İsmail Ali

Çizen: Hakan Karabatak

U.S. Foreign Policy: Iran-Contra, the Imperial Presidency, and the Problems of Being a Democratic Superpower

The United States is an anomaly among the nations of the world. It is a democracy, but it is also a superpower, with the sometimes dishonorable ability to use its power for conquest—though it cloaks its desire for empire in less inflammatory terms, such as “delivering democracy.” This paper considers several aspects of this dilemma: the Iran-Contra scandal and what it says about an “imperial Presidency” and the problems the U.S. has trying to be both a democracy and a superpower.

“Imperial Presidency” is a term that was coined to describe a President who acts like an emperor. It was first associated with Ronald Reagan because of his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal. Iran-Contra, in brief, was a “secret arrangement in the 1980s to provide funds to the Nicaraguan contra rebels from profits gained by selling arms to Iran” (Iran-Contra affair, 2009). It is one of the major scandals of American government in the last 30 years.

Iran-Contra relates to the idea of the imperial Presidency because Reagan approved of an operation to supply arms to the Nicaraguan rebels in defiance of Congressional policy. In the Walsh Iran-Contra report, the author discusses the fact that those charged in the conspiracy (LtCol Oliver L. North, USMC; Admiral John M. Poindexter; Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim) “conducted an unauthorized covert program in support of the contras. Because they feared that Congress would stop them if it knew of their activities and because they feared, as well, the political consequences of that exposure, they deceived Congress about the fact that they were providing this support” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). By providing support to foreign insurgents, the conspirators “obstructed Congress's legitimate functions of regulating governmental expenditures and overseeing foreign covert actions” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis).

Second, Poindexter and North used their positions in government to create a “hidden slush fund” that they kept under their exclusive control (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). This represented a conflict of interest in several ways: first, it permitted them to generate significant profits for the conspirators; less so but still significant profits for North (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). It also enabled North to grab power, by using his position “to drive down the amount that the U.S. Government received from the Iran arms sales and to inflate the amount that the Iranian purchasers paid the conspirators” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). A dispassionate observer might point out that this is the same Iran the United States is now labeling an enemy and a threat; the only conclusion possible is that U.S. foreign policy was, sometimes, a hopeless mess, based largely on the old wheeze that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The United States needs to find a better rationale on which to base its foreign pursuits.

The third point in the report is the fact that the conspirators’ pursuit of their own ends “outraged the Iranians they were attempting to persuade and thus jeopardized the success of the Iran initiative” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). In particular, the initiative was aimed at improving relations with Iran and “securing the release of American hostages held by groups sympathetic to that country” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). But the mission was jeopardized when the conspirators overpriced the weapons they were selling to Iran to increase their profits (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis).

Where this all gets really nasty is Reagan’s reaction to it. “The Reagan Administration was unambiguously hostile to this count [the charge of conspiracy]” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). In an “unprecedented” move, in November 1988 the Justice Department filed a brief to dismiss the count, basing it on Colonel North’s claim that “the count was legally insufficient” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). Subsequently, the Independent Counsel informed the Administration that the conspiracy count “could be tried only if a small amount of classified information was declassified,” only to have the Administration refuse to declassify it (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). “Because there was no way to appeal such a refusal to declassify, Independent Counsel was forced in January 1989 to drop Count One [conspiracy] in North and a related charge that the diversion of profits from the Iran arms sales was a theft of Government funds” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). In other words, a sitting President stepped in to halt a legal proceeding that would have shown him in a bad light; involved in illegal activities in fact.

Testimony cited later in the document reveals that President Reagan did in fact know about the conspiracy, and “through Poindexter, retained full control over the weapons after Secord received them and up to the point of actual delivery to Iran” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). In addition, Reagan was “informed and personally approved both February shipments of TOWs [missiles] (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis). At one point, a shipment of HAWK spares was turned back to Israel over pricing problems; “Only with President Reagan's personal approval was this second plane load of weapons and parts subsequently delivered” (The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis).

What all this tells us is that President Reagan, contrary to his denials, was deeply involved in Iran-Contra, an operation that is dubious in the extreme, since it relied on selling arms to raise money to fund guerrilla operations in another sovereign nation. What is most distressing is Reagan’s deliberate—and successful—attempt to block a legitimate legal inquiry into the matter. This is also the time that the phrase “what did he know and when did he know it” came into usage. It’s also the imperial presidency at its worst, at least until George Bush took office in 2000.

President Bush is quite likely to go down in history as the worst American president ever. Of only average intelligence, he is also aggressive, a deadly combination that was revealed after 9/11 in a frenzy of war mongering. The 9/11 attack transformed the Bush presidency from something of a joke into an important test of leadership, and he took advantage of it for political gain. This is the legacy of the imperial Presidency handed down from Reagan. The attack shocked, frightened and enraged Americans, and brought out the very worst aspects of the American character. Xenophobic to begin with and out for revenge, Americans went along with the invasion plans; those who dared to voice opposition were shouted down or threatened. And so America went to war, invading Afghanistan and then, after a charade perpetrated by Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others, Iraq. It justified its invasion of Iraq by saying that there was conclusive proof that Iraq had WMDs and was about to launch an attack on the U.S.; it characterized the action as a preventive measure; that is, it invaded to forestall an attack that was imminent.

The power to make war is reserved to the Congress; the thinking is that as a deliberative body it will weight the pros and cons and take the consequences into account before launching such a devastating action. It was thought that making war was too important and too deadly to be left in the hands of just one individual, the President. But in 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which said in part that the President could send U.S. forces into hostilities in where the circumstances clearly warrant such an action, and which could be exercised only in case of a declaration of war; “specific statutory authorization” or a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States” (War Powers Resolution, 1973). In the next paragraph, the Resolution gives the President the wiggle room he needs to ignore Congress, when it says “The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities” (War Powers Resolution, 1973). That little word “possible” can be interpreted any number of ways, including the one that suggests there is no time to consult with Congress before sending troops to combat.

Since the attack and the invasion of Iraq, investigations have brought numerous facts to light that indicate Bush lied to the American people in order to get troops to the Middle East. Since then, there has been a lot of material written about the advantage Bush took of the emergency situation, and what must be done now to restore balance. The measures he took impact a great many policies that have nothing to do with the actual conduct of the war.

Americans were frightened by the attacks, with reason, but Bush and his administration heightened the fear and used it to advance a repressive political agenda that included an attempt to increase surveillance of ordinary Americans. The excuse given was that they wanted to identify potential terrorists, but it was obvious to any thinking person that part of the purpose was to stifle dissent and criticism of the administration and its policies. An editorial in The New York Times noted that Congress had allowed President Bush to go much too far in his undermining of the Bill of Rights, but that it “now has a chance to undo some of that damage—if it has the courage and good sense to stand up to the White House and for the Constitution” (Compromising the Constitution, 2008). The editorial urges the Senate to reject a bill that would “needlessly expand the government ability to spy on Americans and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of President Bush’s unlawful wiretapping” (Compromising the Constitution, 2008). This is reminiscent of Reagan’s blocking the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal, and is another measure of the power that is inherent in the imperial Presidency.

Jonathan Turley notes that the American people approve of providing special powers to the President in emergencies only because they are temporary; however, in a war like the “war on terror” that has no endpoint, it becomes more problematic to say that the President can retain these special powers indefinitely (2001). He might well be speaking of the 1973 resolution when he says “It is dangerous to treat an ambiguous resolution of Congress as the functional equivalent of a declaration of war” (Turley, 2001). Doing so would set a precedent that would allow future administrations the potential for abuse, “allowing a war to drift from country to country without any formal declaration” (Turley, 2001)

Former House Speaker Tom Daschle, who helped craft the 2001 legislation giving Bush extraordinary powers, says that Bush’s assertion that he was given power to wiretap American citizens without obtaining a warrant is false: “I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps” (Daschle, 2005, p. A21). Daschle also notes that there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorism, a distinction that escaped Bush and his administration (Daschle, 2005). Instead of using tactics that preserve individual rights and freedoms, the Bush administration adopted heavy-handed tactics that breed suspicion and fear (Daschle, 2005). Of course, a citizenry that is afraid and confused is easy to manipulate, and that is certainly one of the aims of Bush and his colleagues. Daschle concludes that if the media reports are accurate, then Bush exercised powers that are not granted to him by the Constitution or by the laws that Daschle helped craft in the wake of 9/11 (2005).

Broder writes that even conservatives were alarmed by Bush’s acts, and that Senators Graham and Sununu, staunch supporters of Bush, searched for a very specific item in the PATRIOT ACT: the requirement that the government must convince a judge “that a search of records has a direct connection, not just vague ‘relevance,’ to a suspected terrorist” (2004, p. B07). It was to the point where an accusation of being a terrorist was enough to raise suspicion, and the original PATRIOT ACT allowed for such excesses as searches without informing the person that such a search had been performed (Broder, 2004). When conservatives began to question these excesses, it became clear that doubts about Bush were creeping into the ranks of even his strongest supporters.

A renewal of the PATRIOT act did not give Bush all the powers he wanted; perhaps in a reaction to his previous excesses (Weisman). “Negotiators refused to back the administration's request for administrative subpoenas, which would have expanded the government's power to subpoena records without the approval of a judge or grand jury in terrorism investigations” (Weisman). It seemed that there was no end to the excesses of the previous Administration; every concession only led to demands for more, until it seemed that Americans did indeed have an imperial President, if not a tyrant, at the helm.

Finally, an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times from March, 2009, suggests that a citizen’s commission should be formed to investigate how far Bush wanted to expand executive power after the attack (Rutten). In March of this year the Obama administration released legal opinions that had been created by the Office of Legal Counsel; most were the work of conservative lawyer John Woo who believes, among other things, that the President should be given “virtually unfettered powers” when he is acting to protect national security in his role as commander-in-chief (Rutten, 2009). It was these legal opinions that asserted President Bush “had the power to order the military to capture suspected terrorists on U.S. soil and to treat them as enemy combatants without any rights to due process” (Rutten, 2009). Other opinions from this office included the idea that the military was “free to ignore 4^th Amendment prohibitions on illegal search and seizure and to engage in warrantless wiretapping” and that the First Amendment protections of free speech “could be suspended at the chief executive's directive”; also under these conditions, the president “has the power to abrogate any international treaty at will” (Rutten, 2009). It’s easy to see how Bush, with the support of legal “experts” who threw the Constitution under the bus, managed to subvert the rights of the American people, alienate American allies, and infuriate others who might otherwise have remained neutral.

It gets worse and worse. A legal opinion sent to Bush on October 23, 2001, “flatly stated that 1st Amendment ‘speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully” (Rutten, 2009). Less than a year later, the same office issued the opinion that the President was “free to authorize the torture of suspected terrorists” (Rutten, 2009). These legal precedents gave Bush the power to do pretty much as he pleased: spy on Americans, torture suspects, hold them without attorneys, without trial—even without charges, for as long as he liked, trample on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, all without paying for his egregious acts. It is a national shame that America has proven so cowardly in the face of adversity that Americans would give up their rights in the hope of finding some illusory “security.” The best possible security anyone can have is a friend watching their back—but American administration told its allies to take a hike, and they did. Administration's “go it alone,” “with us or against us” rhetoric has cost Americans the good will of the rest of the world. Cowboy diplomacy is a ridiculous and losing position to maintain.

President George W. Bush together with Reagan administration can be shown as another example of what can go wrong when the Constitution is disregarded and power is put in the hands of one person who craves it for the wrong reasons. It will take decades to undo the mess Bush created in eight years, and his mean-spirited and iconoclastic approach to the rest of the world leaves Americans more vulnerable to attack than ever before.

REFERENCES

Broder, David. (2005, December 4). Finally, Congress Stands Up. Washington Post, B07.

Compromising the Constitution. (2008, July 8). The New York Times, Editorial.

Daschle, Tom. (2005, December 23). Power We Didn’t Grant. Washington Post, A21.

Iran-Contra affair. (2009). Retrieved December 18, 2009 from http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825447.html

The operational conspiracy: A legal analysis. Walsh Iran-Contra Report Part III.

Rutten, Timothy. (2009, March 4). Bush’s Executive Tyranny. The Los Angeles Times, Opinion.

Turley, J. (2001, December 21). A War Powers Quandary. The Washington Post, Commentary.

War Powers Resolution. (1973).

Weisman, Jonathan. (2005, November 17). Congress Arrives at a Deal on Patriot Act. Washington Post, A01.

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