Will Bush Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?

While the November elections provided the Democratic Party a public mandate to end the war in Iraq, President Bush has signaled his intent to utilize his institutional powers as Commander in Chief to maintain and even escalate the U.S. commitment, public or congressional opinion notwithstanding. The Democratic leadership has removed two obvious ways to stop him -- impeachment and a cutoff of war funds -- from the table. Some Democrats have even indicated they will acquiesce in the sending of tens of thousands more troops to Iraq.

For those for in Congress and the public whom acquiescence is not an option, there remains an indirect route to challenging Presidential war-making power and force withdrawal from Iraq. That is to so discredit the Administration in the eyes of the public that neither Republican politicians nor the military, the intelligence agencies, the foreign policy establishment, or the corporate elite will allow it to continue on its catastrophic course. That requires a devastating exposure of the criminality, corruption, stupidity, and false premises of those who are making the decisions.

The road to withdrawal from Iraq, in short, may run through a congressional hearing room. But whether it does will depend in large part on how Democrats go about their investigations and how much the public demands they truly confront the Bush administration's criminality.

Just in the first three weeks of the session, Senate Democrats plan to call at least 13 hearings on Iraq.1 On the House side, Rep. John Murtha has promised to hold two hearings a day for several months beginning on January 17th, and many others are planned as well.

The Democrats' investigations could follow either of two strategies. One is to use hearings simply to service their '08 election goals by revealing some blemishes in Bush's Iraq policy -- while letting the war, torture, spying, and other crimes continue unimpeded. The alternate is to investigate with the intent of driving a dagger into the soft underbelly of the Bush juggernaut -- its criminal violation of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. and international law and its criminal coverup of its abuses.

The upcoming hearings will undoubtedly include demands for information that the Administration has up till now refused to provide. The consequence will be a power struggle which could -- if Democrats so choose -- be the defining moment in the effort to establish legal and constitutional accountability for the Bush administration -- and thereby force it to end the war.

The Bush administration has been historic in its refusal to share information with Congress or the public. It has strong motivations to continue to conceal such information, such as avoiding humiliation, further public exposure, and probable criminal liability. It has sent strong signals it will indeed refuse to provide such information. As Time magazine wrote just before the election:

When it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist described as 'a cataclysmic fight to the death' over the balance between Congress and White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is 'going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.

As a result, the U.S. is headed toward what Tom Engelhard has called "the mother of all Constitutional crises."

Indeed, that crisis has already begun. For example, just after the elections the Justice Department, in response to an ACLU suit, disclosed in court the existence of directives from the President and the CIA General Counsel that may have authorized torture and other illegal interrogation techniques. Sen. Patrick Leahy, incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, immediately wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting the documents and related records. On January 2, Leahy released a letter from the Justice Department refusing to provide the documents on grounds of national security and executive privilege. Leahy decried the refusal and added, "I have advised the Attorney General that I plan to pursue this matter further at the Committee's first oversight hearing of the Department of Justice."