The redoubtable Brad Friedman over at THE BRAD BLOG has just posted yet another on-point piece, partially dispelling the corporate media obfuscation of Congress’ very real responsibility with respect to the the troop “surge”:

All of the Sunday news shows today were abuzz with talk of Bush’s reported troop “surge” plan for Iraq. The general theme was that, as Commander-in-Chief, Bush could do whatever he wanted in regard to troop levels and the only thing Congress could do about it was to use their control of the purse strings by voting to stop funding the war.

… But aside from cutting off funding for the war, now or in the future, there is another option for the moment in answer to Bush’s predicted call for a “surge”; demand that the White House release their estimates of the number of casualties we will incur during such a “surge.”

…It seems to me that any plan to increase troop strength would come with some sort of general estimate from the Pentagon as to the cost in increased, or decreased, causalities [sic] for our troops. Congress must call on the White House to go on record with that estimate!

Apart from debunking the idea that Congress has no effective options, Brad’s full piece goes on to point out that holding Bush to an official prediction of casualities would enable his feet to be held to the fire later. I like what Brad’s saying…but I want to point out that under the Constitution, Congress also has the power

to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.

So they’re NOT restricted to purse-strings and information requests. Nothing could be more repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution, whose framers envisioned nothing like the Imperial Presidency of the last sixty years, let alone Dubya. Congress has DIRECT power to determine how the armed forced are used. The President, as Commander in Chief, only has supreme EXECUTIVE power over the military (and the rest of the government as Chief Executive), not power to override Congress.

The last clause of the same section of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) gives Congress the power

to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

On what grounds, then, can a president possibly claim that his executive powers preempt the legislative authority of Congress?

Now, I grant you, given the veto power–not to mention the profound state of Constitutional confusion that shills for the imperial presidency have created in the national consciousness–it would be difficult for Congress to effectively assert the power I’m talking about. Maybe as a rider to a bill Bush desperately wants? If he signed the bill and tried to signing-statement the rider away, then there would be some chance of recourse in the courts, kangarooish though they are.

What Brad’s suggesting is probably more practical. But I think it’s still important to discuss all options. We need to keep up a discourse about what our actual rights are as Americans, and not get discouraged into letting the obfuscators with the megaphones trim them away on the grounds that “there’s nothing we can do about it.” That defeatism got us here, bit by bit, and if there’s more hope now, it’s because people have started taking destiny back into their own hands.

What a difference eleven days make. Democrats rule the Capitol, and Ford and Hussein are dead–both with far more blood on their hands than the courtiers Hamlet outwitted.

The gush-fest for Ford–though mild compared with the love-a-thon that greeted the death of the genocidal reactionary Reagan–has already engrained yet another Republican talking point into the accepted canon of beliefs of the culture zone defined by American television: he healed the nation. Never mind what Ford did to the nation of East Timor, a third of whose population was murdered in an offensive for which he supplied the weapons, illegally, and gave the go-ahead (a far less intimate involvement, to be sure, than the Reagan CIA’s direct coaching of the later slaughter in Guatemala). Ford healed “the nation”–i.e., the only one that counts within the aforementioned U.S. TV culture zone–by pardoning, against the wishes of a large majority of the American people, the criminal president who had appointed him to office on his way out the door. Thus was upheld the great American principle that, while presidents might not be quite entirely above the law, ex-presidents certainly are. The healing effect was so great that angry Americans gave Democrats two-thirds of both houses of Congress for the next two elections. Well, Ford may not have healed that part of the nation, but he certainly healed the ruling classes’ fear that the punishment might actually fit the crime.

While USTV bestows its seal of sanctity upon Ford’s death because of its Secret-Service-protected nonagenarian peacefulness, they give it to Hussein’s for the self-righteous will to kill of its perpetrators–the American System avenging itself against a former ally who committed most of his worst atrocities during their alliance. It is the ultimate climax to our Two Minutes of Hate, an act of flaming moral exuberance within the tinderbox the U.S. has made of Iraq.

ADDED JANUARY 6-> If Ford really was, apart from the pardon, one of the less divisive presidents of recent decades, it’s mostly because he was in such a weak political position–never elected, coming to office with his party under the cloud of the century, and then facing, after the first six months of his term, the aforementioned two-thirds Democratic majority. Even though the Democratic Party of that time suffered profound internal divisions (yes, far more so even than today), this hardly left Ford room to indulge in the euphoric ideological delirium that has characterized the current Occupant. Indeed, Ford is the only modern president who, having served one term or less, nearly lost his own party’s nomination (Truman, Carter, and Bush Sr. faced real opposition but in the end were renominated rather handily).

But why give such rational, structural explanations when you can reduce it all to the personal qualities of the “leaders”? USTV, after all, prides itself in the vulgar postmodernism that holds that the most superficial explanations are really the most sophisticated–and more specifically that all human affairs can be explained by endless recourse to the omnipotent PERSONAL level, from fashion to politics, which inevitably triumphs over mere institutional mandates (isn’t that why communism had to fall?).

What would be really fascinating would be to see how USTV pundits would square the rather nasty attacks Reagan and Ford hurled at each other as they battled for the 1976 nomination with the confirmed “fact” that they were both such nice guys (and such wonderful leaders that they surely didn’t deserve more than mild criticisms). Oh yes–I know–the pundits would emphasize that they later made up, with Reagan considering Ford as a possible running mate, and probably even taking him on fishing trips. Now that’s what I call HEALING.