The Shaming of America: Republican Congressmen v. The U.S. Constitution

They can't stand having an Afro-American being the President of the U.S.  From Day One, in January 2009, Senator Mitch McConnell declared that the Republicans had one mission: To insure that Obama is a one term President.  They and their supporters on the Right keep on questioning Obama's citizenship and his love of America.

Recently, former New York City mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, wondered in  public whether the President cherished America.  At a State of the Union message, a Republican Congressman heckled Obama while delivering that message to a joint session.  He shouted, "Liar."  Unprecedented.  Obama, unruffled looked at that offender and responded: "Thank You."

During campaigning in opposition to Obama, Senator McCain, Republican from Arizona, was asked a question from his audience.  The lady asking the question made in fact a comment attacking Obama.  She, on national TV, said: "He is an Arab."  In a subdued voice, McCain, with microphone now in hand, responded: "No!  He is not an Arab."  As if being an Arab in America was a grave national security breach.

Republicans in Congress, now in the majority in both houses, are shaming America.  Their attacks on Obama have turned into a violation of the U.S. Constitution, especially in the area of foreign affairs.

That document, crafted by geniuses in checks and balances, promulgated in 1787 "in order to form a more perfect union" gave the President primary responsibility for foreign affairs.

He is "Commander in Chief;" has power "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties;" "appoint ambassadors," with the Senate's "advice and consent," but with a simple majority of one vote; and make use of international agreements and compacts, at times with congressional participation.

On these bases, it has been asserted in case law that the President acts "as the sole organ of the Federal Government in the field of international relations." (Justice Sutherland of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Curtiss-Wright case).

By comparison to the primacy of the Presidential role in foreign affairs, Congress, under Article I (Section 8) of the Constitution, has been accorded limited powers.  Congress can "provide for the common defense," can "declare war," and can "raise and support armies."

So primarily, Congress real prerogative lies in controlling the defense budget.  Its power to declare ware has been used in about 5 cases, in the course of more than two centuries.  Even in this foreign affairs domain, that power has been overwhelmed by the resort by the President to executive agreements which can speedily and privately commit the U.S. to action in foreign affairs without the need of any congressional involvement.  This is the essence of what is legally described "pure executive agreements." 

Also in regard to military action, the President may act unilaterally in actual hostilities against the U.S.  When this happens, the only authority left to Congress is its exercise of "the spending power."  But limiting the presidential power at times of hostilities can only be done by Congress through its enactment or non-enactment of military appropriations every two years.

The entire weight of legal constitutional scholarship is that the President has paramount power to represent the U.S. in day-to-day foreign relations.

Yet in the course of this month of March, Republican Congressmen have shamed the U.S., through shaming President Obama.  John Boener, Speaker of the House, on his own and in service of his narrow interests invites a foreign leader to address a joint "meeting" (not session) of Congress.

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel was thus afforded the unheard of luxury of having Congress become a theatrical prop for his electoral aspirations to secure a fourth term.  The repeated standing ovations on Capitol Hill for him represented a massive Congressional indictment of Obama's efforts, still ongoing, to secure a deal with Iran on its nuclear aspirations.

Not to be outdone by these Republican efforts to undermine Obama's primary authority in foreign affairs, a 37-year old Senator from Arkansas addresses a letter to the Iranian authorities.  The letter from Tom Cotton warned Tehran not to conclude a deal on the nuclear issue.  Why?  Because that inexperienced Senator, with only 65 days in the Senate, offered a crazy warning:  A deal with Obama could be cancelled by a successor.  In essence, Cotton is telling the Iranians and the world: "Commitment by our President is worth nothing."

Are these lawmakers or are they Clowns?  CLOWNS, in a failing roadside circus.  For they have:

• Infringed the Constitutional prerogatives of the U.S. President for whom foreign policy is a primary domain;
• Weakened the hands of the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry.  This is in the midst of international negotiations aiming at reaching a consensual deal with Iran and all the five members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany;
• Confirmed the perception in the Arab and Muslim world that Israel, in regard to the Likud attempt to have and hold a Greater Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, at the expense of the creation of a sovereign State of Palestine, has the backing of U.S. Congress;
• Ignored the fact that Israel is already a nuclear power, yet making, through the Likud in Israel, any nuclear program in the Arab Middle East, an existential threat;
• Made a great institution like U.S. Congress represent members who put their aspirations for keeping their seats ahead of the interests of "a more perfect union;"
• Hollowed out the incantations of America addressed to the outside world that when it comes to democracy and human rights, America, as Ronald Reagan put it, was akin to "a City on a Shining Hill;" and 
• Enhanced the trepidations of America's allies that trusting America, especially in this global war on terrorism, is a risky gamble.

Putting perceptions aside, here are some realities drawn from applicable international law:

• If and when made, the deal with Iran is subject to approval by the UN Security Council.  A scholar at Princeton University, Seyed Hussein Mousavian wrote on this subject an op ed in Al Monitor.  He aptly titled it: "On Iran deal, Republicans cut off their nose to spite their face."  In it he points out that: "If a deal is reached, the Security Council would pass a resolution enacting its terms, which Congress has no authority over rescinding."
• In his hallucinating letter, signed by 46 other Republican Senators, Senator Tom Cotton reminds Tehran of US sanctions.  In another swipe at Obama, he in effect states that even if a deal is reached, the US Senate could still maintain sanctions on Iran.

In opposition to a constitutional scholar called Obama, Cotton must have had real cotton in his ears during classes in international law.  Sanctions work only if several other States, especially neighbors and big Powers cooperate.  Our "Tommy," in his incongruous role of a volunteer advisor to the Islamic Republic of Iran, should know that in a deal internationally accepted, unilateral US sanctions would not have their intended effect.  

• War is no longer a U.S. option.  Especially in a fanciful war on Iran.  Just look at the administration having a difficult time in Congress just to agree to an authorization for the President to combat ISIS.  In reality, Obama needs no such authorization.  In his recent testimony before Congress, John Kerry cleared Obama's objective.  The Administration was calling on Congress only to speak "with a single powerful voice" at this critical juncture.

One of the four pillars of national sovereignty is the State's ability to conduct foreign affairs.  Today's Congress, with Republican majorities, is proving that the U.S. governmental system is plagued by more "checks" than "balances."  Retired U.S. Major General Paul Eaton said it to the point: "The idea of engaging directly with foreign entities on foreign policy is frankly a gross breach of discipline."

The rise of the extreme right in the US, including the Tea Party and the likes of Ted Cruz, Sara Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Bill O'Reilly, represents an endemic desire for endless war.  The lessons of the wars in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003), with their consequences of sectarianism in the Muslim world and the economic great recession in America, seem to have been lost.

It is ironic to have the great party of Lincoln turning into the party of war.  American efforts to "contain and degrade ISIS," even through an international coalition, seem to have spawned an internal American war.  A war against Obama.

A thoughtful commentator, Dr. Sayed Amin Shalaby, the Executive Director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, recently quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski.  In his book entitled Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, Zbig, as per his nickname, as quoted by my friend Ambassador Shalaby, argues that America has to understand that its power abroad will increasingly depend on its ability to face its internal challenges.

Well said!!  A return by Congress to the U.S. Constitution is one such primordial necessity.  The shaming of America is an factor in international destabilization.

A great America President, a Democrat, a hundred years ago, wrote while at Princeton University, a great book.  It was a must read for me as a graduate student and a teaching assistant in the 1950s in America.  Titled Congressional Government, President Woodrow Wilson warned against congressional usurpation of presidential powers.

It was Wilson, a real Cassandra, who as U.S. President, crafted the League of Nations.  The Republican Senate of his day prevented America's membership in it.  The League, without the US in it, collapsed in 1939, ushering in the Second World War. In spite of that, a Wilson legacy is still standing: His advocacy  of people's right to self-determination.

An editorial in the New York Times of March 13, addressed this weird coup-like Congressional episodes.  It said: "The Republicans are the leaders in Congress.  But their efforts to undermine Mr. Obama in every matter are infecting ALL governance."

An op ed article in the same issue of the New York Times by Professor Kathleen Duval headlined "We Have a President for a Reason."  Denouncing that Republican power grab, it concluded: "It would be strange for a group of 21st Century senators to take advantage of the negotiations with Iran and return U.S. to an earlier age of cacophony and weakness."

Time Magazine of March 23 includes an article by Ian Bremmer, a foreign affairs columnist.  In it, he says: "This move undermines the credibility of future Presidents, Democrats and Republicans."

Yet the process of the shaming of America keeps on going in various directions: President Obama calls Netanyahu to chide him for declaring retreat from the promise of two-States.  But Boehner, Republican Speaker of the House, travels to Israel to stand by Netanyahu's side.

And on March 23, the craziest of U.S. Senators, Texan Republican Ted Cruz, announces his candidacy for President in 2016.  This icon of the Tea Party, in his totally unpromising bid for President, accuses Obama of communism.  Shameless!!

Want To See A Thriller? Watch Hitchcock Not Al-Jazeera!

This is not about the case of Al-Jazeera journalists litigated in Egypt.  I do not have before me the file on that case.  This posting has to do with a much larger issue: Does press freedom know no limits?!  Because this is the basic issue confronting Al-Jazeera as it fabricates its case around the world against the New Egypt.

For eight long and productive years, I learnt an important lesson from one great journalists source -Forbes Magazine.  From 1976 to 1984, I was retained by Forbes great co-founder, the late Malcolm Forbes.  He, and his four sons, and the editor, James Michaels, were my inspirational source.  After choosing me to be the editor of the Arabic edition of Forbes Magazine, I posed a question to Malcolm: "What is the most important department at Forbes?" With a tilt of his head, twinkle in his eyes, and an assertive wave of his hands, Malcolm Forbes drew me closer as he whispered: "The Facts-Checking Department."  How profound!!

When I began watching Al-Jazeera TV network, I felt truly ambivalent about what I was seeing.  Captivated by its global resources as it presented documentaries on Arab history.  But repulsed by its news presentations of current Arab issues.  As if I was watching the production of a schizophrenic network where the past was revered, but the present was slanted.

The Al-Jazeera's slant decidedly pointed to its own funding Mecca - The Petro-State of Qatar!!  Not one word was ever uttered evaluating Qatar as a family business.  But torrents of news and innuendos and oblique hints disparaging nearly every other Arab regime.

Al-Jazeera called itself "The Pulpit of the Pulpitless" (in Arabic: "Minbar Mun La Minbara Lahu").  OK!!  But as the channel's popularity grew, in the midst of the dearth of similar technological resources for other Arab media, a decided tone of pomposity crept in.

Interviews became marked by long leading introductions; assertive interviewers ended their questions with the arms-twisting phrase of "isn't it so," without more; frequent interruptions of the interviewees; non-ascertainable facts peppered the news programs; and clips selectively vouching for Al-Jazeera's editorial commitments ruled the airwaves.

Conclusion: ideology took a front-row seat; facts, as gleaned from facts-checking, took a back seat.  As in the sordid practice of personal injury lawyers, chasing after ambulances to get injured clients signed up, Al-Jazeera was chasing any opposition group in the Arab homeland as the only source of credible news.

One of their leading interviewees was Abdel-Bari Attwan, the past editor of "Al-Quds Al-Arabi."  He, without shame, eulogized in a full-length page Saddam Hussein the day of the execution of that mass murderer.  Called him "The Leader of the Arab Nation!!"  But "the best" of Attwan, a Palestinian who was educated for free at Cairo University, was yet to come:  On Al-Jazeera, he described the mastermind of 9/11 as "Sheikh Osama Bin Laden." (Sheikh means an Islamic scholar).

On Al-Jazeera's airwaves, Attwan advocated a resumption of war between Egypt and Israel.  Both Al-Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, described Hamas invasion of Egypt through the Sinai tunnels as "legitimater for being the strategic depth of Hamas."  

This is not to mention daily attacks on other Arab Governments from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan to the East, to Morocco to the West.  Now fast forward to Al-Jazeera's attitude towards the turbulent scene in the New Egypt from December 2010 to the collapse, under massive popular pressure, of the fascist Islamist regime of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Two and a half years of misery in the most populous Arab country where the Islamists for a while highjacked the Revolution of January 25, 2011; attacked the Copts and the Shiis; gloried in the burning of convents and museums; attacked nuns; burned books; manipulated university students; side-lined Al-Azhar; issued crazy fatwas; allowed uneducated preachers in mosques to celebrate a retrograde interpretation of Islam; aligned themselves with haters of secular Egypt from Hamas to Qatar to Turkey; and called for drastic revisions of security measures in Sinai.  For one fateful year, Egypt was ruled by a Taliban-like cabal with one difference: The Taliban espouse Afghanistan; a Brotherhood Supreme Guide said: "To Hell with Egypt."

Throughout that period of internal terror, Al-Jazeera raised the Islamist flag as high as Qatar wanted; Qatari petro-dollars illegally poured in; foreign NGO, without any accountability to the Government, treated Egypt as if it was a No-Man's Land; and Al-Jazeera's news reports became so one-sided as to qualify for "news fabrication."  They focused on how chaos was the daily event in Egypt.

It was a constant drumbeat by Al-Jazeera creating a world-wide false impression of a failed State.  No sovereign State on earth could allow such an organization to go on falsely destroying its fabric from within.  States have the sovereign obligation to keep national dangers outside their borders.

A sample of Al-Jazeera playing games with the facts on the territory of the New Egypt is Al-Jazeera's reporting of a non-factual article by Michelle Dunne.  Dunne is described in that article publicized by Al-Jazeera on Nov. 4, 2014 as "a senior associate in the Middle East programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace."  In her article, Dunne, whose husband was implicated in a case brought before the Egyptian judiciary against an NGO alleged intervention in internal affairs, had plenty to say through which to vent her incurable Egyptophobia.

In her own self-proclaimed expertise, Dunne denounces Egypt's measures of counter-terrorism in Sinai as follows: "There were the remarkable scene of Egyptian bulldozers demolishing houses to create a buffer zone in Rafah following allegations that militants or weapons had entered from Gaza to carry out the attacks.  While the tunnels under Rafah have been a persistent and serious problem, the total media blackout in Sinai makes it impossible to know what actually happened and whether the demolitions were truly necessary or rather a hasty exertion of collective punishment against Sinai residents."

How insane can Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment and Al-Jazeera of Qatar get!!  Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Friends of Jerusalem), and based in Gaza, has proclaimed these terror actions to the whole world.  They have targeted both Egyptian security forces and foreign tourists.  They have declared Sinai an emirate of ISIS.  Is Dunne and Al-Jazeera so deranged as to expect from Cairo detailed and open access to military operations and measures of self-defense?  On what basis in law or fact does Dunne, through Al-Jazeera, characterize internal and sovereign defensive actions by Egypt in Sinai as "collective punishment against Sinai residents?!"  Total fabrication which is shamelessly uttered behind the facade of "press freedom."  Is it any wonder that in mid-December 2014 she was refused entry to Egypt?  Is that press freedom, on a sinister invention of news and malicious mythinformation?

To me at least, it is the kind of hate-mongering which makes of both the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Al-Jazeera Network pro-conflict propaganda organizations.  Their manifest purpose is destabilizing the New Egypt.  Permanent war seems to be their lifeblood of existence in this age of chaos.  Why is this my conclusion?

• Because freedom of the press is designed to enlighten, not to obfuscate; to shed light on credible facts as the best means of mass education;
• Because freedom without limitation is the definition of chaos.  Like the Olympic connected circles, the limits of my freedom is where the outer limits of your freedom begin;
• Because the age of Nazi Goebbels teaches all of us that a steady barrage of lies about other people, whether for religious or ethnic or imperial reasons, shall lead ultimately to catastrophes like the Holocaust;
• Because it violates the UN Charter purposes of developing "friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples" (Article I, para. 2);
• Because interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States, as through negative and non-substantiated media reports, is prohibited under international law (UN Charter, Article II, para. 7) except in apartheid-like situations;
• Because defamation of States or people or faith through surface conclusions and blatant fabrication of rumors and events, such as manifested by Al-Jazeera and Michelle Dunne, are not only unethical.  They are also means of fomenting mistrust of governance.  That is especially so in countries like Egypt which is going through the dual difficult tasks of reconstruction as well as containment of ISIS-like terrorism;
• Because the "Freedom of Expression" does not apply to someone mischievously yelling in a crowded theater "Fire!" causing death and injury by a terrified stampede.

A seminal article appeared in the New York Review of Books of January 2015 by David Cole, under the title "Must Counter terrorism Cancel Democracy." In it, that legal scholar deals with government powers during national emergencies.  He says: "Properly regulated, surveillance is a legitimate governmental function in peacetime and wartime.  Every country does it; no country forbids it."  With regard to El-Sisi Administration, Al-Jazeera and Dunne seem oblivious to this reality.

The claim by Al-Jazeera to a bogus total, unbridled, unregulated, and non-substantiated stream of invented facts about sovereign States is rebuffed by law and ethics.  Their claim of credibility has been found to vanish through a permanent ideological pattern of smear campaigns against secular Egypt.  Al-Jazeera shamelessly manifested its tilt towards a defunct Islamist regime some of whose leaders are now in refuge in Qatar which bankrolls Al-Jazeera.

The Qatar/Al-Jazeera symbiosis is the clearest evidence of Al-Jazeera's absence of independence.  To Qatar, it is "His Master's Voice!!"

The New Egypt is charting its own course, come what may.  It has a secular constitution which nullified an earlier totally retrograde Islamic Constitution; a president who was fairly and openly elected by secret ballot in June 2014; a cabinet of technocrats under the steady stewardship of Prime Minister Mahlab; an upper House of Parliament in which woman, Copts, the disabled, and other previously marginalized communities and minorities are represented; lower house elections are slated to be held later this year.

And Egypt has an independent judiciary.  That judiciary, through the Court of Cassation, the highest court in Egypt, and of which Bar I am honored to be a member, is the ultimate judicial voice in the case of the remaining two of Al-Jazeera journalists.

How obscene for the New York Times of January 2, 2015, to plainly advocate outside intervention in that judicial matter?  Can the New York Times call for such intervention in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court?  How contradictory to the principle of judicial independence does the author of that article, Kareem Fahim, a clone of David Kirkpatrick, call for by-passing that judicial process in sovereign Egypt?!  

In this morass of malicious one-sidedness which goes by the misnomer of "Press Freedom," Al-Jazeera again steps in.  In that New York Times article, Al-Jazeera condemned the Egyptian Court decision for judicial review.  It arrogantly states: "Al-Jazeera said that the Egyptian authorities had a choice:

"Free these men quickly, or continue to string this out, all the while continuing this injustice and harming the image of their own country in the eyes of the world.  They should choose the former."

Yes, Al Jazeera, you, through your fabricated half-truths, know better than the leadership of the New Egypt about what should and shouldn't be done.

But thanks for making my case!!  I have always felt that you were not truly engaged in airing news backed by facts.  You, and the likes of Michelle Dunne, are engaged in imaginary thrillers.  

But when I want to see a thriller, I can assure you that you are not my first choice.  Hitchcock is!!