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

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159038944957656

Wars Are Like Bad Trade Deals: Simple Majority of Congress is Enough to
Stop Them

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.
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