Orwell Only Got the Date Wrong

Tom Englehardt writing in Asia Times Online reminds us that the United States faces a fundamental crisis in the expansion of executive power under King George the Worst.

"For these cultists of an all-powerful presidency, the holy war, the 'crusade' to be embarked upon was, above all, aimed at creating a president accountable to no one, overseen by no one, and restricted by no other force or power in his will to act as he saw fit. And so, in the Bush White House, all roads have led back to one issue: how to press ever harder at the weakening boundaries of presidential power.

This is why, when critics concentrate on any specific issue or set of administration acts, no matter how egregious or significant, they invariably miss the point. The issue, it turns out, is never primarily - to take just two areas of potentially illegal administration activity - torture or warrantless surveillance. Though each of them had value and importance to top administration officials, they were nonetheless primarily the means to an end.

This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the 'global war on terror' almost immediately after the September 11 attacks was so important. It was to be a 'war' without end. No one ever attempted to define what 'victory' might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations....[snip]

As you push the limits, wherever they may be, to create a situation in which all control rests in your hands, the odds are that you will create an uncontrollable situation as well. From torture to spying, such acts, however contained they may initially appear to be, involve a deep plunge into a dark and perverse pool of human emotions. Torture in particular, but also unlimited forms of surveillance and any other acts which invest individuals secretly with something like the powers of gods, invariably lead to humanity's darkest side.

The permission to commit such acts, once released into the world, mutates and spreads like wildfire from top to bottom in any command structure and across all boundaries. You may start out with a relatively small program of secret imprisonment, torture, spying or whatever, meant to achieve limited goals while establishing certain prerogatives of power, but in no case is the situation likely to remain that way for long.

This was, perhaps, the true genius of the US system as imagined by its founders - the understanding that any form of state power left unchecked in the hands of a single person or group of people was likely to degenerate into despotism (or worse), whatever the initial desires of the individuals involved...."

The Cold War gave rise to the National Security State that led to the excesses of Lyndon Johnson (undeclared war) and Richard Nixon (criminal acts against critics). Even though those excesses were checked in the post-Watergate era, they were not elimiated. The end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for the national security state only to see it revived for the Global War on Terror. Unlike the Cold War, this war has no end.

So remember that when BushCheney and his apologists talk about the Framers'"original intent", that it is merely a term of convenience and certainly does not extend to executive powers.