Endless War? 

Endless War?

I guess the clearest statement of the Bushies' view is: the President has practically limitless power during wartime--and it's always, or almost always, wartime. Unless, of course (they think wistfully), we can somehow escape to Mars or somewhere in outer space, and leave the bad people behind. Then Americans can enjoy a full complement of civil liberties again. On "wartime" see David Rivkin in Q2 here (pdf). (Link via Matt Welch, Hit and Run). Also: Kevin Drum here, and Drum praising Jonah Goldberg for saying emergency powers in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 are one thing; but when hostilities go on for years, the President should learn to do what he wants to do in a lawful way.

On escaping to the Moon or Mars, see the erstwhile sober, thoughtful Jim Pinkerton, with comments from Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reynolds.

Perhaps our hopes for constitutional government don't depend entirely on outer space. We'll make more or less endless war for a long time, but this will actually have a somewhat utopian goal of establishing democracy, and thus (I guess) endless peace, all over the world. Not endless war, but more or less endless war until there is endless peace. Again, this is somehow adopting Trotsky (Hitchens) to the Republican Party of no books, please, we just have to be resolute.

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