To his credit, Raymond accepts responsibility for breaking the law, but in his curt dismissal of morality he lays bare the sickening delusion that informs the entire framework of conservative ideology from the trenches of electoral combat to the loftiest heights of policymaking. In the conservative universe all politics is war, and in war moral consideration is a handicap, principles are for losers. There is but one consideration: winning. As Raymond says, he was “hired to engineer victory…. morality was not a luxury to be afforded candidates or their staff.”

Allen Raymond and conservatives in general take comfort in not having to judge their individual actions in a moral/ethical light, for they have another imperative to judge themselves by: victory. This is just another “ends-justify-the-means” formulation, nothing new in the affairs of man, but conservatives have reconfigured the moral calculus to where morality is now a function more of identity than of actions and behavior. As members of the moral army, defending “Christian Family Values,” promoting the Ten Commandments or any other standard of God-sanctioned virtue, individual soldiers need not consider the morality of their actions, for they clearly, in spite of an occasional venality, are fighting for the good. Besides, in war stuff happens.

Blanket absolution for warriors, too, is nothing new in the affairs of man, but it is a bit surprising how adamant and successful this strategy of undeclared war has been for Republicans in helping them garner political power, if not policy success. Practically every Republican initiative is couched in the language of war, or is itself a literal war. And the battlefield is littered with Republican warriors who have been caught up in serious ethical compromise and who yet have emerged from the fires of scandal, Terminator-like, ready to take the fight to the enemy, from Dick Cheney to Alberto Gonzales to Larry Craig, and seemingly hundreds more. Every one of them is proudly unabashed by, if not utterly ignorant of, their personal moral failings.

Allen Raymond says “morality is the domain of organized religion, … but not government,” forgetting individual moral responsibility altogether. He demonstrates the moral development of a child. In a civilized society of adults, questions of the morality of one’s behavior are always in play at every level. And as an officer of an institution, whether church or government, one is responsible for upholding the letter of the laws they represent in exemplary fashion. This is a moral imperative, one that Republicans, in their unbridled disdain for government, have ignored at the peril of our democracy.

Conservative ideology in fact reverses the moral imperative of honorable conduct in high office, substituting it with a creed of selfishness. As Alan Raymond so aptly puts it “the bright line of the law [is to] be taunted but not crossed. Anybody who has a problem with that or doesn’t get it doesn’t understand America. America is about self interest, within the rule of law.” Conservatives have jettisoned the concept of personal responsibility, and in particular personal morality, for the sake of winning a war of self-interest they have silently declared against anyone who does not agree with them.

Rather than defend and uphold the parameters of any law or moral convention, conservative warriors look for advantage “taunting” the outer limits of what’s permissible. Rather than a paragon of the laws they represent, conservatives act like criminals looking for enforcement loopholes, they push the boundaries with all the zeal and sophistication of a two-year old who won’t accept the word “NO.” From corporate boardrooms to the halls of government, from Ken Lay to the subprime mortgage mess, from the Gonzales Justice Department to the “War” President, it’s all about taunting the law rather than respecting it. It’s all about winning. This is not a war of ideas; ideas require respectful discourse between adversaries. This is simply a war, waged by people who are convinced they are right and who respond to disagreement as an act of war.

We often hear from across the political spectrum people decrying “the bitter partisan divide in Washington.” But no one, neither pundit nor politician, seems to have a clue as to why this is happening. The answer is War. While conservatives would never have the courage to openly declare war, they prefer casting themselves as victims of others’ aggressions, it is their war that is the source of so much bitterness. Our democracy was built on the idea that respectful discourse and compromise among adversaries is the way to create a nation of laws. The conservative blitzkrieg on our government would spit on the notion of respect for their adversaries and actively frustrates the spirit of compromise through filibuster, signing statements, and outright disregard for the rule of law. These are bitter pills to swallow for anyone who still cares about democracy in America.

Let us consider these two assessments, the first political, and the second military, separately before we presume to make a policy determination regarding what to do in Iraq.

We begin with the military assessment, since it is commonly stated that the purpose of the surge is to create calm for Iraq so that it can proceed with political resolutions to its ongoing problems. First of all, a report of some moderate progress is perhaps heartening for many Americans, particularly for President Bush, whose entire legacy rests on something positive coming out of his misadventure in Iraq. Also, for those eager to show that they support the troops, it’s nice to have something to say that acknowledges the positive outcomes for all the hard work and sacrifice our soldiers have made. Certainly, no matter how true it might be, saying that the “surge” or any other aspect of our military exercises in Iraq is failing will be loudly protested in the US as anti-troop, or treasonous if you’re Karl Rove. So while “modest progress” may be a soothing palliative for Americans sick of this war, it does little or nothing to meet the needs or boost the hopes of Iraqis living amid the chaos in their country.

Let’s be realistic. What use are “signs of moderate progress” against the truly disastrous situation throughout Iraq and beyond. The American invasion has so terribly stirred up the hornet’s nest of centuries of sectarian animosities while destroying Iraqi society, modest progress just ain’t going to do it. Gone are such bulwarks of social welfare as a functioning economy, military and police forces to maintain civic order, institutions of justice, health care, education, food, water, sewage, electricity. All are barely functioning, or worse, contributing to the tensions or being targeted by militants and blown to bits. What is needed is not moderate progress but a blinding stupendous miracle, something on the order of religious détente between Sunnis and Shias. Short of a miraculous turnaround, all our efforts, all our interventions and modest gains are merely postponing the gathering storm.

Of all the powerful assets the US has in its arsenal, none is more powerful than the asset Iraqi militants have in infinite supply: time. While our troops rush about the country putting out fires, calming tensions in disparate neighborhoods, our adversaries can bide their time waiting for opportunities to stir up tensions across the whole country with a single act of violence. One well-placed bomb can undo a month’s worth of modest progress. Ultimately, no matter what patchwork peace we can cobble together for Iraq, once we’ve left the country, one year or ten years from now, after the celebrations over ridding the country of the invaders, Iraqi adversaries who have been at each others’ throats for a thousand years or more will still have to work out their differences. Ten years is not a long time to wait.

In sum, no matter what grand military victory we might pull off in Iraq, it is unlikely to have any effect on the simmering, infinitely complex web of tensions that suffuse Iraq save to perhaps squelch them temporarily. And even if there were areas of calm, swaths of moderate progress such as we may be seeing in Fallujah these days, the police chief there reported last week how terribly fragile and vulnerable that calm is. This is a problem no application of US military force can repair, at least not in Iraq.

That’s the report of five US soldiers in the New York Times last Sunday, concluding after 15 months of operations in several military branches across several regions of Iraq that there’s nothing of ultimate value that can be gained by continuing the “surge” or any other US military operations there. Somehow, I find the conclusions of those who are actually carrying out the “surge” more convincing than those of a president who categorically denies the existence of bad news, those of a Senator who spent two days looking at the very best scenarios the US military could orchestrate, or even those of the Times reporters O’Hanlon and Pollack who spent eight days recently as guests of DOD in Iraq before writing a cautiously optimistic op-ed about giving the surge a chance.

Which brings us to the political situation. What better measure of US military success in Iraq than progress on the political front in the Iraqi government? After all, even Commander in Iraq David Petraeus insists that there is only a political solution to Iraq’s troubles, to which military operations play but a supporting role. Today’s NIE showers the al Maliki government with doom and gloom, as have President Bush, Senator Levin, and others over just the past couple of days, calling into question al Maliki’s fitness to continue presiding. These pronouncements, while accurately portraying the political troubles faced by al Maliki’s government, promote fallacies fitted to the American political framework, and serve American political aims while ignoring Iraqi reality. To wit, as in America where we resolve political discontents by replacing the commander in chief every few years, Iraq’s problems are entirely a function of poor leadership and could be resolved simply by replacing al Maliki with a less divisive, more effective leader.

Once again, the unspoken assumption here is that in a miraculous stroke of good fortune, some super-president will ascend to that high office and quell the unrest and bring stability to Iraq. Nothing less than a surprise appearance by the Prophet Mohammed would suffice (and even the prophet himself would have a hard time patching up Iraq’s wounds). Unfortunately for everyone, we’re stuck with a list of less than divine candidates. And beyond that, even with a perfect president at the helm, the Iraqi government itself is nearly powerless to soothe the outrage and hopelessness that clutters the Iraqi political landscape.

Is it more than a little baffling that the first replacement candidate floated out by American conservatives is none other than Ayad Allawi, who has already once been President of Iraq but failed to bring the disparate parties together in the first go-round? What kind of miracle are we to expect from this retread?

Even more disturbing about this recent tack against al Maliki is that it is an obvious effort by President Bush to find a new way to postpone judgment and prevent serious alternatives to his “stay-the-course” strategy. Replacing al Maliki would require of us yet another suspension of disbelief while we allow the new guy a chance to make the difference, locking in another “stay-the-course” extension as we come ever closer to the end of President Bush’s term.

The idea that a new president will make a decided difference in Iraqi politics is bunk. Anyone worthy of consideration has made numerous alignments and affiliations to gain and consolidate power that are sure to alienate just enough Iraqi interest groups to essentially paralyze his government, just as al Maliki and the Iraqi parliament are now.

The problem is not the president of Iraq, the problem is Iraq itself. Whatever we might wish we could do, there simply is very little the US can do, military or otherwise, to help pull Iraq out of the chaos our invasion has unleashed. It is an intractable situation, where even our most noble efforts (such as they are) are easily undone by our adversaries.

For now we are stuck with a President Bush whose main objective in the war in Iraq is to craft his policies to impress American voters (without much luck, apparently), bully his Democratic opponents into inaction (very successfully), and to insure that historians will see the American mis-adventure in Iraq as a bipartisan disaster (we’ll see). The one group President Bush’s policies have never sought to impress, the Iraqi people, is the one group that will someday determine the political future of Iraq.

To make political progress in Iraq, what’s needed is not hope among the political classes in America but hope among the people in Iraq. It’d be nice to see an American strategy that actually seeks to bring hope to Iraq, not another delaying tactic, not another meaningless change in government, and not more bombs, more bullets, more fighting, more senseless death. That would itself be a miracle.

- Ted Bucklin

And these days many Americans have the opportunity to be reminded of the power of this phrase, particularly by the president himself, who is fond of using it to add throw-weight to his magisterial pronouncements. In fact, as President Bush’s credibility diminishes, he is ever more insistent that by virtue of his being “Commander in Chief” we must take him seriously.

Unfortunately, it appears that many Americans would bow before his majestic title rather than judge the seriousness of the man who claims it. Whether it be the force of his logic, which commands the attention of almost no one, his veracity, which frequently strays beyond the boundaries of plausibility, or the outcomes of his many crumbling policy initiatives, of which the Iraq disaster is but the most egregious example among many, it is clear that the president’s only remaining majesty is in his title. Which is why he keeps deploying it like a bunker buster bomb, blasting away at mountains of doubt about his performance as commander in chief.

Perhaps his most egregious misuse of the title is when he invokes it to remind us that as supreme commander of our military forces, he is also the supreme military strategist whose access to all channels of intelligence and expert counsel makes him alone qualified to choose the course for our legions in Iraq and elsewhere. Time and again he has dismissed questions, dissenting views, the recommendations of experts including his own generals, by hiding behind the screen of his official powers, without once addressing the depressing consistency with which his strategies have led to worsening conditions and outright failure. President Bush seems to believe that his status as Commander in Chief makes him infallible, beyond reproach, and his performance irrelevant.

America, and in particular the news media, needs to reach through the imposing artifice of the president’s title and remind President Bush of his humble office as citizen of the United States, answerable to the principles of democracy and to the questions of the people he represents.

-Ted Bucklin

Dear Congressperson,

I’m writing because I am concerned about the state of affairs in our country. The situation in Iraq captures the headlines, and it is indeed a horrendous situation that needs our attention, but it is not simply the crisis in Iraq but rather the crisis in the United States that we must address. Call me Chicken Little, but I think our democracy is in extreme peril. There is no time to lose in checking the erosion that has already significantly damaged the principles and institutions of our once proud nation.

President Bush and his administration have demonstrated time and again their utter disdain for democratic principles in making policy, they show repeatedly their contempt for the rule of law, and they reject out of hand the reasoned counsel of anyone, be it intelligence agencies, scientists, policy experts, bipartisan panels hired to make recommendations, and perhaps most significantly, the will of the American voters.

There is, of course, a certain amount of flexibility in our political system that forgives even transgressions such as those listed above. However, I believe when the sum of all Executive Branch misdemeanors over the past six years is added up, the challenge to our Constitutional system is unmistakable and grave. To fail to challenge this assault leaves our Constitution vulnerable to irreparable damage. The problem for leaders such as yourself is that it is difficult to judge when to stand up to such transgressions. After all, President Bush will be out of office in a matter of days (six hundred and some to go).

At this point, the problem is not President Bush himself, it is the erosion of our “sacred” democratic principles, the destruction of our whole system of governance that he has unleashed and we, by our inaction and tepid measures to counteract, sanction. What makes me feel that we as a country (and as a member of a community of nations) are in great peril is the recklessness with which President Bush pursues his policies even as evidence and wise counsel (most succinctly expressed in an op-ed in the Feb. 11 issue of the Washington Post by retired Lt. General William Odom) piles up that contradict and demonstrate the folly of his policies. A sober assessment of the Bush administration’s policies, especially but not limited to a close look at what they say and do about the situation in Iraq, can only be characterized as madness. And Iraq is but an illustration of how they approach all policy questions, from the economy to the environment to international affairs.

The president’s Iraq policies are truly insane. While the NIE, to which Bush has had unfettered access since long before the first time the words “surge” fell from his lips, expresses unequivocal disdain for the notion that our troops can effect a positive outcome in Baghdad much less Iraq as a whole, Bush pushes on with a policy that experts along with the American people have clearly said they don’t think will work and they don’t support it. Even more disturbing is how Bush seems bent on provoking Iran into war, an eventuality that none but the most deluded among us can think of as a good thing. Rather, much in the way the Iraq adventure appeared foolish from the outset, a military confrontation with Iran would be not just foolish but terribly destructive to our interests and contrary to our values. A sober assessment of Bush policies over the entire duration of his presidency shows the same pattern in every aspect of his governance. It is a pattern that is toxic to American democracy.

We can no longer look at Bush’s policies as a benign quirk of an odd man who happens to be our president. We can no longer see the broad front of assaults upon our cherished democratic values, against social equity and equanimity, against the rule of law, domestic and international, against the primacy of reason in governance, against the will of the majority as expressed in the vote and in Congress, as disparate transgressions. They must be seen for the complete set of rewritten values and principles that the Bush administration is imposing upon our nation, regardless of what we Americans would wish or vote. As such, I believe it is no longer tenable to approach this assault upon the most sacrosanct tenets of our nation employing the normal “collegial” approach to lawmaking and Congressional oversight. Congress must recognize the fundamental anti-democratic value system that informs practically every significant move made by the Bush Administration and act to counter it forcefully and without remorse.

Julius Caesar stood upon the banks of the Rubicon River and pondered his future. Not crossing the river was repugnant to Caesar because in staying, he would leave the fate of Rome in the hands of incompetents. I think the US Congress (and the American public) stands at the banks of its own Rubicon. Would that the choices were clearer. Would that America’s dedication to the principles of democracy was more informed and more steadfast. Nevertheless, I feel there is a compelling need for dramatic action, if only to force the question into the limelight: Do we choose democracy, do we defend the principles upon which our nation was founded, or do we allow those principles to be watered down, abnegated, ignored at the whim and convenience of our supposed protectors? I, for one, am far more concerned about the anti-democratic forces in our government than I am about any threats from the Middle East.

The Executive Branch of the United States Government is currently demolishing our democratic system, unchecked by its bicameral counterweight in Congress, unless you consider non-binding resolutions and pledges to investigate malfeasance as some kind of meaningful response. I realize that politics is a slow game of chess-like moves and countermoves, drawn out by the chatter among the media heavyweights, as the public is invited to be confused about how to evaluate all this. I think it’s time to move beyond politics into heroics, some kind of high-stakes, make-it-or-break-it commitment to repulse this anti-democratic surge in our country. It’s not as if we need more evidence that high crimes and misdemeanors are being committed at the highest levels of government. From torture and utter disregard for the rule of law, to statements from the Attorney General dismissing habeas corpus and other foundational legal precepts, from corporate and CPA malfeasance to the strategic and international diplomatic nightmare that is now and has been since our first bombs fell in Iraq, from recent brazen politically-motivated replacements at top federal attorney positions to vote tampering to intelligence manipulation to lies and misrepresentations and malfeasance and bad-faith acts at every level, Congress increasingly looks like Nero fiddling over a conflagration.

Perhaps most disturbing of all to me is how President Bush appears literally deluded in his “new” strategy for Iraq. Is there anything more frightening than a violent madman with an unlimited arsenal?

Congress must find a way to reset the nation’s course toward a sensible and sane horizon, and I believe a business-as-usual approach is at this point tantamount to capitulation to the Executive’s plan for America. Indeed the current administration is taking full advantage of the ponderous pace of normal political discourse with an anti-democracy blitzkrieg that has outflanked all normal political safeguards, including, or perhaps especially, Congressional powers. As the President mounts his final, obviously doomed offensive in Iraq, preparing to waste lives and treasure for foolhardy reasons, while recklessly taunting Iran to join us on the battlefield, I can think of no more corrupt or morally bankrupt scenario in the history of our great nation, and the strategic outcomes that are likely to result from this truly insane scheme will drag at our heels for generations to come.

As my representative in Congress I urge you to take extraordinary action to counter this ongoing desecration of my democracy. The Bush Administration has changed the rules of play in government. For Congress to try to repel the Bush onslaught with “by the book” strategies would be as futile as throwing foreign soldiers into a roiling civil war. It is time for an innovative and fierce defense of our precious democratic principles before they are corrupted beyond repair.