Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

by Chalmers Johnson

  7: THE CRISIS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

  1. Edith Hamilton, Mythology (1940; repr., New York: Mentor Books, 1953), p. 88.

  2. George F. Will, Washington Post, “Having the President Observe the Law,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 16, 2006; James Ridgeway, “The Bush Family Coup,” Village Voice, December 30, 2005. See also Federation of American Scientists, Project on Governmental Secrecy, “Confronting the White House’s ’Monarchical Doctrine,’” Secrecy News, February 16, 2006.

  3. James Madison, “Virginia Resolutions,” December 21, 1798, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechsl9.html.

  4. James Madison, from a letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822, http://www.matisse.net/files/madison.html.

  5. “Bill Moyers on the Freedom of Information Act,” Now, Public Broadcasting Service, April 5, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_moyers4_print.html.

  6. See Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002); and Johnson, Review of Ellsberg, Secrets, in London Review of Books, February 6, 2003, pp. 7-9, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n03/print/john04_.html.

  7. James Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain of Secrecy,” Future of Freedom Foundation, August 1, 2005, http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0504c.asp.

  8. Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, “War Crimes Made Easy: How the Bush Administration Legalized Intelligence Deceptions, Assassinations, and Aggressive War,” TomDispatch.com,, December 6, 2005, p. 3, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=41419.

  9. Ruth Rosen, “The Day Ashcroft Censored Freedom of Information,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views02/0108-04.htm.

  10. Quoted by Brecher and Smith, “War Crimes Made Easy.” See also Adam Clymer, “Bush Expands Government Secrecy,” New York Times, January 3, 2003.

  11. Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain.”

  12. Wikipedia, “Executive Order 13233,” February 12, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13233.

  13. Quoted in Editorial, “An Executive Order Hiding Presidential Papers,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2001.

  14. Federation of American Scientists, “Statement of Richard Reeves on Presidential Records,” April 11, 2002, http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2002/041102reeves.html.

  15. Quoted by Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain.”

  16. Ibid.

  17. Noah Feldman, “Who Can Check the President?” New York Times Magazine, January 8, 2006, p. 55.

  18. Quoted by Ridgeway, “Bush Family Coup.”

  19. Quoted by Caroline Daniel, “Cheney Leads Fight for Presidential Power,” Financial Times, December 14, 2005.

  20. Quoted by Linda Feldmann, “Tug of War over Presidential Powers,” Christian Science Monitor, December 22, 2005, http://csmonitor.com/2005/1222/p01s03-uspo.htm.

  21. Quoted by Thomas E. Woods Jr., “All the President’s Power,” American Conservative, January 30, 2006, http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_0l_30/print/coverprint.html.

  22. R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen, “Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees,” Washington Post, January 5, 2005; Daniel, “Cheney Leads Fight”; Jane Mayer, “The Memo: How an Internal Effort to Ban the Abuse and Torture of Detainees Was Thwarted,” New Yorker, February 27, 2006, http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060227fa_fact. For texts of the memo and other documents, see Human Rights First, “U.S. Government Memos on Torture and International Law,” http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_lawVetn/gov_rep/gov_memo_intlaw.htm.

  23. Quoted by Dana Milbank, “In Cheney’s Shadow, Counsel Pushes the Conservative Cause,” Washington Post, October 11, 2004. There are altogether four Yoo memos available to the public that assert a dictatorial power for the president: (1) September 21, 2001, arguing that 9/11 allowed the president to take “measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties”; (2) September 25, 2001, in which Yoo says Congress could not put “limits on the president’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the president alone to make”; (3) January 9, 2002, a Yoo memo saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to American prisoners even though ratified treaties are, according to the Constitution, the “supreme law of the land”; and (4) the Torture Memo of August 1, 2002. See Sidney Blumenthal, “The Law Is King,” Salon, December 22, 2005, http://fairuse.laccesshost.com/news2/blumenthal-lawking.html. For a detailed analysis of the executive branch’s defense of torture, see Tom Engelhardt, “George Orwell Meet ... Franz Kafka,” TomDispatch.com,, June 13, 2004, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1494.

  24. Massimo Calabresi, “Wartime Power Play,” Time, February 5, 2006.

  25. Bruce Schneier, “Unchecked Presidential Power,” StarTribune.com, December 21, 2005, http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/mobile_story.php?story=5793639.

  26. Dan Farber, “The Case Against Presidential Supremacy,” San Diego Union-Tribune, January 15, 2006.

  27. 343 US 579; Mayer, “The Memo.”

  28. For details of the FISA, see Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, pp. 295-98.

  29. See Electronic Privacy Information Center, “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Orders, 1979-2004,” http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html.

  30. Paul Craig Roberts, “A Criminal Administration,” Antiwar.com, January 2, 2006.

  31. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” New York Times, December 16, 2005. See also Aziz Huq (School of Law, New York University), “At the NSA, the Enemy Is Us,” TomPaine.com, March 2, 2006, http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/02/at_the_nsa_the_enemy_is_us.php.

  32. Roberts, “Criminal Administration.”

  33. Blumenthal, “Law Is King.”

  34. Thomas Powers, “The Biggest Secret,” New York Review of Books, February 23, 2006, pp. 9-12.

  35. Quoted by Amy Goodman, “Total Information Awareness Lives On Inside the National Security Agency,” Democracy Now, February 27, 2006, http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=06/02/27/1519235.

  36. Walter Pincus, “Pentagon’s Intelligence Authority Widens,” Washington Post, December 19, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121801006_pf.html. See also Tom Engelhardt, “Proliferation Wars in the Intelligence Community,” TomDispatch.com,, May 30, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=87452.

  37. Shane Harris, “TIA Lives On,” National Journal, February 23, 2006; John W. Dean, “Why Should Anyone Worry about Whose Communications Bush and Cheney Are Intercepting If It Helps to Find Terrorists?” FindLaw.com, February 24, 2006, http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20060224.html; Shane Harris, “Signals and Noise,” National Journal, June 17, 2006, http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0619nj1.htm.

  38. John W. Dean, “The Problem with Presidential Signing Statements: Their Use and Misuse by the Bush Administration,” FindLaw.com, January 13, 2006, http://writ.findlaw.com/dean/20060113.html.

  39. Quoted by Charlie Savage, “Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban,” Boston Globe, January 4, 2006, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_010406A.shtml. See also Savage, “Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws,” Boston Globe, April 30, 2006, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/.

  40. Dean, “Presidential Signing Statements.”

  41. Aziz Huq, “Constitutional License,” TomPaine.com, January 24, 2006, http://www.tompaine.com/print/constitutional_license.php.

  42. See Alfred W. McCoy, “Why the McCain Torture Ban Won’t Work,” Tom Dispatch.com, February 8, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=57336.

  43. Quoted by Savage, “Bush Could Bypass Torture Ban.”

  44. Anthony Legouranis, “Tortured Logic: What I Learned as a Military Interrogator in Iraq,�
� New York Times, February 28, 2006.

  45. Feldman, “Who Can Check the President?”

  46. Al Gore, “U.S. Constitution in Grave Danger,” January 16, 2006, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_011606Y.shtml.

  47. See Chalmers Johnson, “The Military-Industrial Man,” TomDispatch.com,, September 14, 2004, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1818; and “My Congressman Stands for Money, Not for Me—And, What’s Even Worse, There’s No Way I Can Get Rid of Him,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2004.

  48. Matt Kelley and Jim Drinkard, “Secret Military Spending Gets Little Oversight,” USA Today, November 8, 2005; Paul Sisson, “Defense Dollars for Everyone,” North County Times (San Diego), July 17, 2005, p. E5.

  49. Onell R. Soto, “Rep. Cunningham Resigns; Took $2.4 Million in Bribes,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 29, 2005; Soto, “Feds Seek 10 Years for Cunningham,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 18, 2006; Finlay Lewis, Jerry Kammer, and Joe Cantlupe, “Contractor Admits Bribing Cunningham,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 25, 2006.

  50. Laura Rozen,” ’Duke’ of Deception,” American Prospect, February 2006, http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=10816.

  51. Bill Moyers, “Restoring the Public Trust,” TomPaine.com, February 24, 2006, http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/24/restoring_the_public_trust.php.

  52. Matt Kelley and Jim Drinkard, “Contractor Spends Big on Key Lawmakers,” USA Today, November 20, 2005.

  53. Dean Calbreath, “The Power of Persuasion: Poway Businessman Brent Wilkes Funneled Campaign Donations to Key Lawmakers as He Tried to Build a Defense Empire,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 5, 2006.

  54. Wes Allison and Anita Kumar, “Fla. Senators Get Funds for Military Companies, Many of Them Donors,” St. Petersburg Times (FL), March 11, 2006.

  55. Moyers, “Restoring the Public Trust.”

  56. Ibid. Also see Larry Margasak and Sharon Theimer, Associated Press, “Dollar Trail from D.C. to Islands,” CBS News, May 3, 2005; Rep. George Miller (Democrat from California), “New Developments—Abramoff, DeLay, and the Northern Mariana Islands,” May 6, 2005, http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/marianasupdate.html; Dennis Cook, Associated Press, “Controversial Lobbyist Had Close Contact with Bush Team,” USA Today, May 6, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abramoff-bush_x.htm; Eamon Javers, “Op-Eds for Sale,” Business Week, December 15, 2005; Byron York, “Hillary, Saipan, Sweatshops, Campaign Cash—and Abramoff,” National Review, March 10, 2006.

  57. Ken Silverstein, “The Great American Pork Barrel,” Harper’s Magazine, July 2005, http://www.harpers.org/TheGreatAmericanPorkBarrel.html.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Quoted by David Wood, Newhouse News Service, “Pentagon’s ’Black’ Budgets Ripe for Corruption,” San Diego Union-Tribune, December 2, 2005. Also see Dan Morgan, “Classified Spending On the Rise,” Washington Post, August 27, 2003; Drew Brown, “Classified Military Spending Reaches Highest Level Since Cold War,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, May 19, 2006.

  60. Moyers, “Inside the Pentagon.” See also William D. Hartung, “Dick Cheney and the Power of the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone,” in How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration (New York: Nation Books, 2004), pp. 23-43.

  61. Winslow T. Wheeler, “How Congress Sacrifices Readiness for Pork,” Counter-punch, January 24, 2006; Emanuel Pastreich, “Rebels Within the U.S. Federal System,” Center for Defense Information, January 10, 2006.

  62. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.

  63. Center for Defense Information, “Fiscal Year 2001 Add-Ons: Congress’s Unrequested Spending for the Pentagon,” July 28, 2000, http://cdi.org/issues/budget/add-onsOl.html; Center for Defense Information, “Fiscal Year 2002 Add-Ons,” January 16, 2002, http://www.cdi.org/issues/budget/add-ons02-pr.cfm.

  64. Editorial, “Kabuki Congress,” New York Times, March 6, 2006. See also Editorial, “The Death of the Intelligence Panel,” New York Times, March 9, 2006.

  65. Brian Foley, “Playing with Fire: Congress and Executive Power,” Jurist, January 9, 2006, http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/01/playing-with-fire-congress-and.php.

  66. McCoy, “McCain Ban Won’t Work.”

  67. Quoted by Eric Schmitt, “Senate Approves Limiting Rights of U.S. Detainees,” New York Times, November 11, 2005.

  68. Foley, “Playing with Fire.”

  69. Quoted by Woods, “All the President’s Power.”

  70. Bob Herbert, “The Torturers Win,” New York Times, February 20, 2006.

  71. Anatol Lieven, “Decadent America Must Give Up Imperial Ambitions,” Financial Times, November 29, 2005.

  72. Louis Uchitelle, “U.S. and Trade Partners Maintain Unhealthy Long-Term Relationship,” New York Times, September 18, 2004; Christopher Swann,”U.S. Deficit Data Fuel Anxieties on Dollar,” Financial Times, March 15, 2006.

  73. Martin Crutsinger, “U.S. Trade Deficit Hits All-Time High,” Associated Press, February 10, 2006.

  74. Keith Bradsher, “China Passes Japan in Foreign Exchange Reserves,” New York Times, March 29, 2006.

  75. Marshall Auerback, “What Could Go Wrong in 2005?” TomDispatch.com, January 22, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2141.

  76. See the discussion by Doug Dowd, “U.S. Military Expenditures: Beneficial or Harmful? Or, Who Benefits and Who Pays?” State of Nature, Winter 2006, http://www.stateofnature.org/milex.html. See also Robert B. Reich, “John Maynard Keynes: His Radical Idea that Governments Should Spend Money They Don’t Have May Have Saved Capitalism,” Time, March 29, 1999, http://www.time.com/time/timelOO/scientist/profile/keynes.html.

  77. Wikipedia, “Permanent Arms Economy,” February 10, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_arms_economy.

  78. Andrew Gumbel, “How the War Machine Is Driving the U.S. Economy,” Independent, January 6, 2004.

  79. Wikipedia, “Military Keynesianism,” February 5, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Keynesianism; Michael Kidron, “A Permanent Arms Economy,” International Socialism 1, no. 28 (Spring 1967), http://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1967/xx/permarms.htm.

  80. Ronald Steel, Temptations of a Superpower (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 61.

  81. See John L. Boies, Buying for Armageddon: Business, Society, and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).

  82. Gumbel, “War Machine”; Fred Kaplan, “The Military’s Bloated Budget,” Slate, September 12, 2003.

  83. Jonathan Karp, “Pet Projects Prevail in U.S. Military-Spending Boom,” Wall Street journal, June 16, 2006.

  84. Jeff Bliss, “U.S. War Spending to Rise 44% to $9.8 Billion a Month, Report Says,” Bloomberg.com, March 17, 2006, http://truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_031706B.shtml.

  85. Winslow T. Wheeler, “A Tutorial on How to Find the Real Numbers: Just How Big Is the Defense Budget?” Counterpunch, January 19, 2006.

  86. Robert Higgs, “The Defense Budget Is Bigger than You Think,” The Independent Institute, January 18, 2004, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1253.80; Doug Dowd, “U.S. Military Expenditures”; Walter Adams and James W. Brock, The Bigness Complex: Industry, Labor, and Government in the American Economy,2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).

  87. Ann Scott Tyson, “Defense Spending Is Overstated, GAO Report Says,” Washington Post, September 22, 2005.

  88. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict,” National Bureau of Economic Research (Working Paper 12054, February 2006), http://www.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/download/2006_Cost_of_War_in_Iraq_NBER.pdf.

  Acknowledgments

  Sheila K. Johnson, who has her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, spent endless hours in conversation with me about this book, and she carefully edite
d my first draft. As my wife of forty-nine years, she obviously knows where I’m coming from.

  Tom Engelhardt is the founder and editor of TomDispatch.com, ‘a regular antidote to the mainstream media’ and a project of the Nation Institute. He is also the editor of all three books of the Blowback Trilogy— Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis—for Metropolitan Books. I am indebted to him for his intelligence, integrity, and support for the American Empire Project, which he helped create.