Enabling Act for the Bush dictatorship?

Congress and the American people are getting what we asked for in the days following September 11, 2001

The text of H.J. Res. 64, passed through both chambers of the Congress of the United States on September 14, 2001 is as follows:

H.J. RES. 64

Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and

Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and

Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and

Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and

Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Authorization for Use of Military Force’’.

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL.—That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any further acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

(b) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS. —
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION.—
Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS.
—Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution. [emphasis added]

There's big a problem with all this. Nobody has ever asked President Bush to explain just how ``he determines'' who the ``terrorists'' are and who ``aides'' them. Out of these open-ended authorizations flows the ``legal authority'' President Bush now asserts.

The result has been a worldwide round-up of presidentially-declared ``enemy combatants'' who often disappear into black prisons for torture. These persons never are brought up on charges. The justice of public trials never are afforded these suspects who remain entombed in the American-run gulags.

Now a broad spying program against US citizens has been revealed late and grudgingly by the New York Times.

It's an insanely un-American net of unlimited suspicion for which Congress laid down before Bush in September 2001, and that the president continues to promulgate now:

PRESIDENT BUSH, MONDAY: What we quickly learned was that al Qaeda was not a conventional enemy. Some lived in our cities and communities, and communicated from here in America to plot and plan with bin Laden's lieutenants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Then they boarded our airplanes and launched the worst attack on our country in our nation's history.

This new threat required us to think and act differently. And as the 9/11 Commission pointed out, to prevent this from happening again, we need to connect the dots before the enemy attacks, not after. And we need to recognize that dealing with al Qaeda is not simply a matter of law enforcement; it requires defending the country against an enemy that declared war against the United States of America.

Despite the deadly spectacle of September 11, this is broad-brush over-reaction of the worst kind. It is and always has been absurd to view criminal terrorism as some kind of world war. It is downright defeatism to lay down our civil liberties while discarding legitimate law enforcement as the main tool to protect the country from what are at most a very small number of truly dangerous enemies.

We need the cooperation of people around the world to root out the genuine terrorists. But conducting war against the people who live above the oil is in fact a surefire method of breeding terrorism instead.

Bush cannot be trusted with the power he accurately claims he was awarded in 2001, as he is proving every day. Will history record that HJ 64 enabled dictatorship in America? Is there a lesson of history from the German Enabling Act of 1933, which asserted that,

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed. [from How Hitler Became a Dictator by Jacob G. Hornberger, quoting a translation of the original declaration passed the day after the Reichstag fire]

President Bush angrily denied he had become a dictator, while denouncing the unnamed person or persons who had leaked details of the spying program to the press. The warning coded into these remarks says to me that we should fear Mr. Bush is fast becoming exactly what he says he is not.

Even if Bush leaves office on schedule in 2009, will the next president maintain the same broad powers? It would be difficult for a new president to resist holding onto them, even if that president projects a less messianic outlook.