Critique : Houston Indymedia

Several Republicans came out against the Iraq invasion plans this week. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to Bush's father has stated: "There is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive." Henry Kissinger and a few others even joined in, warning Bush against undermining the "war on terrorism" by undermining alliances with international partners.
This is not a bunch of flower-children, these are some of the individuals who have been primarily responsible for large scale slaughter of civilians in declared and undeclared U.S. wars around the world. The children killed by U.S. chemical, covert, radioactive and economic warfare in Laos, Cambodia, Central America, Vietnam and Iraq were witnesses to the brutality of these men.
However, there are apparently individuals, like Bush and Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official and consultant to "Defense" Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who would go even further than Kissinger and Scowcroft. Perle has an interesting defense of the road to war.
"I think Brent just got it wrong," he said. "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism."
So, a reason for going to war is that Bush has already said some stuff. The usual excuses for going to war focus on the enemy, he is evil, he is aggressive, he needs to be stopped. But this explanation of Perle's acknowledges one of the main arguments against war, that international war is launched for domestic reasons.
The ability of Presidents to get us into wars, has always rubbed up against the Constitution which states "The Congress shall have Power To declare War." So, in 1973, alarmed by a war in Vietnam which we had gotten into gradually and illegally, the Congress decided to pass the War Powers Act, to further delineate the role of the President.
It states:
"The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
The fact that Bush clearly has none of these right now, manifested at least a semblence of open Congressional hearings. But no matter how explicit the War Powers Act might be about limiting a President's ability to make war, anyone, even a war-maker like Brent Scowcroft, can be criticized for undermining further use of violence.