Counterfactuals or Theoretical, Normative, or Political Implications

¶ … counterfactuals or theoretical, normative, or political implications of the facts conveyed in the assignment.

In his "Arsenal of Democracy," Zelizer (2010) indicates that, contrary to the popular truism that "politics stops at the water's edge," domestic concerns has intruded onto national security. Pages 431 onwards document George Bush's controversial War on Terrorism and show how Bush stoked his house with conservative Republicans of like-minded views and how these people carried their partisan politics into everything including their fight against terrorism.

Clinton, for instance, had battled terrorism by bringing it into the legal and judicial field and treating domestic terrorism as a high-level crime

For Bush, it was a war from the beginning.

Bush's stance reveals as much:

"Today our nation saw evil," The president said in a televised address on the day of the [9/11] attack, "the very worst of human nature." On September 13, he said, "We have just seen the first war of the 21st century." (439)

Early on in his presidency, in fact, he had failed to take the necessary steps needed to implement any organizational reforms that were necessary for combating terrorism. This, despite emerging warnings. The Bush era preferred to devote their attention to other areas. And when terrorism did occur, he played dramatics and presented 9/11 as a declaration of war.

The Iraqi War, failure as it was, was Bush's attempt to introduce Americanism (or rather Bush's form of Republican / conservative Americanism) to foreign shores. Bush never realized -- or wanted to realize -that his schemes had failed. Even at the end when reviled and popularity ratings were extremely low, Bush turned a blind eye to the way that the Iraqi people saw the intervention and continued proclaiming American's superiority.

Implications of partisan fighting shaping American foreign policy determine the rise and fall of American statesmen. Personalities who achieved renown and celebrity during one era may likely have achieved this reputation only due to the fact that their politics cohered so well to the government of the moment.

We see this evidenced with Colin Powell.

Powell, a reputed and capable statesman during the Clinton era, dissolved during Bush's time largely due to the fact that Powell's liberal policies were unable to translate themselves into Bush's conservative schemes. Powel had a "commitment to multilateralism and international institutions" (437) that Bush lacked. These liberal policies reflected the Democratic government and shaped national security during Clinton's era. Powell "was eaten alive in the first year of the Bush White house" (ibid) since his politics were so different. In fact:

For its September 10, 2001, issue, Powell was the subject of a "Time" magazine cover story "Odd Man Out," which recounted how Powell had failed to prevent administration moves towards unilateralism in the first hundred days. (438).

Powell's liberalism had gained him a reputation of political suaveness. This same political suaveness failed to come through in the very different domestic politics of Bush's regime that shaped national security too. Instead, it was Condoleezza Rice, representative of the Bush regimen and its politics, who gained popularity during the Bush era.

Frightening too is the fact that presidents have more power than it is popularly asserted. Congress (in turn the American nation) is supposed to stand by certain conventions regardless of the government of the moment. Bush's government overturned at least one of those precedents and, by doing so; the implication is that no precedent may be safe from partisan politics. Bush, for instance, pushed for virtually unlimited power in war and "was defiant, if not downright hostile, about any kind of congressional restrictions whatsoever" on his limitations of authority. Clinton had voiced similar concerns too but his had been premised on technical interpretations of the law aside from which he had accepted certain congressional limitations. Bush saw the other as a threat and carried this perception into all that he did. Frighteningly, it shaped foreign policy too and made Congress pass the 'Authorization for the Use of Military Force on September 14 which gave the president the power to "Use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 & #8230; In order to prevent any future international terrorism against the United States." (442).

Bush's tirade had modified Congressional policy. The president's continued push for constitutional power - his personal agenda -- overrode fixed law on the necessary detachment of president from controlling foreign intervention and, during Bush's regime; Bush was the executor of the War on Terror. His own attitude shaped public perception of this so-called War, and his policies controlled operation of the "War."

In fact, Bush refused to realize that his War was a failure even when it was:

At the end of December, President Bush paid a surprise visit to Iraq in an effort to highlight whatever stability had been achieved in the country since the surge. Instead of celebration, the trip turned into a fiasco when an Iraqi television journalist… threw his shoes at Bush, yelling, "It is the farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!" (502).

The President was given too much power. Politics should have stopped at "the water's edge." Instead, the politician became the statesman and, to many, Bush took too much power and misused it.