Current Events

Darryl Sharratt is the father of Justin Sharratt. Who is Justin Sharratt? Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt is one of the Marines accused of murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Darryl Sharratt recently shared his feelings on the case in an interview with the right-wing website NewsMax. In that interview, I found this revealing quote:

We have a constitutional amendment that separates church and state, but we need one that separates state and military.

Regardless of the guilt or innocence of Lance Cpl. Sharratt, his father does indeed raise an interesting point. Congressman Jack Murtha, who brought the Haditha incident to the public spotlight, also chairs the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Which means that there’s something of a conflict of interest in him pushing for the prosecution of these Marines. The military could conceivably be prosecuting Sharratt & Co. simply because they’re afraid to piss Murtha off and have their budgets slashed or redirected. “Are you going to bite the hand that feeds you?” Sharratt asks NewsMax. “They may say it’s not political, but there’s your first step in the political process — you have to go to this man to get your next M-16 rifle.”

Which leads me to one of the things that’s so distressing about the whole Iraq War in the first place. Most of the men and women in our government seem to have forgotten what the Constitution says about the separation of powers. Worse yet, the public’s bought in to it.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work, according to the Constitution.

Islamic fundamentalists execute a direct attack on the United States. The public is outraged. The U.S. intelligence agencies figure out who’s behind the attack and hand this information off to Congress. Congress jumps into emergency sessions and, after some speechifying, decides to declare war on Afghanistan. The president salutes smartly, says “will do,” and orders up the attack on Afghanistan. The war progresses, Congress declares a victory or a treaty or even a retreat, and the president complies.

This is something every American kid learns in school. The president of the United States cannot declare war. Only the Congress can do that. Let’s take a look at the tape. (Or, rather, let’s take a look at Article One, Section 8 of a certain yellowed historic document sitting in the National Archives.)

The Congress shall have the power… To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

Meanwhile, the president? Here’s what aforementioned yellowed document says about his/her role:

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…. He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.

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As the death toll for the Iraq War continues to climb and President Bush decides to ramp up the U.S. commitment there instead of ramping it down, public support for the war has taken a nosedive in the past year. The latest USA Today/Gallup poll gives Bush a 72% disapproval rating on his handling of Iraq.

Politicians and pollsters are now lining up to declare themselves in essentially two separate camps:

1. The camp that says we made a mistake going into Iraq
2. The camp that says we were right to go into Iraq, but have done a poor job of it

When we put ourselves into George W. Bush’s (most likely fake) cowboy boots, we generally ask ourselves if we would have made the same decision back then as he did. The alternatives are generally framed as a messy, violent situation where Saddam Hussein remains in power, or a messy, violent situation where Saddam Hussein isn’t in power.

But I think the real acid test on the war is this: would you still have invaded Iraq if the United States had easily and decisively won the conflict?

Let’s pretend that instead of the smoldering ruin we have now, Iraq is now a functioning, albeit dodgy, democracy. Let’s pretend that those looters never tore Baghdad to shreds in the days immediately following the fall of Saddam, and that the radical Islamists never gained any traction with their insurgency. Let’s pretend that, instead of 3,000 U.S. soldiers killed and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, the total casualty list right now is merely in the hundreds or the low thousands. Knowing all this… if you had the opportunity to jump in a time machine right now, would you still choose to invade Iraq?

The point I’m trying to make is that fair-weather war supporters piss me off. If you’re going to support the war, then support the fucking war and take responsibility for it.

Did you support the invasion of Iraq back before the death toll started to climb, and then change your mind when it was your kid or your friend or your neighbor that lost a leg? Did you support the decision to destabilize the region and send U.S. troops into harm’s way only because you thought we’d kick ass and take names? Did you support the war because you thought it would be easy? What did you think would happen when the tanks started rolling in and the missiles started flying? Did you really buy that line about us being greeted as liberators?

I’m a little worried about attacking straw men here, simply because I don’t know anyone personally who’s made such a turnaround. Almost everyone I’ve had discussions with about the Iraq War opposed it to some degree from the beginning. But these fair-weather war supporters have to be out there. The approval numbers have gone from 76% in April 2003 down to their current 26% today. What could account for these numbers other than people who supported the war because they thought it would be a cakewalk?

News flash: war is hell. It’s always hell. Details at 11.

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