War Is Peace
Freedom is slavery! My alter-ego/double secret sockpuppet identity, Glenn Greenwald,* decries the shameless Orwellian warmongering implicit in references to POTUS as “Commander in Chief.” Cites use of mind-control terminology by Joe Biden, currently running for vice-president of Oceania:
Joe Biden, speaking yesterday at a rally in Ohio (h/t Jonathan Schwarz):
Over the past week, Republicans have gone way over the top in my view, calling Barack Obama every name in the book, and it probably will get worse in the next three and a half to four days . . . . After next Tuesday, the very critics he has now and the rest of America will be calling him something else - they will be calling him the 44th president of the United States of America, our commander in chief Barack Obama!
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago (see the last few paragraphs): if I could be granted one small political wish, it would be the permanent elimination of this widespread, execrable Orwellian fetish of reverently referring to the President as “our commander in chief.” And Biden’s formulation here is a particularly creepy rendition, since he’s taunting opponents of Obama that, come Tuesday, they will be forced to refer to him as “our commander in chief Barack Obama” (Sarah Palin, in the very first speech she delivered after being unveiled as the Vice Presidential candidate, said of John McCain: ”that’s the kind of man I want as our commander in chief,” and she’s been delivering that same line in her stump speech ever since).
This is much more than a semantic irritant. It’s a perversion of the Constitution, under which American civilians simply do not have a “commander in chief”; only those in the military — when it’s called into service — have one (Art. II, Sec. 2).
Worse, “commander in chief” is a military term, which reflects the core military dynamic: superiors issue orders which subordinates obey. That isn’t supposed to be the relationship between the U.S. President and civilian American citizens, but because the mindless phrase “our commander in chief” has become interchangeable with ”the President,” that is exactly the attribute — supreme, unquestionable authority in all arenas — which has increasingly come to define the power of the President.
Sheep-like Americans can’t be trusted not to understand that “C-in-C” refers to the president’s authority to order troops to go anywhere, do just about anything he wants them to. Much as has been done by the administrations of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy … lessee … I’m pretty sure Eisenhower did it, too. Anyway, you get the point. Hey, remember Teddy Roosevelt’s Cruise of the Great White Fleet? Lincoln’s crushing of insurrection? That was great! Somewhat complicated by his need to keep hiring and firing generals, though. Another one I like is when Jefferson sent the United States Navy and Marines to kick Barbary ass.
It’s this distinctly authoritarian mindset that also explains the still-astonishing confession by The New York Times‘ White House reporter Elizabeth Bumiller that reporters such as herself were “very deferential” to the Bush administration in press conferences in the run-up to the war because “It’s frightening to stand up there . . .You are standing up on prime time live television, asking the president of the United States a question when the country is about to go to war.” White House reporters weren’t questioning a political official who is to be held accountable. They were gently — “deferentially” — posing questions to The Commander-in-Chief.
Don’t worry, the cat eventually let go of the tongue that speaks truth to power.
Whether deliberate or not, the chronic assignment to the President of this title is a method for training the citizenry to conceive of our political leaders, especially the President, as someone whose authority is naturally and desirably expansive and absolute. He’s supreme. It converts civilians into soldiers and Presidents into supreme rulers. It’s no surprise that this is the shape our government has now taken; this phraseology both reflects and helps to enable the transformation of the President into an unaccountable, virtually omnipotent figure.
The Orwellian “C-in-C” mind control project explains why so many millions of Yankbots have been mindlessly voting for the Bushitler regime, though a last-minute emergency get-out-the-tinfoil-helmet effort in 2006 allowed Democrats to take over Congress.
Anyway, the sockpuppet also known as Greenwald makes a good point, but doesn’t go far enough. Not only should the presidency be stripped of the semantic tools of authoritarianism, all authority over the military should be placed in the hands of actual elected leaders, the Senate president and House speaker. No, wait a minute. America will never be free of the threat of war until we disband our military, and strike the hate-speech words like “military” from our lexicon! Hang on, he’s working up to it:
It was never envisioned by the Founders that we would have a permanently deployed military, which is why they imposed on Congress’ power ”To raise and support Armies” the prohibition that “no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years“ (Art. I, Sec. 8). Equating “the President” with “our commander in chief” rests on the opposite assumption: that this power is not just central to the presidency, but intrinsic to it, because we’re always a nation at war.
More Greenwald scholarship:
Lacking Even the Ethics of a Journalist
* See Crittenden as sockpuppet.
Topics: language, military, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:12 am on Sunday, November 2, 2008
6 Responses to “War Is Peace”
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November 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
What a delicate little flower is our Glenn. I’m not sure about the “supreme authority of the President” bit, but regarding turning civilians into soldiers… um… who does he think fought the American Revolution? Or the Civil War, or WWI and II, or any subsequent war Americans were involved in? Where does he think our present volunteer army came from? I mean, they weren’t all born in camouflage.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
LIncoln did not crush an insurrection. That was merely northern propaganda turned agitprop.
The FedGov has wildly overstepped its constitutional authority, and the overwhelming majority of the problem can be laid at the feet of Lincoln. We can complain about calling the POTUS CiC, but Lincoln laid the foundation and was the titular head of the first leftwing party. Hamilton laid that foundation, but his party didn’t succeed until 1865.
Alas, both McCain and Obama are within that mainstream. We may not like what’s happening now, but it ain’t gonna end until the American people wake up and actually read the constitution and work to enforce it. Chances of that happening are somewhere between slim and none.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…”
Right out of Article 2. Greenwald needs to take a couple of aspirin and go lie down.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
‘Even in the limited sense that the Constitution uses the term (”Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States”), the President doesn’t always wield that power, but only when those branches are “called into the actual Service of the United States.” ‘
No,putz. The POTUS is ALWAYS the commander of the Army and Navy. The Army and Navy are permanent bodies, and are always under the command of the POTUS. He’s the commander of the militia only when it is called into the actual service of the United States.
And, this nimrod was a constitutional lawyer? No wonder this country is so screwed up.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Dave S:
No, the POS in question is a soft noodled neo-marxist who was able to play at being a Constitutional lawyer.
And Quartermaster does have a point about the federal gov. It has grown into a behemoth in exactly the way the US Constitution was designed to keep it from growing.
I’m usually not at all in favor of new laws being made, we’ve got so many now that are unenforceable and/or ignored. But, a law that demands the forfeiture of life and property of any federal elected or appointed official, including SCOTUS that refuse to honor the Constitution as it is written and amended, rather than how they’d prefer it to read would be a welcome addition.
One amendment to the Constitution that I believe needs to be made is one that reworks the idea of a standing, professional army. We simply can not survive in this hostile world with the traditional use of ad-hoc forces raised up to meet specific emergencies. That was, more or less, our practice prior to the Cold War standoff with the USSR. We’ve long since abandoned the two year limit as a practice. I think it’s time the Constitution was updated to reflect that.
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
It’s also strange how GG saw the line “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years,” but somehow missed the next one:
“To provide and maintain a Navy”
Anything there about a two year limit, GG?