[Peace-discuss] Who opposes the war?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[While the Democratic presidential candidate is agreeing with
the administration that "A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel,
to its neighbors and beyond [so] we cannot and should not --
must not -- permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons"  
<http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8428> -- and demanding
that the administration take stronger action against Iran --
the far right is condemning the war.  --CGE]


	Last Updated: Jan 23rd, 2006 - 08:28:07
        Anti-war Stance Is Right, Not Left
        by Gary Benoit
        
According to the wisdom of the day, the left is against the
war in Iraq while the right supports the war. So why do The
John Birch Society and its affiliated magazine THE NEW
AMERICAN support the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq? Isn’t
that the position of the hard left? (Click here for an online
letter to Congress, "Bring Our Soldiers Home From Iraq -- Now!")

In actuality, there are fundamental differences between the
left and us regarding the question of war.

Unlike the left, we do not believe any one man should ever be
entrusted with the awesome power of deciding when to go to
war. It makes no difference if the president is a Republican
or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal. The Constitution
assigns to Congress, not the president, the power “to declare
war.” If America needs to go to war, Congress should declare it.

Democrat presidents were wrong when they claimed that the
decision to go to war was theirs to make, and President Bush
is wrong when he makes the same claim. Mr. Bush’s
acknowledgement of last December that “as President, I am
responsible for the decision to go into Iraq,” overlooks the
fact that this decision was not his to make.

Unlike the left, we recognize that the president’s powers as
commander-in-chief are limited, as well they should be. Under
our system of government, we have a president entrusted with
certain specified powers; we do not have an elected dictator
or a king. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist
Papers (No. 69), the president’s authority as
commander-in-chief amounts “to nothing more than the supreme
command and direction of the military and naval forces, as
first general and admiral … while that of the British king
extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and
regulating of fleets and armies — all which, by the
Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the
legislature.”

Unlike the left, we do not want to send our troops to war to
enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions. Yet this
is exactly what President Bush did in the case of Iraq, by his
own repeated admissions. For instance, on November 8, 2002,
the day the Security Council passed its Resolution 1441
insisting that Iraq eliminate its reputed weapons of mass
destruction, Mr. Bush declared: “America will be making only
one determination: is Iraq meeting the terms of the Security
Council resolution or not?... If Iraq fails to fully comply,
the United States and other nations will disarm Saddam Hussein.”

Even though the left supports intervening militarily on behalf
of the UN, it opposed Bush’s intervention in Iraq because the
Security Council did not pass a new resolution explicitly
authorizing a military invasion to enforce Resolution 1441 and
other Security Council resolutions. The irony is that the Bush
administration, by launching an offensive war against Iraq,
actually demonstrated it was more interested in putting teeth
behind Security Council resolutions than the Security Council
itself was.

Unlike the left, we believe in putting America first, which
means minding our own business, avoiding foreign
entanglements, and going to war only when necessary to defend
our citizens and country. We should not be the world’s
policeman. Nor should we spill another drop of American blood
to wage the Bush administration’s “global democratic revolution.”

Using military force to right the wrongs in other countries
and cultures dissimilar to our own is sure to backfire, even
if the intent is sincere. As John Quincy Adams correctly
observed: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to
destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and
independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only
of her own.... She well knows that by once enlisting under
other banners than her own, were they even the banners of
foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the
power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue,
of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the
colors and usurp the standards of freedom.”

Countries that mind their own business are less likely to be
attacked than those that intervene in other countries’
affairs, particularly when those interventions come to be
viewed as unwanted occupations.

Unlike the left, we believe that “to be prepared for war is
one of the most effectual means of preserving peace,” as
George Washington succinctly put it. This means preparedness
by our intelligence services as well as the military against
terrorist attack or military attack by a foreign power.
Countries that are prepared are much less likely to be
attacked than countries that are not prepared.

Unlike the left, we believe that in war “there is no
substitute for victory,” to quote General Douglas MacArthur.
Why, therefore, do we want to bring the troops home now? Why
not win and then get out? Well, if winning means eliminating
Iraq’s reputed weapons of mass destruction, there is no
victory to obtain because those weapons do not exist. If it
means toppling the Saddam regime, that victory has already
been achieved. But if it means propping up the new Iraqi
regime until that regime can stand on its own, that “victory”
would be no victory at all, since that new regime is fast
becoming another Iran, an “axis of evil” nation.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_3103.shtml
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