The Imperious President

[kliljedahl]

David Isenberg
January 06, 2006

David Isenberg is an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information and a senior analyst with the British-American Security Information Council. The views expressed are his own.

If Arthur Schlesinger were writing his classic book The Imperial Presidency today, he would have to produce an extended version to accommodate all the actions undertaken by George W. Bush in the name of what Dick Cheney calls a “robust” and “unimpaired” presidency.

It is axiomatic that all presidents seek to enlarge their powers in wartime. After all, Abraham Lincoln grabbed power by suspending habeas corpus , but at least he was doing it to end slavery. President Bush seems to want power for its own sake. And now that the United States is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as an overarching global war on terror, Bush has, in the name of fighting terrorism, done so with a vengeance.

Further illuminating this flagrant grab for power by the executive branch is the news of illicit wiretaps on international phone calls of U.S. citizens suspected of being Al Qaeda members or contacts. These wiretaps are obtained without judicial warrants and violate the fourth amendment right for U.S. citizens to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. The illegal wiretaps, ordered by Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks and orchestrated by the National Security Agency (NSA), are the latest revelation in a sad litany of abuses and illegalities by an increasingly authoritarian Bush administration.

The Bush administration’s abuse of power further defies American rights by violating civil liberties under the PATRIOT Act as well as allowing for the analysis of detailed information of U.S. citizens by John Poindexter’s brainchild, the “Total Information Awareness” project—originally envisioned to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant. It is surely ironic how the Bush administration claims to be on a mission to spread democracy around the world, yet feels free to violate it at home.

Americans are not the only people to be hurt by the Bush administration’s abuse of power



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