until there is evidence that it is unsafe. Likewise with food additives or genetically modified foods.

Another example is the airline industry. Until recently, the USA could negotiate bilaterally with every single member state and pick them off one by one. Now the USA has to negotiate with the EU as a whole and the privileged position of US airlines is being eroded.

Or take the visa issue. Post war, US citizens could travel visa-free to most EU states, while the European citizens had for the most part to put up with the indignities of the US INS. The EU policy is now to insist on complete reciprocity.

Yes, there are still Europhobes about and they make noise in inverse proportion to their numbers. They are mostly confined to the older generation and younger people take for granted the reality that Europe has now a single market, a common travel area, a common judicial space, that our EU health cards give us health cover throughout the Union, that we have the right to work freely throughout the Union, can retire anywhere, vote for the EU parliament and, if we live outside our home countries vote in local elections.

That latter right, BTW, has amusing consequences: for example, the south of Spain, for example has a very high number of retired English and German permanent residents. They have nothing else to do so they tend to get involved in local politics. When they get elected, the Spanish promptly put the Brit and German local council members in charge of the sanitation, refuse collection and health services which gives the majority more time to organise the cultural and leisure activities – to the general satisfaction of all.

The European nightmare is where the Italians run the bureaucracy, the English do the catering, etc. In practice it doesn’t work out that way. We all gain from what the other nations are good at.

For example, the Spanish have recently introduced juries in their higher criminal Courts and have discovered the positive effect that citizen participation brings. We have discovered the benefits of the French concept of proportionality in administrative law – that the administrative action must be proportionate to the problem and not go beyond. It’s a stricter test than “not irrational” and has considerable benefits in controlling the executive.
 

mourad:

Yes, there are still Europhobes about and they make noise in inverse proportion to their numbers. They are mostly confined to the older generation and younger people take for granted the reality that Europe has now a single market, a common travel area, a common judicial space, that our EU health cards give us health cover throughout the Union, that we have the right to work freely throughout the Union, can retire anywhere, vote for the EU parliament and, if we live outside our home countries vote in local elections.

I notice that you distinguish the bureaucratic hell being imposed by Brussels on business from the freedom which attracts the younger generation to the EU. If the EU treaty/constitution has more freedom and less bureaucracy, it would have a much easier time being accepted.

The problem is that the old established welfare states do not want the competition being posed by the UK, Ireland and Eastern Europe. Thus, the harmonization hell included in the current proposal.

BTW, you do not even want to get into a discussion about the relative performance and prospects of the EU compared to the US. The US is not worried about the EU. We are looking East to India and China.
 

Neocon Bart wrote:

BTW, you do not even want to get into a discussion about the relative performance and prospects of the EU compared to the US. The US is not worried about the EU. We are looking East to India and China.

Good luck! - You had better do well with China especially, you owe them so much money and they drive a hard bargain and their foreign trade lawyers can knock spots off most of the competition.

PS - how about a reply to the rest of the post?
 

The Eurpoeans are not a single people with a common heritage. They are a collection of nation states with long independent histories.

Bart, that is true more or less of *every* nation.

Germany is not made up of pure Germans, France is not made up of pure Frenchmen, China is not made up of pure Chinese, etc. (Even Japan has the Ainu.)

Your volkish tendencies are not particularly surprising, all things considered, but I had thought they were pretty well discredited by now.
 

Professor Levinson is right that requiring unanimity makes it much harder for a constitutional framework or treaty to be adopted. However, this is at it must be -- Europe is not a nation, state or country, and no one wants to be bound by decisions of citizens of another country. Imagine adopting a new regional trade agreement whereby the U.S. is bound by the decisions of Canada and Mexico...

However, all of this is changing. As Mourad points out, many people in Europe are living the "European" dream -- they live, marry and pursue their happiness across borders while enjoying the best that this diverse group of countries called Europe has to offer. If you were an older English couple, would you not rather sip a Burgundy red while watching the sun set in Cyprus or Seville rather than saving up pounds for the heater in Bradford? Or if you were a young and ambitious French or German person, why not live in London for a few years with your Swedish boyfriend while entering the world of sophisticated financial products? Given sufficient time, professor Levinson's suggestion may therefore well become a solution that IS palatable to most Europeans.

In the meantime, comments from U.S. neocons that the U.S. is better and unafraid of Europe merely show the binary mindset of those on the "right." Why not acknowledge that there is more that unites us than there is that divides us (that is, once the current awful regime has been sent back to Texas and Wyoming) and just let others be and pursue life, liberty and happiness? You know those unalienable rights?
 

If there is one thing we Europeans have learned from our centuries of warfare and revolution, often to no great purpose, is that on the whole evolution is preferable to revolution and the vision of Robert Schuman was to make a 4th war between France and Germany impossible by creating strong economic bonds between the two nations.

I agree with Joen - it will not be possible to achieve an instant solution to the full long term agenda. In EU theory there is no surrender of national sovereignty but a pooling and joint exercise of certain sovereign powers.

On many issues there is now "qualified majority voting" where each member state has a population weighted number of votes and if a given majority agrees, then the measure goes through.

While the early member states negotiated opt-outs to parts of the EU scheme, new members now have to sign up to the full package.

It is my belief that opt-outs will gradually disappear. Take the single currency. The UK and Denmark opted out. Businesses wanted to opt in - public opinion in both countries was against. But as the advantages of the single currency become more known, opinion softens. In the UK the massive opposition was principally due to the effect of decimalisation of our currency in 1971. It was in a period of inflation. Changing from 240 pence to £1 to 100p meant that prices had to be rounded up or down and the housewife experience was that all the prices went up. Older housewives have still not forgotten.

It wasn't so much an issue of the monarch, the monarch's head of the other EU monarchies appears on one side of the Euro coins they mint.

Now the UK is getting used to the Euro and the benefits of not having to change currencies on a trip by car through several countries to get to Greece, opposition is softening and I see eventual UK adoption of the Euro as inevitable.

Likewise with the Schengen agreement - abolition of internal borders for travel. There the principal fear was of refugees. Because we speak the most internationally known language of the EU, a surprising portion of refugees want to come to England rather than the country of first arrival. That will be sorted one day.

Th EU and the USA account together for half the trade of the whole world. We are each other's biggest trading partners.

Yes, relations with the present Administration are bad - appalling in fact. But bad things come to an end too. As the utilities are prone to say: "Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible" - on a basis of reciprocity, common endeavour and mutual respect.
 

Germany is not made up of pure Germans

You mean it wasn't "Ein Volk, Ein Reich"? Darn, and Lou Dobbs had his heart set on that.
 

And how about the Anglo-Saxon myth here in America?

My hometown Boston Globe editorially defends Ireland on this vote, pointing to the complicated constitution virtually the same that had previously been rejected by a couple of EU nations several years ago.

Amd Europe has its own North/South to contend with.

As to Ireland, much of its economic success is attributable to tax breaks that enticed American firms to invest there. And keep in mind that Blair's England was hand in glove with George W's foreign policy. So perhaps these two non-Anglo-Saxon nations want to be closer to the US not just geographically.

If the currently proposed EU constitution were to be approved, can you imagine the EU version of Balkinization? Lisa would need 50 bros for the debate.
 

I'd be interested in Mourad's take on Robert Kagan's OpEd in today's Washington Post titled "In Europe, a Slide Towards Irrelevance" on the impact of Ireland's vote on the Lisbon Treaty as it relates to America. Kagan closes:

"Rachman is certainly right that many Europeans prefer it this way. Europe has started to settle into a role akin to the chorus of a Greek tragedy, endlessly commenting and pronouncing judgment on the actions of the protagonists -- "O Oedipus, by reckless pride undone!" -- but with little or no effect on the outcome of the drama. And perhaps Europe -- the Europe lacking in leadership, the Europe now lacking a new treaty -- is the way it is because that's what the people really do want. If so, the 21st century, decidedly not run by Europe, will be a very tricky time for the United States."

Of course Kagan made a major contribution to the invasion of iraq. So he must be an authority we can rely upon. His new book "The Return of History and the End of Dreams" is ably reviewed by Andrew Bacevich, who points out that Kagan does not question invading Iraq but blames Bush and others for subsequent mistakes. (The review is available in the July/August 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs.) I audited two of Bacevich's courses at Boston University on Political Science in recent years of my semi-retirement. I am eagerly awaiting publication of his forthcoming "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."
 

Robert Kagan is an historian of classical European political and military history. He seems to share the point of view of his classical European subjects rather than the isolationism in vogue now with most of academia.

"The Return of History and the End of Dreams" is a rebuttal to Francis Fukuyama's essay "The End of History." Kagan's two main theses are that rivalries between nation states and ideologies have not gone away and that the Bush Doctrine is simply a variation of US policy since the end of WWII.

I largely agree with Kagan's take, but I think he misses the post Vietnam split in US foreign policy when the Dems abandoned FDR style internationalism. Kagan cites Clinton's military deployments as evidence of a similarity with the Bush Doctrine. However, none of the military interventions which Mr. Clinton threatened ever proceeded in the face of actual opposition. When our military was opposed like during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, Clinton fled.

In any case, in his article In Europe, a Slide Toward Irrelevance, Kagan makes the rather incontestable observation that the EU has checked out of the great power game and is no longer much of a hard power consideration.

The World Wars left Europe with an understandable desire to avoid any future wars. Europe was able to do so largely because it enjoyed American military protection. Without the threat of the Soviet Empire, though, the EU has now allowed its military power to dwindle to near impotence.

The 21st Century does not portend a resurgence in EU power. Once the Baby Boom generation starts passing, the Europeans will literally start dying out as a civilization because today's generations are failing to reproduce enough even to maintain the current population. The only segment of EU society reproducing and expanding are the unassimilated Muslim immigrants, which does not exactly suggest great things for the future viability of Euro culture.
 

If Kagan's new book is indeed a rebuttal of Fukiyama's book on "The End of History," what took Kagan so long to make this rebuttal? Frankly, Kagan's title "The Return of History and the End of Dreams" seems a rather moist dream on his part to boost himself and book sales. But consider that Fukiyama, subsequent to "The End of History" weighed back in with "unanticipated" events to indicate that history had not died.

I confess I did not read Kagan's book and my knowledge of it comes from Bacevich's review. Perhaps I should check other reviews in the Weekly Standard to see where Lisa's bro's agreement with Kagan comes from, assuming he hasn't actually read the book.

(Maybe Lisa's bro has read Kagan's book. But based upon his blogulations and his busy DUI legal career, I wonder if St. Peter might in years to come determine his age based upon bloggable hours in line with the joke about the deceased lawyer seeking entrance into heaven who was only 40 years of age but based upon his billable hours was determined to to 125 years old, resulting in St. Peter's telling him to go to hell.)
 

I’ve often wondered just why the Washington Post is prepared to pay Robert Kagan for the drivel he writes in his monthly opinion piece. I have finally come to the conclusion that the paper, does so because it needs copy to fill the column inches between the paid advertising. It’s not even as if this dilettante scribbler even gets his facts right:

The Irish voters’ rejection of the Lisbon Treaty is not a “deadly blow” or anything like it, it’s a blip which will get sorted.

As for Blair being a serious candidate for the putative post of “President of the Union”, what can Kagan be smoking? After the poodle joined Bush in the ill-fated “Enterprise of Iraq”, he became almost as contaminated as the Toxic Texan himself. He was never a serious candidate except (i) in his own inflated-ego mind, (ii) in the wishful thinking of US Neocons who saw this as a way of influencing EU policy (which was a further disqualification for Blair) and (iii) in the minds of many in the Labour Party who wanted him out of the country at any price so as not to have him playing Banquo’s Ghost to Gordon Brown’s Macbeth.

Yes, immigration and assimilation are issues: Not all of them real.

With the 1.5 million Poles now in England, I can get an emergency plumber to come to my home in under a week and the call-out fee has gone down to under US$90 – although the meter starts ticking once he is inside the door. The building industry is counting on immigration from the new member and candidate states to enable the Olympic athletes to run in a completed stadium and sleep in finished apartments.

My local hospital provides interpreting services in over 100 languages but I take my friend’s 4 year old (Kurdish father – Brazilian mother) to his nursery school in the mornings and on the way he jabbers on about Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine – English is his first language and he will be perfectly assimilated when he grows up.

And by the way – the maternity services and primary schools are bursting at the seams – no worries about an aging population here – it’s more about where we will build the new houses needed to house the newcomers and how serious the mortgage famine which has resulted from the US mortgage débacle will prove to be.

The worry about Muslim immigrants rather mirrors the concerns expressed after 1900 as waves of Jewish refugees arrived -now all perfectly assimilated. My family has been here for rather longer than the United States has been a country Although I am of a religious minority and, like Senator Obama, have “funny” names - telephone operators tend to mistake it for “Morag” and ask me if I’m Scottish or Welsh – my worries about my co-religionists stem principally from incompetent US policy having negative consequences in Europe.

Yes, there is a needle of truth in the haystack of Kagan's words. Europeans have had about as much as they can stand of the Bush Administration. So the hopes of Kagan and the other Neocons that Europe will raise its military spending to a level equivalent to that of the USA so as to enable the USA to assemble more "coalitions of the willing" for foreign adventures is a total non-starter.
 

Shag:

Take the link and read Kagan's summary of his book. Although I own or have read some of Kagan's prior work, I have not purchased this book.
 

Kagan understands the world in terms of power -- dividing the world into leaders and followers, and into those "with us" and those "against us" (first the communists, now the so-called islamo-fascists). Like so many others, both here in the U.S. and in Europe, he bought into Huntington's clash of civilization paradigm. Viewed through this lens, Europe is losing relevance because (i) it has not made sufficient investments into military development; and (ii) it is weakened by the current enemy-du-jour (Muslims) from within.

But this is generally not how most Western Europeans see the world. As Mourad pointed out, centuries of war and unspeakable atrocities have ingrained a distrust of military force to achieve positive change. This notion is quite like the traditional American distrust of "government." As a result, use of force must be constrained (institutionally and legally) and legitimate -- i.e. absent U.N. approval, military force is only justified to defend the country against an imminent threat.

After WWII, Western Europe and the U.S. entered into an agreement: in return for accepting U.S. leadership and dominance, Western Europe enjoyed the protection of the U.S. military umbrella (thereby allowing it in part to invest in the current welfare systems, education and the economy). Although the terms of this transatlantic agreement became the subject of renegotiation after 1989 (with different European countries taking different approaches), it is still not in the U.S.'s interest if Europe were to begin making the kind of military investments that we see here. Indeed, the same people who decry Europe's supposed irrelevance would suddenly perceive a threat to U.S. interests and perhaps decide that Europe is a more realistic enemy than the amorphous (and incapable) "islamo-fascists."

But rearming Europe would also be terrible for Europe. With the exception of its common agricultural policy, Europe is now on balance a force for "good." But this is partly the result of a horrific legacy and historical guilt stemming from colonialism and genocide. So why give matches to a pyromaniac seeking to make amends? It would also simply be a waste of resources that are used to support countries that are economically and socially behind the times (like the $60 billion plus that was invested by the E.U. in Ireland). Moreover, rearming for what purpose? To fight the Russians? Please... Who would benefit from that? Although Europe needs Russia for its resources, Russia needs Europe for its cash, infrastructure and common market. Moreover, although not part of the EU, since Peter the Great, Russia is in important ways "European" too.

Refusing a clash of civilizations paradigm also shows that rather than losing relevance, Europe is actually gaining importance and relevance, including for the U.S. Although many citizens of many European countries are quite distrustful of their Muslim fellow-citizens for cultural and economic reasons, the governments and elites are actively resisting the notion that all Muslims are dangerous or disloyal to their country. With results: the active cooperation between citizens who are Muslim with the security and intelligence services has helped thwart attacks and has saved lives (including U.S. lives) around the world.

In short, Kagan and his followers should stop painting the world into black and white. Although facile, the belief that everyone in the world can be broadly categorized as friend or foe does not help make this world a better place for anyone (least of all Americans). Indeed, when was the last time you traveled to South America, Asia or even Europe and were not a little apprehensive identifying yourself as an American? LEt's just say that when I lived in Paris a few years ago, I saw so many "Canadians" that by any count all of Canada was enjoying a vacation abroad.
 

jeroen:

Kagan does subscribe to a clash of civilizations theory, born probably from his lifelong scholarship studying the clash of civilizations in the classical world. He believes as I do that Western Civilization is special and worth preserving rather than the multi-cultural nonsense that Western Civilization is just another set of values no more important than any other,

Kagan thinks that the European have abandoned any pretense of actually defending their own interests and leave all the heavy lifting to the Americans.

The Euros cannot be a "force for good" if they are unwilling to use force for any purpose. The entire concept of "soft power" built entirely on moral suasion is a complete joke to amoral or immoral regimes like the Yugoslavs as the merrily slaughtered one another while the EU waited for the US to intervene militarily and now the Iranians who are openly laughing at the EU after years of "soft power" negotiations.

If the EU wants to rearm for the purpose of being a force for good in the world, that is terrific.

If the EU instead wants to become a continental Belgium, then they can at least act the part and stop pretending they matter any more except as a pleasant place to vacation.

There is an old military phrase which fits the EU:

Lead, follow or just get the hell out of the way.
 

Bart,

Western civilisation may indeed be special, but what on earth makes you think that the USA is yet qualified to be part of it?

Few people in Europe would regard Kagan as a “scholar” – he’s a co-founder of the ill-starred Project for the New American Century and a died in the wool Neoconservative. It gives me no comfort to know that he is now advising McSame on foreign policy.

Everyone knew that Saddam’s army couldn’t fight its way out of a wet paper bag. Even with all the weapons which the West supplied and the Arabian Gulf States financed it could not handle the Iran-Iraq war. Toppling the regime was a piece of cake. Winning hearts and minds was quite another matter.

What you have not yet realised is that the USA does not now have the military and other resources needed to subdue and rebuild foreign nations. All the sophisticated weaponry in the world is not a substitute for boots on the ground.

To achieve even a partial success in Iraq, the USA would have needed about 3 times the ground forces it actually deployed – long service professional infantry, not reservists who had never been out of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma or wherever.

You needed a competent corps of experienced civil affairs officers to act as Town Majors for each population centre. You needed to put the Iraqi people back to work instead of throwing money at crony contractors. There is a lot of truth in the old adage that the devil makes work for idle hands.

You needed to win hearts and minds and instead alienated them by inappropriate conduct towards the civil population, plain lack of discipline, indiscriminate use of heavy weapons and air power - the list of incompetences is endless. Paul Bremer’s CPA was one of the most futile institutions every devised by man.

Apart from the Iraqi dead and maimed and the 4.7 MILLION destitute refugees, you are in all probability going to leave a failed state behind.

And by the way, you are not doing much better in Afghanistan either.

It you think the EU has any intention at all of rearming to assist the Neocons you support in more adventures of the nature of the “Enterprise of Iraq” – forget it.

We’ll stick to international legitimacy, UN authorised peace enforcement and peacekeeping, foreign aid and overseas development. Such actions actually work and save lives.
 

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way" -- a typically military pattern of thought. It works well enough when you are placed in command of a company of soldiers with a clearly defined mission.

It doesn't work when what's needed is to build consensus, or at least win the willingness of the minority to go along with the majority.

Consensus works reasonably well when everybody can agree on the ends and the allowable methods for reaching those ends. Good luck with that on a grand scale.
 

Mourad:

Western civilisation may indeed be special, but what on earth makes you think that the USA is yet qualified to be part of it?

I had read about the overweening and self important arrogance of the Euro leftist snobs, but you are definitely the first example of that phenomenon I have actually run across.

That last statement is so childish it does not merit a response.

What you have not yet realised is that the USA does not now have the military and other resources needed to subdue and rebuild foreign nations. All the sophisticated weaponry in the world is not a substitute for boots on the ground.

This will be news to the 50 million liberated Afghanis and Iraqis, their elected governments, their new armies, their rapidly expanding economies and the tens of thousands of Baathists, Taliban or al Qaeda who lie dead or are enjoying the hospitality of a prison cell.

If your measure of a rebuilt society is the EU, sorry to disappoint you. We needed societies who were willing to fight for their new found freedom.

To achieve even a partial success in Iraq, the USA would have needed about 3 times the ground forces it actually deployed – long service professional infantry, not reservists who had never been out of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma or wherever.

This attack on our National Guard and reserves is amusing coming from a fop who has never served in the military and who cheerleads for a wannabe United States of Europe that (outside of the UK) cannot field a force which is willing to take on the raggedy ass Taliban.

Our National Guard and Reserves are better trained, better armed, have more combat experience and have won more battles that any "professional force" fielded by the EU apart from some units in the British Army.

If the EU ever wants to field a professional military designed to actually fight and win wars, I am sure that our National Guard can train your units.

You needed a competent corps of experienced civil affairs officers to act as Town Majors for each population centre. You needed to put the Iraqi people back to work instead of throwing money at crony contractors. There is a lot of truth in the old adage that the devil makes work for idle hands.

You appear to conversant on British law and history. I would stick with what you know because your knowledge of the military is more than a little deficient.

The goal of a counter insurgency is NOT to take conquer Iraq and make their decisions for them. That fuels insurgencies. Rather, the goal of a counter insurgency is to transition decision making and security responsibilities to the local population to deny the enemy sanctuary among them. Our officers play the role of mediators between Iraqi leaders. Our troops train and mentor the Iraqi military and police. The Iraqis make their own decisions and conduct their own security operations. Unless you have been under a rock for the past year, this strategy has won the Iraq War.

We’ll stick to international legitimacy, UN authorised peace enforcement and peacekeeping, foreign aid and overseas development. Such actions actually work and save lives.

:::chuckle:::

Tell it to the over million Saddam slaughtered, the tens of thousands the Taliban slaughtered, the tens of thousands the Serbs and Croats slaughtered and the nearly 1 million the Rwandans slaughtered.

Unless the US sends in troops willing to fight, the primary occupation of the EU and UN is to impotently watch over genocides and issue communiqués.

Have you seen the movie "Hotel Rwanda?" A more damning indictment of the castrati who run the UN, EU and at that time the US you will never see. The Rwandans begged for the UN to save their lives and the UN and it "peace keepers" did nothing but watch the slaughter progress.

If this is your idea of "international legitimacy," then I cast my lot with the United States' "illegitimate" efforts to liberate and save people.
 

With respect, thats seems a disingenuous portrayal of the situation. As has been said, if the treaty were subjected to a referendum in all the countries, it would suffer more defeat. Lucky for the Irish, their Constitution doesn't give their legislative body the ability to steamroll its own people. The nerve! More than any other European country, Ireland is a nation with a government, not the other way around.
 

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Stephen's comment is a reminder of the significance in our own Constitution of "We the People .... " Upon reflection, perhaps the people of Ireland just had to speak up. Here at Balkinization there are many contentious discussions concerning our Constitution. Who are "We the People ... " and what are our rights? Yes, we have representative, republican government. How could we manage if "We the People ... " were to make the decisions in a complicated nation in a complicated world that gets more complex with time? But isn't it actually refreshing to hear the voters of Ireland say "STOP!"? How do "We the People ... " get the attention of those who represent us? Polls are informative of public opinion, but sometimes a vote sends the message from the bottom to the top to let the latter know their concerns.

This and other recents posts on this Blog have reminded me of C. Wright Mills' "The Power Elite" published in 1956. A few years before then I had finished college and law school, so I wasn't aware of Mills or his book. It wasn't until recent years in my semi-retirement from the practice of law that I became aware of Mills from a political science course I audited at a local university for a nominal fee to attract senior citizens back to the classroom. Mills opened wide doors that I had been aware of but had not had time to focus upon because of the demands of a busy law practice, raising a family, etc. I have wondered how my understanding of American politics would have changed had I had the benefit of "The Power Elite" in my more formative years. Perhaps the posters and commenters at this Blog much younger than myself have been exposed to and influenced by Mills and his "The Power Elite."

So perhaps "We the People ... " is a response to "The Power Elite." Will they listen?
 

Neocon Bart wrote in response to comments in a previous post of mine:-

Bart: “If your measure of a rebuilt society is the EU, sorry to disappoint you. We needed societies who were willing to fight for their new found freedom."

Mourad: To achieve even a partial success in Iraq, the USA would have needed about 3 times the ground forces it actually deployed – long service professional infantry, not reservists who had never been out of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma or wherever.

Bart: This attack on our National Guard and reserves is amusing coming from a fop who has never served in the military and who cheerleads for a wannabe United States of Europe that (outside of the UK) cannot field a force which is willing to take on the raggedy ass Taliban.

Our National Guard and Reserves are better trained, better armed, have more combat experience and have won more battles that any "professional force" fielded by the EU apart from some units in the British Army.

MAF: You needed a competent corps of experienced civil affairs officers to act as Town Majors for each population centre. You needed to put the Iraqi people back to work instead of throwing money at crony contractors. There is a lot of truth in the old adage that the devil makes work for idle hands.

Bart: You appear to conversant on British law and history. I would stick with what you know because your knowledge of the military is more than a little deficient.”

My dear Bart,

I am aware that you like to talk of your little stroll in Iraq during the Gulf War – which, I believe, was the only time you went into a hostile situation during the whole of your vast military experience and which you even have the bad taste to particularise on your office web site as if it were relevant to your DUI practice.

There will be many posters to this blog who have relevant experience to the subjects we discuss, but, quite often, they prefer not to flaunt their qualifications particularly intimate things like personal military experiences.

As it happens, my dear Bart, I too have some limited military experience. In HM Forces, as it happens, and in a regiment first raised more than 100 years before US independence. I became a NCO 14 months after I “took the Queen’s shilling” and served inter alia, in Northern Ireland during the PIRA troubles (more than one tour), as a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus, in 4 various other overseas locations and finished up as an instructor NCO giving practical training to newly-minted Lieutenants and others in how not to get themselves and their men killed while serving in peacekeeping or peace enforcement roles. Just a few years’ experience, but not, however, altogether uneventful.

Since you are so keen on matters military, here are two exchanges I overheard during my time:

In a training establishment to a parade of what we used to call “chinless wonders” – officers just out of the Academy:-

Sgt: “Gentlemen, in this establishment, I and my NCO instructors will call each of you “Sir” and you will address me and them as “Sarn’t” or by their appropriate rank. But, as you are about to find out, the difference is that you, Gentlemen, will mean what you say.

Another establishment – on an exercise:-

Instructor: Now, Sir, the word is that the third building on the left of his street, houses a PIRA active service unit and we tasked to detain them. What do you do ?

Chinless: Well, Sarn’t, I take my four best men and…”

Instructor: “No, Sir, you tell your senior NCO, that's Geordie, to detail off a brick [a small team] to do the necessary and you stay back here.”

Chinless: “Pray why, Sarn’t?”

Instructor: ”Because, Sir, they know what they are doing and you don’t and Geordie, who’s a friend of mine, would get a black [adverse comment] on his record if he let you get killed.”


Believe me, dear Bart,

I have nothing against your country’s Reservists and National Guardsmen who were doubtless doing what they thought was their best in very difficult circumstances.

But I have very good reason to have the utmost contempt for the Neoconservatives in and out of the Administration, mostly people commonly referred by the US epithet “chickenhawks”, who were instrumental in sending these young men (and women) into wars which, in the considered opinion of quite a number of your own country’s very senior officers, were ill-advised, badly planned and poorly executed – and, above all, without the lengthy training and careful indoctrination as to the behaviour necessary to minimise the risk of a resentful civil population becoming actively hostile.

As for your qualification of the Taliban as "rageddy ass", readers may care to contrast your view with that of the UK Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, KCB, CBE, MC, in a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies last September:

In Afghanistan, we fight a rather different campaign. Again our adversaries are also quite complex and I would prefer to once more use the term militant and to be careful not to demonise the people we fight in Afghanistan. There is a lazy tendency for them all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”, but it is not as simple as that. Yes, there is a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of the people we are engaged with are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons. So we must beware of tarring them all with the same brush, as I am sure that one day we will need to deal with and reconcile the majority of these people. And the character of the people who oppose here is different to that of the people in Iraq. Afghans are a hardy people, who respect force and the warrior ethos. They are generally more impressed by a company of infantry, fighting bravely with bayonets fixed than by high tech ISTAR and offensive support. Their current choice is to fight in the cultivated areas where the visibility and fields of view can be measured in tens of metres, where basic skills, not technical prowess are most important.

Indeed, it is a form of operation that our forefathers would recognise from the Normandy bocage – indeed on their part it is clever, because we are denied the hi-tech advantages of stand off and range.

One of the key successes has been that of the Operational Mentoring, Liaison and Training Teams – the OMLTs, working with the Afghans. These small teams of British Officers and NCOs live, train and fight with the Afghan National Army. Operating on the same principles that our grandfathers who worked in the tribal areas would understand, they share the same dangers and teach and lead by example. The bonds that have formed between British and Afghan soldiers through shedding blood together is immeasurably strong and is an important lesson from the past applied to the present and the future.

Speaking of lessons from the past, I need not remind you, I hope, that no foreign force has conquered Afghanistan since Alexander the Great. Not for want of trying, the most recent example being the modern Soviet army.

I’m glad you consider me to have some competence in both law and history and I may well be, as you term it, ”a fop”. That is not for me to judge.

But, unlike you, I am not in the habit of pontificating on subjects on which I am ill-informed.

I do from, time to time, avail myself of the privilege of drinking in my old battalion’s mess and today’s sergeants are seriously worried, both about the situation in the two theatres, and about the US approach to the civil populations.

Believe me, when long service sergeants in our army start to get worried, it is time for the generals to have nightmares.

But time will tell which of us is right, even if the facts are suppressed in the Pentagon and rewritten in Hollywood for popular consumption.

Likewise for the future of Europe.
 

Shag from Brookline wrote:

“Stephen's comment is a reminder of the significance in our own Constitution of "We the People .... " Upon reflection, perhaps the people of Ireland just had to speak up.”

May I just observe that a referendum is, perhaps, a singularly inappropriate way of deciding whether a complex treaty should be ratified. It’s impossible to know from a “Yes” and “No” vote what parts of the Treaty were acceptable and what not.

The vast majority of Irish voters interviewed on the BBC said they just couldn’t make up their minds whether the proposals were a good or a bad thing and felt the government had not done a good enough job of “selling the Treaty” to them.

It’s rather akin to the problem with popular initiatives on ballots and the election of judges. I prefer to leave these often quite complex matters in the hands of the people who are paid (by the taxpayers) to work on such matters in Parliament. If they muck things up they can be booted out at the next election.

But to each nation its own arrangements and it may prove to have been useful. The treaty or the constitution which is incapable of improvement has not been written yet.
 

mourad:

If you indeed served as an NCO in the British Army, then I humbly apologize for my assumption that you did not based on your past posts displaying an ignorance of things military. However, if your attitude refusing to engage your nation's enemies is common among what used to be the outstanding British NCO corps then the British Army is following the path towards irrelevance already blazed by its EU partners.
 

I am a strong believer in representative republican (lower case, of course) government that can be held accountable. Mourad points out:

"If they muck things up they can be booted out at the next election."

But here across the pond from Mourad in 2004 the mother-muckers to a great extent were reelected, with the situation further mucked up. Time perhaps heals all wounds, but a heel elected to the Presidency leaves a lot of scar tissue, witness Richard Nixon.

Perhaps Erin can go bra-less on the EU.
 

I have wondered how my understanding of American politics would have changed had I had the benefit of "The Power Elite" in my more formative years.

Mills was a seminal influence on Tom Hayden and others of the New Left. Just think: your life in the '60s might have been much more exciting had you read Mills when first published.
 

May I just observe that a referendum is, perhaps, a singularly inappropriate way of deciding whether a complex treaty should be ratified. It’s impossible to know from a “Yes” and “No” vote what parts of the Treaty were acceptable and what not.
Indeed it is, but the people don't get to unratify the treaty once it has been done and the elites aren't the once that pay the price for a treaty that ties their destiny to other coutry's ways of choosing their own leaders who would in turn be leading the people of Ireland. If its that complex, then its best to educate the people. If its still too complex, then maybe in a generation or two, it can be simplified to the extent that people will support it. Where are this generations "Federalist Papers" defending the treaty? And whats the big rush for anyways?
 

Bart:

Thank you for your ungracious apology.

I have no reluctance to see HM Forces defend our country's national interest, or that of our allies, or to defend people unable to defend themselves.

I do have extreme reluctance to see the will of the UNSC thwarted (as did General Eisenhower over Suez - and rightly) or that we assist in conduct that is unlawful as a matter of international law, or that we condone those such as yourself who are content that we make new enemies where there were none before by unlawful conduct - such as torture, and/or inhuman degrading treatment of prisoners.

We condemn our enemies when they do such things - we should be no less forthright with our allies.

BTW 8,500 more UK troops will be going to Afghanistan shorty - but as part of the UN sanctioned ISAF, not as part of the US go-it-alone Enduring Freedom.
 

Perhaps the posters and commenters at this Blog much younger than myself have been exposed to and influenced by Mills and his "The Power Elite."

My dissertation involves the pervasiveness of Mills' concept in recent archaeological accounts of prehistoric sociopolitical structures.
 

But, unlike you, I am not in the habit of pontificating on subjects on which I am ill-informed.

That pretty much says it all.

Put a gun in Bart's hand and he thinks he knows something.
 

When our military was opposed like during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, Clinton fled.

When our military was opposed in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, the GOP members of Congress* had spent the better part of a year prior to the fight demanding that the troops be removed from Somalia. That is, they wanted to flee before the battle even happened.

*See:
H.CON.RES.163, 103rd Congress (7/27/1993)
H.J.RES.259, 103rd Congress
(9/13/1993)
H.R.3212, 103rd Congress
(10/5/1993)
H.RES.227, 103rd Congress (10/7/1993)
H.J.RES.275, 103rd Congress
(10/7/1993)
H.CON.RES.170, 103rd Congress
(10/22/1993) [this one, btw, is an explicit reversal of an AUMF--a nasty almost-precedent for "cutting and running" in your eyes, I should think. No big surprise, though, as only 3 GOP House members voted for the AUMF in the first place!]

The majority of the GOP-introduced bills appeared on the 7th of October--the day after the Mogadishu battle.

All of which finally culminated in a vote on 170 which was passed nearly unanimously by both parties on Nov. 8, 1993, a short month after the battle.

With no support in Congress for the fight and no support among the people for the fight, Clinton rightly pulled the forces out. You might call that retreat, but you might also call it responsive governance.

I just wish the current administration had read the writing on the wall as well.
 

Stephen wrote:

If its that complex, then its best to educate the people. If its still too complex, then maybe in a generation or two, it can be simplified to the extent that people will support it. Where are this generations "Federalist Papers" defending the treaty? And whats the big rush for anyways?

I agree with you about the 'education'.

You can read or download the treaty on the EU website in any one of the community languages. Be prepared to be quite bored it is 392 pages long.

The "at a glance- summary is here:
http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/glance/index_en.htm
 

Yes, I have it. Its an abomination. My favorite are all the Declarations made by each country hedging their bets in one form or another. Look, I'm all in favor of Europeans both consolidating their bloated governments and adding yet another layer of bureacracy to their lives if thats what they desire. But lets not misrepresent (or condemn) the desire of the people as Ms. Levinson has done just because the ball isn't rolling the way she wants it to. The Irish have wide experience in having their lives dominated by a foreign class of elites. Lets not sell them short in the wisdom department just yet.
 

Stephen:

The total staff of the EU civil service is presently 32,000 which, for a population larger than the USA and a larger economy, compares pretty favorably with the US federal bureaucracy.

Of course the analogy is false because for example, the civil services of the member states administer the EU programmes - Brussels only sets policy in the areas it covers.

Ireland, BTW, is a huge net beneficiary in fiscal terms from EU Membership.
 

PMS:

We were not at war in Somalia. George I sent in a small contingent of troops to provide security for food deliveries.

Mr. Clinton changed the mission when he ordered the troops to engage in offensive search and destroy missions against the local warlords.

Congress never approved Mr. Clinton's new war and the GOP unsuccessfully tried to get the Dem Congress to pull the plug. The Dems there and almost certainly here did not appear to have any problem with a Dem President starting his own wars. That faux outrage is saved for GOP Presidents with bipartisan AUMFs.

In any case, Mr. Clinton continued his war until the troops actually took casualties and CNN ran video of dead troops being dragged in the streets 24/7. In the usual display of Clintonian political courage (sic), Bill cut and ran as soon as he could get the troops on transports.

Al Qaeda took heart that the US was indeed a weak horse and used this cut and run to recruit more terrorists and cited it in their declaration of war on the United States.
 

ahhh.. the sweet stench of a pious partisan prodigal .. nothing quite matches the smell .. eh ??

See: Ronald Reagan, Beruit, Lebanon as well .
 

"Bart" DeDicta, historical revisionist par excellance:

However, none of the military interventions which Mr. Clinton threatened ever proceeded in the face of actual opposition. When our military was opposed like during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, Clinton fled.

Bush I put the troops in Somalia. And the withdrawal was done amidst howling demands from the Rethuglicans that he do so.

Cheers,
 

LOL. Pwn3d!

"Bart" DeDicta:

Robert Kagan is an historian of classical European political and military history. He seems to share the point of view of his classical European subjects rather than the isolationism in vogue now with most of academia.

"The Return of History and the End of Dreams" is a rebuttal to Francis Fukuyama's essay "The End of History." Kagan's two main theses are that rivalries between nation states and ideologies have not gone away and that the Bush Doctrine is simply a variation of US policy since the end of WWII.

I largely agree with Kagan's take,....<*blah-blah-blah....*>

[Shag from Brookline]: I confess I did not read Kagan's book and my knowledge of it comes from Bacevich's review. Perhaps I should check other reviews in the Weekly Standard to see where Lisa's bro's agreement with Kagan comes from, assuming he hasn't actually read the book.

["Bart"]: Although I own or have read some of Kagan's prior work, I have not purchased this book.

Q.E.D.....

FWIW, though, Robert Kagan is just one more of the neocon RWAs that have so infested the Dubya maladministration as to bring us to the present fiascos. Glenn Greenwald justly dumps on Kagan and his ilk in these articles.

Cheers,
 

Mourad:

And by the way, you are not doing much better in Afghanistan either.

Indeed, things there have gone from bad to worse, thanks to Dubya's eedjitcy.

I just returned from Canada, where a lively debate is on as to whether Canada ought to rethink it's presence in Afghanistan following the 100th troop death there (not even mentioning a substantial portion of those were killed by U.S. forces), if not withdraw outright.

But on "Bart"'s planet, things are going swimmingly in their alter-Afghanistan ... because Dubya is Gawd, and Gawd doan make no misteaks.....

Cheers,
 

If I may just point out the obvious:

["Bart"]: If you indeed served as an NCO in the British Army, then I humbly apologize for my assumption [that's "Bart"'s misspelling of "assertion"] that you did not based on your past posts displaying an ignorance of things military.

About the only one here that has demonstrated ignerrence is the person that said that Mourad had no military experience.

Tell you what: If I was given a choice, I'd pick the one that knows what he says and says what he knows, over the blowhard, as a CO any day.

Cheers,
 

Mr. Clinton changed the mission

Faux outrage, indeed. If you change the mission from "get the WMDs!" to "democracy now!" to "fight al-qaeda there so we don't fight them here!" to "99 bottles of beer on the wall" (or what ever the latest flavor of justification is), then I suppose that's fine and dandy, but if UN forces governing security start getting attacked by local militias, responding is out of the question.

Either you buy the tripe about broad Article II powers to carry out war belonging to the President or you don't. Furthermore, the bipartisan nature of the Iraq AUMF is nifty, but a majority is all that's required in our democracy to go to war--another reason to suspect that the Article II war powers are/should be limited.

I think you'd have an easier time justifying Continue Hope under the original AUMF for Somalia (making a secure environment for the distribution of supplies) than you would justifying a five year war in Iraq under an AUMF that asked for protection against "the continuing threat posed by Iraq"--newspeak for WMDs--and the enforcement of WMD-related UN security resolutions.

In fact, I don't see much difference in the scope of the AUMFs at all, neverminding the three pages of CYA whereases in the latter bill.
 

It is a great pity that Patrick Henry failed and we did not retain our Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was a mistake and all the promises the Federalists made turned out to be wrong. The Anti-Federalists were right.
 

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pms:

As you may recall, I have argued in the past that the Constitution requires Congress is issue a declaration of war before a President may start a war, although the procedure is moot it an enemy has already started the was by attacking the United States. I have never offered the Yoo argument that Presidents can declare their own wars.

Unlike many Dems here, I do not have different standards depending on whether the President is a Donkey or an Elephant.

Did any Dem here protest that Mr. Clinton violated the requirement of a declaration of war in Somalia and Kosovo and almost with Haiti? I doubt it.

Dem outrage only applies to the current GOP President who obtained an AUMF for both of his wars.

Did any Dem here protest that Mr. Clinton intentionally avoided going to the UN for permission to bomb the hell out of Serbia to avoid having the Russians veto the operation? I think not.

That outrage is reserved for the current GOP President who actually invested (wasted) months wooing the UN to bless his war.

You really do not want to play this hypocrisy game.
 

The anti-federalists make up an important aspect of our current political and civic culture. They were right in that some of the Federalists, the Hamiltonian folks, intended a far more overreaching federal government than what was being admitted to during the convention, to which Marshall would prove them right in a little over a decade. But its to the anti-federalists that we owe the legacy of our beloved Bill of Rights. kudos to them for that.
 

But its to the anti-federalists that we owe the legacy of our beloved Bill of Rights. kudos to them for that.

Most of the anti-federalists opposed the BoR, claiming it didn't solve the structural problems they criticized about the Constitution (centralized authority, taxation of individuals, etc.). Madison really introduced it to take away an issue from them, expecting (correctly) that most of those unsure about the Constitution would be reassured that their rights would be protected.
 

Mark, yes. They indeed smelled a rat. But without their bickering, that solution would not have been available to Madison. Ultimately, yes, they were not happy, but without them the BoR wouldn't have been added, inasmuch as Madison thought the BoR would be used to limit the scope of the people's rights. Boy, was he right.
 

"Bart" DeDictaL

Did any Dem here protest that Mr. Clinton intentionally avoided going to the UN for permission to bomb the hell out of Serbia to avoid having the Russians veto the operation? I think not.

I didn't approve of the bombing of Serbia. But it was probably better than invading them, FWIW (although those on the ground in Belgrade, such as my brother-in-law's mother, probably didn't appreciate it all that much [disclaimer: I didn't know him at the time]). Nor did I approve the bombing of Iraq in 1998.

As for Haiti, how many bombs did we drop on them?

Bosnia was a NATO peace-keeping mission, intended to separate the sides, and stop an already raging war.

You really do not want to play this hypocrisy game.

Why not? What did you think of the invasion of Grenada and the attack on Panama, "Bart"? Care to point us to the evidence of your outrage there? Were you out protesting in the streets about this trampling of the Constitution? Writing letters to the editor?

Mr. Clinton violated the requirement of a declaration of war in Somalia....

As has been repeatedly pointed it, you spelled "Bush I" wrong....

But I do note the "Clinton's peni$! Clinton's peni$!!!" nature of your complaints.

Cheers,
 

The shame of the events in the former Yugoslavia during the Clinton years falls more upon European nations that failed to act on matters in their own backyards rather than upon Clinton and America, keeping in mind the WWI and WWII triggering events in the area.
 

"But I do note the "Clinton's peni$! Clinton's peni$!!!" nature of your complaints."

Why are Democrats so obsessed with Clinton's willie, that they keep bringing it up in discussions that have nothing to do with it?
 

I have never offered the Yoo argument that Presidents can declare their own wars.

Did I say that you did? My point was that you would normally adhere to the idea that the President has the exclusive ability to change the mission--that is, how the goals of the conflict should be achieved--by dint of Article II powers. Have I mischaracterized your opinion?

The point where we diverge is whether an AUMF allows Congress to direct how a military objective (e.g. "secure environment") is to be achieved. My position is that Congress, as the voice of the people, has the ability and obligation to do so, through statutory limitation in addition to the "power o' the purse."

Your position seems to be that Congress has the right to do so if--and only if--the President is a Democrat and the Congress is Republican. I can't see any other way to reconcile your support of broad Article II powers to direct the military with your support of the GOP's pre-Mogadishu attempt to repeal the AUMF in Somalia.

At this point, I suspect that any workaround is going to be based less in "objective standards" and more in weasel phrases that let you rationalize the contradiction inherent in your position.
 

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Brett:

Why are Democrats so obsessed with Clinton's willie, that they keep bringing it up in discussions that have nothing to do with it?

It's the generic appellation for the standard tu quoque argument of the RW: Whenever someone complains about what the maladministration does, it's met with a resounding "But Clinton!!! ...." response, totally ignoring the fact that the RW hated Clinton and everything he did.

We really didn't care much about Clinton's peni$. It's the RWers that did, spending $60 million of taxpayer dollars and using the vast resources of the FBI to find out if there were any "identifying marks", and publishing a 'report' on all of this that would make Larry Flynt envious....

Cheers,
 

RWingers suffering from ED were so obsessed with how well Clinton functioned, with the economy and otherwise, that they had to dis his personal functions. Let's see, who were the RWingers forced to the sidelines because they couldn't stand up to the heat ...?
 

But, Arne, if you're going to come up with some phrase to sumarize this, it should be vaguely relevant to the complaints Republicans actually make. Here, give this one a try:

"But I do note the "Clinton's perjury! Clinton's perjury!!!" nature of your complaints."

There, that actually makes some sense.

Shag, let's get real here: That the impeachment was about a BJ, rather than barely unsuccessful perjury and obstruction of justice by a President Republicans thought had successfully obstructed justice on several prior occasions, was just a Democratic talking point. "Clinton's peni$! Clinton's peni$!!!" is just a racier form of "Neener neener!" to yell out when your fingers are in your ears.
 

pms_chicago said...

The point where we diverge is whether an AUMF allows Congress to direct how a military objective (e.g. "secure environment") is to be achieved. My position is that Congress, as the voice of the people, has the ability and obligation to do so, through statutory limitation in addition to the "power o' the purse."

Your position seems to be that Congress has the right to do so if--and only if--the President is a Democrat and the Congress is Republican. I can't see any other way to reconcile your support of broad Article II powers to direct the military with your support of the GOP's pre-Mogadishu attempt to repeal the AUMF in Somalia.

Bush 41's Operation Restore Hope in Somalia was not authorized by an AUMF. Clintons change in mission to wage war against the local Somali warlords most definitely not authorized by an AUMF. There was nothing to repeal.

If Congress had authorized Mr. Clinton's war in Somalia, then all Congress could do is defund the war - no matter which party controlled Congress. Mr. Clinton as CiC would have plenary authority to direct the operations in Somalia - even though he was a Dem.

I do not play the double standards game.
 

Brett, get over your and other neocons' EDeification of Clinton's privates and think of what happened to his surplus in the hands of George W that gave Merkel a shoulder massage (from behind).
 

Got nothing to do with his privates, and everything to do with perjury before a grand jury, among other offenses. I repeat, pretending it was about a blow job was just a talking point, and remarkably dishonest one, at that.

And, yeah, Bush is a terrible President, and saying that the Republican Congress spent like drunken sailors is an insult to drunken sailors everywhere, who at least spend their OWN money on the booze.

But this "Tu quoque" stuff is crap. It's only a fallacy if you try to use it as a defense, and I'm not defending Bush, I'm pointing out that Democrats attacking him have a double standard for assessing Presidents.
 

Brett:

But, Arne, if you're going to come up with some phrase to sumarize this, it should be vaguely relevant to the complaints Republicans actually make. Here, give this one a try:

"But I do note the "Clinton's perjury! Clinton's perjury!!!" nature of your complaints."

There, that actually makes some sense.

Only to the folks that suck up the RW Kool-Aid.

Here's some history for you:

"In the latest travesty, as revealed by the Washington Post, Starr used prosecutors and FBI agents to interrogate Arkansas state troopers about women with whom Bill Clinton allegedly had affairs prior to his presidency. Starr's deputy argues that they had a duty to find out whether Clinton might have confided some incriminating statements to these women. Fine--until you consider the questions Starr's agents actually asked. They wanted to know whether one woman had borne a child who resembled Clinton and whether any of the officers had witnessed Clinton having sex with local women."

(U.S. News and World Report, July 21, 1997)

This long before Lewinsky fell into Starr's lap and he had even some faintly colourable authority to go sniffing panties.

Then there's the matter of what constitutes "perjury" [18 USC § 1621]. That is a crime requiring three separate elements, 1) a statement under oath, which is 2) material, which 3) the affiant believes to be false.

The Rethuglicans (and Starr) pretty much ignored the "materiality" aspect ... because that's a losing claim. Just look at the articles of impeachment; materiality is completely neglected. They pretended that perjury is just a "lie under oath". It is not. Not to mention, you have to show that the person believed the statement to be false. Clinton may well have thought he was just walking a fine line and skirting the law. Keep in mind he's under no legal obligation to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" (see, e.g., the Bronston case).

No, Brett: Let's be honest. It was about embarrassing Clinton about sex, and then trying to cobble together a "perjury" charge in a pretense of making the perse- ... umm, sorry, "prosecution" ... seem legitimate; a perjury charge that no competent DA would bother to try and bring.

Cheers,
 

PMS_Chicago's point proven:

["Bart" DeDicta]: Bush 41's Operation Restore Hope in Somalia was not authorized by an AUMF. Clintons change in mission to wage war against the local Somali warlords most definitely not authorized by an AUMF. There was nothing to repeal.

But it was Clinton that "Bart" criticised, not Bush I. If "Bart" were as even-handed as he claims, he would have criticised both, or Bush I only for introducing the troops. After all, isn't it an open question as to what an executive can do to "direct" the troops once a military operation has begun? To say that Clinton couldn't provide "new directions" to the troops would be to interfere with his authority as CinC.....

Cheers,
 

Brett:

But this "Tu quoque" stuff is crap. It's only a fallacy if you try to use it as a defense, ...

... which is why Clnton's name comes up sooner or later in every discussion of Dubya...

... and I'm not defending Bush, I'm pointing out that Democrats attacking him have a double standard for assessing Presidents.

How so? Please explain.

Cheers,
 

So all of the efforts to impose corporal punishment upon Clinton by Republicans (including the Starr Chamber) during his two terms were not related to his privates? Was it the usual beltway political hitting below the belt? Thanks for the ED-ucation.
 

Arne, you're perfectly free to believe that Clinton was not actually guilty of perjury, though I'd have a little more interest in your opinion on the matter if you showed some sign of knowing what he was accused of perjuring himself about. But your thinking him innocent doesn't change what Republicans were actually accusing him of.

That's right, Shaq; As unrelated to his privates as the reason somebody ran a red light is unrelated to the subsequent ticket.
 

Brett:

Arne, you're perfectly free to believe that Clinton was not actually guilty of perjury, though I'd have a little more interest in your opinion on the matter if you showed some sign of knowing what he was accused of perjuring himself about.

I happen to know a lot about this. Why don't you show both some knowledge of the facts and the law here?

Cheers,
 

BTW, Brett, I notice you didn't address the USN&WR article (which goes to the motives of Starr, the Arkansas Project, and the Rethuglicans, which is what we were discussing). Care to comment?

Cheers,
 

I note a deafening silence of our correspondent "Bart" WRT both Grenada and Panama. Wonder why.....

["Bart"]: You really do not want to play this hypocrisy game.

Yes, we do.

Cheers,
 

"I happen to know a lot about this."

Your R rated version of "Neener neener!" didn't suggest this. Indeed, I'd never guess from what you've written here that Clinton was charged with perjury before the grand jury investigating his obstruction of justice, not during the Jones case.

And do you really want to maintain that the House, when drawing up articles of impeachment, is bound by the same rules governing criminal charges?

Clinton was the subject of numerous investigations, most of which, far from clearing him, merely petered out amid missing evidence, and witnesses fled or uncooperative. Small surprise, then, when he got caught red handed suborning perjury and otherwise obstructing justice, even in a minor matter, that Republicans viewed it as akin to getting Dillinger on tax evasion.
 

Bush 41's Operation Restore Hope in Somalia was not authorized by an AUMF. Clintons change in mission to wage war against the local Somali warlords most definitely not authorized by an AUMF. There was nothing to repeal.

You're absolutely correct. I went back and checked the record more carefully. Even though both houses of Congress voted on and approved S.J.Res. 45, it got stuck in the Senate, which accepted the House-amended version and then did nothing with it.

My bad for being too quick to assume that a bill that had passed both houses might go on to the President. So, you're absolutely right--although both houses of Congress approved the explicit AUMF, they never sealed the deal.
 

"Clinton was the subject of numerous investigations, most of which, far from clearing him, merely petered out ...."

More ED-ification from Brett that it's not about Clinton's privates? Republicans seem to have it up to here with conjugated peters.
 

"More ED-ification from Brett that it's not about Clinton's privates?"

And I suppose you're one of those people who thinks "denigrate" is a racial reference, too.
 

Brett is showing his true colors.
 

Getting back on topic, Larry Solum at Legal Theory has provided a link to Daniel Halberstam's "Constitutional Heterarchy: The Centrality of Conflict in the European Union and the United States" which takes a looks at and compares US federalism/anti-federalism in adopting our Constitution with the goings on in Europe and pluralism, perhaps suggesting that the issues facing Ireland were not black and white. "We the People" should not be totally ignored.
 

Good article,Thank you!
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