Garry Wills' new book Bomb Power brings American history a step forward out of the dark ages. He begins to discuss the elephant in the room from a main stream historian's perspective. Author of books on Lincoln and Jefferson, he castigates all modern Presidents since the creation of the "bomb", the game changer for modern times, as they easily slide onto the throne of King. Truman turns out to be a hot head, Eisenhower a murderer, Kennedy naive, Nixon, Ford, Bush, and Clinton not much better, and then Bush Jr., the worst, as they all played the ace in the hole to foster American policy of secrecy and war. Endless war.
That may be a little unfair on my part, but essentially he is saying the power to use the bomb, in the hands of one man, has caused Congress to abrogate its Constitutional powers, the Executive to grab more power, never give it up, and all of us to nod in agreement as anything and everything is OK as long as the Commander in Chief, with the bomb under his arm, says it is. George Bush 43 pushed this to the extreme with Cheney/Addington writing "signings" that allowed the President to ignore and nullify the actual laws Congress sent up to him to sign. Even McCain's attempt to reinstate the Geneva rules caused Bush/Cheney/Addington to fight tooth and nail to keep the power to torture in the President's hands.
Wills explains how this is all illegal, unconstitutional, and a source of disregard for rules of due process and traditional Executive /Legislative interaction. Congress makes the rules, and the President executes them. That's how it's supposed to be, not the other way around. He shows how the original drafters, our founding fathers, went out of their way to make the Legislative branch the final arbiter of the direction the country should take, in war, in foreign policy, and in dealing with the individual rights of citizens. His main point is that the "bomb", nuclear weapons, changed all that when one man was given the power of the "football". He thinks we should get back to obeying the Constitution, but he doesn't see an easy way to do that.
His subtext though is the elephant in the room. And that is secrecy in a democratic society.
Because of the power of the "bomb" a National Security State has arisen since WWII in the form of a host of bureaucracies all vying for funding and power. Power to classify and protect the "family jewels". Power to keep from the people the often uncomfortable, sometimes illegal, often damaging acts that agencies have done behind closed doors. Even Ike authorized assassinations.
There are a couple heroes in the book that come to mind. William Colby, CIA Director during the Church Committee hearings, and John Kennedy. The bad guys are the usual suspects: Henry Kissinger, Richard Helms, William Casey, the Dulles brothers, Addington/Cheney and many others. I call them "bad guys" because they believe in secrecy, assassination as a President's right, and disregard for the Constitution. In this sense one of the apparatchiks of the bad guys is of course John Woo, the hack government lawyer upon whose "writings" so much damage has been done to the Constitution since 911. But one has to blame the bosses above him, really, since there are always plenty of hacks to choose from when you're looking for illegal justification.
Wills' point is that "bomb power" trumps all rationality and jurisprudence. He also makes the point, though, that much of the subversion of the Constitution by illegal and secret acts, for example, the over throwing, usually violently, of sovereign governments- at least 114 that we know of, such as the 1953 Iranian coup, Patrice Lumamba's murder, Jacob Arbenz Guzman's overthrow all came back to haunt us in one way or another. The chickens came home to roost in some cases. Wills says crime does not pay, and history bears him out, it seems. But '"bad guys" and "heroes" are my terms. Kissinger used a different terminology as he castigated those who would obey the Constitution, or at least believed in the people's right to know what the old white men thought was best for the rest of us all. He thought William Colby was a traitor and "despicable" because Colby tried to answer Congressional questions honestly. Kissinger used the terms "strategists" and "romantics". (p.208) He thought of himself as a "strategist", apparently.
One could argue the strategists have a lot of blood on their hands. They would argue that they have saved the world from annihilation by using the trump card to subdue potential threats. Using that trump card means using subterfuge and assassination as they see fit. The romantics, like Kennedy and Colby, can't defend themselves, yet their records hold up well, viz a viz, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis turned out pretty well with a "romantic" holding off the Generals who would gladly have used the "bomb", and who thought he was a traitor for not using it.
Though Wills has brought the discussion of the problems of a National Security State and its incompatibility with democracy, into the main stream, he failed to make a larger point. Our modern history is filled with controversial deaths of American leaders, well-known and not so well known. Ex CIA Director William Colby died mysteriously. Ex Assistant FBI Director William Sullivan died mysteriously. Senator Hale Boggs died mysteriously. The assassinations of the 60s, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK have not been addressed in the context of how these "coincidences" occur in the National Security State. I think it was FDR who said there are no coincidences in politics. That might apply here.
Wills never mentions Colby's death, and of course he never discusses the assassination of JFK. But he does bring to the main stream historical discussion that elephant in the room- assassination and secrecy. A recent book by Douglas Horne, a member of the ARRB, (the Assassination Records Review Board set up by George H W Bush), called, Inside The ARRB,
does address this elephant in the room- assassination and secrecy. With Horne's and Wills' books we are beginning to emerge belatedly from the dark ages of American history. William Colby thought by turning the light on the "family jewels" which the "bad guys" wanted so desperately to keep hidden, he could save his beloved agency. Coming clean was a good thing. Wonder if it will save the country?
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