OMNI PRESIDENTS’ DAY February
18/GEORGE WASHINGTON
My blog: War
Department/Peace Department
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OMNI NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT
Contents Feb. 18/22, 2013
350.org 2012 AND 2013 actions
Dick: What Is Presidents’ Day?
Wills: Presidential Bomb Power
Consaon: It Is Happening
Mayer: War on Terror = War on US
Scheer: “Defense” (= War) Hawks and 9-11
Daniel Ellsberg, Interview: Presidential Unconstitutional Abuse of War
Power
Our year, our future [D:
350.ORG’S 2013 PRESIDENTS DAY ACTION]
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Jan 13, 2013
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Friends,
I think this is going to be the year
we start to turn the climate crisis around.
Everywhere I
look, good people are working harder than ever to build a better, safer, more
sustainable world. From Canada to India
to Texas
But it’s still a fight, and bigger
than ever. 2012 was the hottest year on record in the United States , climate impacts are being felt
acutely around the world, and the fossil fuel industry maintains a powerful
grip on Washington
The first battle
of 2013 is right around the corner, when President Obama makes his decision
about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. That's why we’re working with the
Sierra Club, the Hip Hop Caucus and folks from across the movement to host a
giant action in Washington DC
Already over
10,000 people have signed up to be there -- will you join us in Washington on
February 17th to demand that President Obama move our country forward and
reject Keystone XL?
Click here to RSVP: act.350.org/signup/presidentsday
If the President intends to take us
forward into a clean energy future -- rather than let us slide into climate
chaos like what we only just began to glimpse in 2012 -- then Keystone XL will be the first and simplest test of
how serious he is.
It’s a decision that is the
President’s to make, and no one else. And it’s a big decision: Keystone XL is
the key to unlocking the Canadian tar sands, the second largest pool of carbon
on the planet, and NASA’s top climate scientist says that burning all that oil will
mean ‘essentially game over for the climate.’
President Obama
alone has the power to reject the pipeline -- but we have the power to force him to make the right
decision. Over 10,000 people have already signed up to be at
the action on Presidents Day weekend. That’s pretty good, but our goal is to make this the largest
climate rally in history. Will you help us make it 20,000?
This is our year. This is our future.
Let’s demand a better one.
Onward, May
350.org is building a global movement to solve
the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook andTwitter, and sign up for email alerts. You can help power
our work by getting involved locally, sharingyour story, and donating here.
What is Presidents' Day? By Dick Bennett
Presidents
Day (or Presidents' Day) is the common name for the federal holiday officially
designated as Washington's Birthday. As the first federal holiday to honor an
American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington
While the holiday is still officially known as Washington's Birthday, it has become popularly known as "Presidents’ Day", honoring both Washington and Lincoln, as well as all the other men who have served as president.
While the holiday is still officially known as Washington's Birthday, it has become popularly known as "Presidents’ Day", honoring both Washington and Lincoln, as well as all the other men who have served as president.
ALL the other
presidents? We wish to honor all the
presidents equally with Washington and Lincoln?
We wish to honor ALL the
presidents? I doubt if Washington and
Lincoln would like that.
It’s
the subject of a large book that I hope will be written. George Washington helped craft a Constitution
notable for its balance of powers among executive, judicial, and
congressional. If any imbalance were
considered, the Founders believed the Congress should be the leading
branch. The intent of the Founders was
to prevent a recurrence of the tyranny they had endured under Britain
But
modern U.S.
The
recent Republican assertion of power in Congress via anti-debt, anti-deficit,
anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, and pro-guns and God policies is only
a minor delay in the steady rise of presidential power described in book after
book. Some of this power expresses a barely
concealed dislike for the black President Obama. But President Obama’s continuity with the
rise of presidential power is clear: he continues
not only US imperial policies of expanding military bases worldwide, but he also embraces the well-established alliance
with corporations and the wealthy one percent. We call this alliance the National Security-Corporate-Pentagon-White
House-Congress-Mainstream (Corporate) Media Complex.
Let
us forget Presidents’ Day February 18 therefore and return to a joyful
commemoration of Washington’s Birthday February 22, for Washington and our
other Founders “envisioned a supreme legislative branch as the heart and soul
of America ’s central
government….America’s modern presidency, with all its trappings, would be
unimaginable to men like Madison ,
Washington
References
Berkin,
Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the Constitution.
Johnson,
Chalmers. Nemesis:The Last Days of the American
Republic
Schwarz,
Frederick, Jr. and Aziz Huq. Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power
in a Time of Terror. 2007.
Wills,
Garry. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security
State
THOSE WHO KNOW
Gary Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State National
Security State
Joe Conason, It
Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush. Dunne/St.
Martin's, 2007. Presidential
power has expanded in the direction of dictatorship. Take Pres.
Nixon: he and the Republican Party perverted the electoral process, the law
enforcement system, and government itself in a manner the nation had not seen
before. Most harmfully, he undermined
the Constitution by dismissing congressional authority: by impounding funds appropriated by Congress
for purposes he didn't approve, by reorganizing the government without
consulting the Congress that had created those departments, and by
circumventing Congress in his conduct of war in Vietnam
and Cambodia . Add wiretapping, burglaries, infiltrations
of antiwar groups, espionage against Democratic campaigns, misuse of the IRS
and Justice Dept., dirty tricks of every description, bribery, obstruction of
justice, perjury, and all financed by illegal corporate slush funds. (pp. 168-69).
And later generations of Republicans have sought to vindicate Nixon by
further expanding his authoritarian vision of executive power. And they were often enabled by the
Democrats.
Jane Mayer, The
Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on
American Ideals. Doubleday, 2008.
President Bush,
Vice-President Cheney, his adviser David Addington, and others used the
post-9/11 crisis to further their long-held agenda to enhance presidential
powers to a degree never known in U.S. history and to obliterate
constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American
experiment in constitutional government.
Robert Scheer, The Pornography of Power: Ho w Defense Hawks
Hjiacked 9/11 and Weakened America
Dick: So let us
speak out against these unconstitutional usurpations of power by the executive
branch, and speak up to President Obama not to repeat them, but to reverse them, and return our government to one of
separation of powers as our Founders had intended.
PRESIDENTIAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL
ABUSE OF WAR POWER: FROM TRUMAN TO OBAMA
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“Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon
committed against me are now legal”
Posted by: June
7, 2011
ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today's OFF-SET questions
is Daniel Ellsberg, author, defense analyst and prominent whistleblower.
He is the subject of a documentary
about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," nominated for a
2010 Academy Award, which took its title from the words former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger used to describe Ellsberg in 1971.
Officially titled "United States-Viet
Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. In April 1973, the court learned that Nixon had ordered his so-called "Plumbers Unit" to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to steal documents they hoped might make the whistle-blower appear crazy. In May, more evidence of government illegal wiretapping was revealed. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped. This led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. (*More bio below)
The federal government has now declassified the Pentagon Papers. The Nixon Presidential Library & Museum will release the documents on June 13, forty years to the day that leaked portions of the report were published on the front page of The New York Times.
Also, the PBS series POV is streaming “The Most Dangerous Man in
In this interview, Ellsberg says, "Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. " (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of
INTERVIEW BEGINS (2011)
Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?
The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.
(I've heard that most if not all of this has long been online. Here's a link I just looked up; there probably are others: CLICK HERE.)
It would be helpful if the publishers indicated, by brackets or different type, what was withheld earlier. But that would be very embarrassing to the Library and the government; I'll be surprised if they do it. Most of the omissions in the GPO edition "for security"–a ridiculous claim, since their substance was nearly all available to the world in the simultaneous Gravel/Beacon Press edition–will appear arbitrary and unjustified.
I'd really like to see someone–a journalist or an anti-secrecy NGO– compare this version in detail with the redacted white space in the 1971 GPO edition, for a measure of what the government has regarded as necessarily classified for the last forty years. And then ask: just why was most of what was released by the GPO, covering 1945 to1968, kept secret as late as 1971? Hint: it wasn't for "national security."
What that comparison would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.
But if the hype around this belated release got a new generation to read the Pentagon Papers or at least the summaries to the various volumes (my highest hope, pretty unlikely), they'd get from them as good an understanding as they could find anywhere today of our war in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon Papers didn't explicitly present that last alternative, but their release contributed to that result, eventually. Is it too much to hope that their re-release could do the same?
Yes, it is. But fortunately there are a few Congresspersons, like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, Walter Jones and Ron Paul who got that message the first time, even if the Republican and Democratic leadership hasn't, yet. (CLICK HERE to see a salon.com essay pointing to the only way out of
On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said, "I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions." How concerned are you that elected officials haven't learned those lessons?
I still stand by my cited conclusions, both for 1971 and for every single year since, including this one. But I never expected elected officials in the Executive branch (of which there are exactly two in each administration) or their myriad subordinates to "learn those lessons" or to accept them as warnings.
Leaders in the Executive branch–in every country– know what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and they always want to stay in office and keep on running things with as little interference from Congress, the public and the courts as possible: which means, with as much secrecy as they can manage. So I'm not exactly concerned that they're still at it (which is why I'm still at what I do), since that is so predictable, in every government, tyrannical or "democratic."
Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history, put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.
However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald, ( CLICK HERE) and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.
This open disregard of a ruling statute (regardless of his supposed feelings about its constitutionality, which Obama has not even bothered to express) is clearly an impeachable offense, though it will certainly not lead to impeachment–given the current complicity of the leaders of both parties–any more than President George W. Bush's misleading Congress into his crime against the peace, aggression, in Iraq, or President Johnson's lies to obtain the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Yet the most important point, as I see it, is not the secrecy and the lying, or even the blatant disregard of the Constitution, the Presidential oath and the rule of law.
As the Pentagon Papers documented for the much of the Vietnam era (we still lack, and we still need, the corresponding Papers for the Nixon policy-making, that added over twenty thousand names unnecessarily to the Vietnam Memorial and over a million deaths in Vietnam) and the last decade confirms: the point is that the Founders had it right the first time.
As Abraham Lincoln explained their intention (in defending to his former law partner William Herndon his opposition to President Polk's deliberately provoked Mexican War): "The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us." ( CLICK HERE to read the whole letter, which I keep pinned to the wall of my office).
As
Either we the people will press elected officials in Congress–on pain of losing their jobs–to take up their Constitutional responsibilities once again and to end by defunding our illegal, unjustifiable (and now, financially insupportable) military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and air attacks on Pakistan, Libya and Yemen: or those bloody stalemates will continue indefinitely.
In March–at the age of 79–you were arrested in front of the White House–and then again outside of
It was then almost impossible to communicate with Bradley Manning, and I have so far done so only through his few visitors. In front of the White House and at Quantico, I was attempting to communicate with those holding him prisoner, to protest the abusive and illegal conditions of his detention, amounting not only to punishment of someone not tried, convicted or sentenced but to torture forbidden by domestic and international law and the Constitution even as punishment.
Do you believe what Bradley did was necessary and heroic?
Yes.
Do you still have all 7000 pages of the Pentagon Papers?
I don't really know. Hundreds of boxes of files have gone from storage into my basement, and my old copies of the Papers may or may not be somewhere in there. I'm not going to go searching among them for the still-classified eleven words.
These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon, what comes to mind?
Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the
There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit obstructions of justice (like Nixon's bribes to potential witnesses) to conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more years.
Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the 54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks, almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).
He could only admire Obama's boldness in using the same Espionage Act provisions used against me–almost surely unconstitutional used against disclosures to the American press and public in my day, less surely under the current Supreme Court–to indict Thomas Drake, a classic whistleblower who exposed illegality and waste in the NSA.
Drake's trial begins on June 13, the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers. If Nixon were alive, he might well choose to attend.
* * *
*MORE BIO: After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics, he studied for a year at King’s College,
In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in
On his return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in
Ellsberg is the author of three books: Papers on the War (1971), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful
He is a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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END PRESIDENTS’/GEORGE
WASHINGTON’S DAY NEWSLETTER
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