[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [Peace] Wars Are Like Trade Deals: Simple Majority of Congress is Enough to Stop Them

[C. G. Estabrook]

> https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159038944957656 <https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159038944957656>
> 
> Wars Are Like Bad Trade Deals: Simple Majority of Congress is Enough to Stop Them
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> A central organizing project of my life since 2006 has been to try to do in Congress to U.S. wars what Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, for whom I worked in 1997-1998, tries to do to bad trade deals: stop them. In this sense, the passage by the House last Thursday of a concurrent resolution [not subject to presidential veto] – exactly as envisioned by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 - to end Trump's unconstitutional war with Iran was like Fast Track '97, when we blocked Bill Clinton on the House floor from getting "fast track" authority to negotiate new trade and investment agreements. It would be salutary if a journalist like John Nichols, who has chronicled Congressional reform efforts in these two areas since Dennis Kucinich was in Congress, would write an article to educate activist public opinion about how wars are like bad trade deals and how trying to stop them is similar.
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> I started thinking about this again this morning because I was listening to a story on This American Life related to migration from Mexico to the United States which noted the huge increase in that migration that occurred in the 1990s. Which, of course, was during the first years of the NAFTA agreement. One of the marketing stories of the NAFTA agreement prior to its passage by Congress was that it was going to reduce migration from Mexico to the United States by creating more economic opportunity in Mexico; the opposite happened. When you look back at what the NAFTA agreement was designed to do, which included replacing Mexican food production for Mexican consumers with U.S. food production for Mexican consumers, the claim that NAFTA was going to reduce migration from Mexico to the United States was preposterous. The Mexican farmers who were thrown out of work by U.S. agricultural dumping had to go somewhere. So the claim that NAFTA was going to reduce Mexican migration to the U.S. was about as preposterous as the claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in order to address the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction or to bring democracy and freedom and human rights to Iraqis. In both cases, it wasn't really a "mistake" - it was a bald-face lie, “from the morning,” as the Palestinians say.
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> One way that wars are like bad trade deals is that the owners of America have an agenda of permanently remaking a foreign country for the benefit of the owners, which agenda is going to victimize a lot of Americans, in addition to victimizing a lot of people in the foreign country which is intended to be victimized. The owners of America sometimes face a usually one-time-only obstacle of democratic accountability they have to get through in order to execute their victimization agenda: the Congress of the United States. In order to get their victimization agenda through Congress - the bad trade deal or the war – the owners have to lie about what the actual effects of their agenda on the victims are going to be. Of course, the owners lie about what's going to happen to the intended victims in the foreign country which is intended to be victimized. That's not very hard to get away with, since the intended victims in the foreign country which is intended to be victimized don't generally vote in U.S. elections or have other good means for voice here. But the owners also lie about what's going to happen to intended victims in America as a result of their agenda, and that part can be trickier, because the intended victims in America do still have some voice in Congress occasionally, even if that voice is usually badly attenuated by the power in Washington of Big Money.
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> So the opponents of the owners’ agenda have to expose and oppose both sets of lies, but the opponents of the owners’ agenda often have to prioritize exposing and opposing the lies about what's going to happen to the American victims, because those concerns are usually the engine that's pulling the train in terms of what Congress is going to do. In this sense, flag-draped caskets at Dover Air Force Base, the destruction of the World Trade Center by Saudis linked to the Saudi regime, and the assassination of U.S. resident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi regime are like the destruction of union manufacturing jobs in the Midwest by U.S. trade agreements.
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> We can see the effects of these dynamics when we compare efforts to oppose unconstitutional war with Iran with efforts to oppose unconstitutional U.S. participation in the genocidal Saudi regime war in Yemen. The half-empty is this: the main reason that the House voted last Thursday to stop unconstitutional war with Iran while it didn't vote last Thursday to stop unconstitutional U.S. participation in the genocidal Saudi regime war in Yemen is that Iran has the capacity to kill Americans and starving children in Yemen and their parents do not. But the spectacular half-full whose robust implications are not yet on public display is this: the underlying mechanism of democratic accountability is exactly the same - Congress invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 exactly as intended to pass a concurrent resolution [not subject to presidential veto] to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in an unauthorized war; and when the House did this on Thursday, with the vigorous backing of the House Democratic leadership, they set a precedent that we can use to try to end the Yemen war, any time we want.
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> On Thursday, top House Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, threw down for Congressional insistence that Congress can stop an unconstitutional war with a simple majority in both houses by passing a concurrent resolution [not subject to presidential veto] to direct the President to stop the unconstitutional war, exactly as envisioned by the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which is the law of the land.
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> This is a game-changer in a Democratic House, because under the War Powers Resolution, any Member of the House can introduce a privileged concurrent resolution to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in a war any time the House is in session, and that bill must go to the floor for a vote if the sponsor insists. It doesn’t say anywhere in the War Powers Resolution that it has to be Ro Khanna. It could be Ilhan Omar. It could be Rashida Tlaib. It could be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It could be Tulsi Gabbard. It could be Jim McGovern, it could be Barbara Lee, it could be Peter DeFazio, it could be Pramila Jayapal. To prevent the introduction of such a privileged concurrent resolution therefore requires the unanimous consent of every single House Democrat. And therefore, every single House Democrat can be held individually accountable for the failure to introduce such a resolution.
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> Moreover, under the War Powers Resolution, any such resolution which is passed by the House is privileged in the Senate, which means that Mitch McConnell can’t block a Senate vote. So this means that if House Democrats are on record as opposing a war – as they are on record opposing unconstitutional U.S. participation in the genocidal Saudi regime war in Yemen – then a single House Democrat – like Ilhan Omar, for example – can pull the plunger on the pinball that will force a Senate vote which Mitch McConnell can do nothing to stop and which can pass the Senate with a simple majority. [Such privileged resolutions only require a simple majority in the Senate.]
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> If we compare the world in which we “only” need a simple majority in both houses to end an unconstitutional war with the world in which we need a two-thirds majority in both houses to end an unconstitutional war because we have to override a presidential veto, the world in which we “only” need a simple majority in both houses to end an unconstitutional war is going to have much less war in it. Much less.
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> For these reasons, the introduction and passage in the House of a concurrent resolution to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen is an urgent priority; not only to end the war – which would certainly be reason enough – but to clarify and underscore and nail to the church door for all time the “new normal” that we “only” need a simple majority in both houses to end an unconstitutional war.
> https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159038944957656 <https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159038944957656>

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