Hsieh

You can't teach at West Point without being duly prejudice in favor of the culminate goal of the U.S. military, embodied in the word "Pentagon," which is the implementation of unilateral presidential foreign policy, whether good or bad.

I believe that columnist David Hoagland correctly realized this fact before writing his candid commentary about General David Petraeus, the politically savvy Princeton proponent of war. Yet, all generals, and professional soldiers, are proponents of war. Thats what keeps them, and their warriors, in business. Petraeuss mentors, while at the United States Military Academy, taught him that his duty to the President, his Caesar, was, in effect, tantamount to his duty to country. And that his honor was dependent upon his duty. Yet, I find no mention of duty to the President in the oath taken by a newly appointed cadet at West Point, but only duty to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Duty, honor, and country are the three words which convey the same meaning today as the fevered cry of Julius Caesars Roman legions, we who are to die salute you, Caesar, pierced the air during the Punic Wars. Petraeus, and others like him, were taught what the Harvard pundit, Samuel P. Huntington, wrote as doctrine for neoconservativism, that the military is the sword of Prometheus, or perhaps, Damocles, in implementing the political will of the federal executive branch.

Presently, a standing U.S. President has the power of a Caesar, and may, by the stroke of pen, create statutory law. I recall a minor 17th Century pundit and essayist, Montaigne, who wrote emphatically that, When the legislative, executive, judicial powers reside in one person, a dictatorship has been effected. The U.S. military was, in essence, originally placed under the control of Congress, or the legislative branch, as outlined in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. And nowhere does Article II convey to the President the plenary authority to create law through the writing of executive orders, or the luxurious option of adding signing statements to laws passed by Congress. No, the President, and the executive branch, are, according to James Madison in the Federalist #14, much more narrowly limited by the Constitution and human reason. Why, in his opinion, was this so?

In 1789, the Framers,during the Constitutional Convention, reflected intently on a recently previous revolutionary war waged against a tyrannical king, George III. These wise founding fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution to preclude a tyrant rising again in the form of a U.S. President. Thats why Article I, Section 8 gave only Congress the power to declare war and to make rules governing the movements of land and naval forces. All that has been added to the power of a President, since 1945, has been done by tradition, and by the refusal of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority. The gradual politicization of the U.S. Supreme Court, in declaring executive orders constitutional, has also contributed to the demise of Congressional will to assert the powers bestowed only the legislative branch.

As a domineering imperial world power, the U.S. is now repeating the same grave errors committed anciently by the imperial Roman Empire, with the approbation of a small uninformed majority of the American electorate. And the hubris of the now reigning King George, and his loyal Pentagon followers, like David Petraeus, has, again, led the United States into deadly and totally unnecessary war in Iraq, which is nothing more than another bloody Vietnam.

Norton R. Nowlin took M.A. and B.A. degrees in the social and behavioral sciences from the Uiversity orf Texas at Tyler, studied law for one full year at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California, and earned an ABA-approved advanced paralegal certification from Edmonds Community College, in Lynnwood, Washington. Mr. Nowlin as attended LaJolla, California's National University and Malibu's Pepperdine University to attain graduate credits in business management and economics. Mr. Nowlin also attained a Texas State Teaching Certification, in social studies and psychology, from the University of Texas at Tyler. A paralegal, published essayist, poet, and free-lance fiction writer, Mr. Nowlin resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, the renown math tutor, Diane C. Nowlin, and their two very intelligent cats.