Bill Moyers: The War Debate

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/14/2523/

The War Debate
by Bill Moyers

As we just heard from Bruce Fein and John Nichols, our country is in a constitutional crisis that could change the nature of our democracy. There was a sense it earlier in the week as the Senate debated what to do about the war in Iraq. Here are some excerpts.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN: Do we continue to send our kids into the middle of a meat grinder based on a policy that is fundamentally flawed? I don’t think there are a dozen Republicans on that side of the aisle who agree with the President’s strategy.

SEN. GORDON SMITH: Some of my colleagues have said just cut off the funding. I have felt that dangerous and dishonorable. President Bush has said stay the course, and I find that troubling.

snip//

As that debate revealed Congress is polarized and paralyzed. And down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Bush still was insisting Congress should stay out of the war. he and Vice President Cheney are holding out for better news from Iraq in September. But when September comes, you can count on more appeals for delay or excuses. that’s the formula for perpetual war — what our founders most feared, because it would turn our Constitution on its head, throwing off the checks and balances so crucial to liberty, and leaving all power in an imperial executive. Already the war in Iraq is in its 5th year, costing $10 billion a month, with the casualties mounting. All week a line from the poet Marvin Bell floated through my mind:

“What/shall we do, we who are at war but are asked/to pretend we are not?”

What shall we do? Impeachment hearings are one way to go, as you heard Fein and Nichols say. In the meantime, those of us in public television have an obligation to make sure viewers like you stay in the loop. I wish we had carried the congressional debate this week in full — all of it — in prime time. When we broadcast teach-ins on the Vietnam war, and the Watergate hearings during the trial of Richard Nixon, it was a real public service — the reason PBS was created. We should keep Iraq in prime time every week — the fighting and dying, the suffering, the debate, the politics — the extraordinary costs. It’s months until September. This war is killing us now, body and soul.

That’s it for the journal. I’m Bill Moyers.

[acmavm]

1. What shall we do?

From the article:

<snip>

What shall we do? Impeachment hearings are one way to go, as you heard Fein and Nichols say. In the meantime, those of us in public television have an obligation to make sure viewers like you stay in the loop. I wish we had carried the congressional debate this week in full — all of it — in prime time. When we broadcast teach-ins on the Vietnam war, and the Watergate hearings during the trial of Richard Nixon, it was a real public service — the reason PBS was created. We should keep Iraq in prime time every week — the fighting and dying, the suffering, the debate, the politics — the extraordinary costs. It’s months until September. This war is killing us now, body and soul.

<snip>