WHAT'S IN A WORD

Over the years it has become more and more popular to use the word “war” for just about any policy undertaking that addresses any vexing problem. There are economic wars (local and international trade), endless wars (poverty, drugs, disease) and most recently, a war on a tactic of war – the war on terrorism. The war on terror has justified an ideological and geographically off-point policy that is devoid of a cogent knowledge of culture and history. It has taken us into a hopeless military adventure fraught with the “unintended consequences” that always plague the dogmatic ideologue who gets his way. Notwithstanding the fact that it is irrational to make war on war, we have let bellicose hyperbole and the loose use of a formidable word that has grave implications has inured us to its power and has degenerated to a level that threatens our way of life.

The recent exclamations of Attorney General Gonzales emphasize the fragile nature of the rights and privileges we enjoy in our Republic. In his interaction with Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that there “. . . is no express grant to habeas corpus in the Constitution.” Strictly speaking he is correct in that it is not among the enumerated rights in the Constitution and is mentioned solely as a privilege. In Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution it states that “The privilege of the writ of the habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” In this context without quibbling over the similar denotations, there is a connotative difference between “rights” and “privileges” and it is expensive and dangerous to blur the distinction. A right is generally considered intrinsic and is withdrawn only in the most dire (real, not perceived) circumstances, a privilege is earned and granted by an authority and is properly more easily withdrawn. To be perfectly clear, according to our Constitution, a writ of Habeas Corpus is a privilege not a right.

Picture liberty as a bucket containing “rights” and “privileges” that have been hard-won in the evolution of the rule of law. The bucket sits on the three-legged government stool that represents our checks and balances. When war is invoked, the bucket is tipped by fearful leadership. “Privileges,” which are lighter flow out first. The more fear generated, the more intensely are privileges and then rights spilled out. For this reason, the evolution of Western political structure has formalized, clarified and restricted the basis and use of the word war. One must not use the word lightly, since in essentially all modern political systems, war is the one thing that surely tips the bucket.

Students of history realize that war is a powerful provocateur that can and has destroyed rational political structures. Hence its regular use by demagogues to tip the bucket and control individuals and a societies. This has drawn evolved cultures toward stricter definitions of war as a conflict between defined geopolitical entities or between parties within a nation (civil war). In our Constitution, the Executive gets to wage it, but the congress gets to declare it. Broken down further, the House of Representatives has to fund it and the Senate, although not explicit, needs to go along, usually considered as an extension of its role in treaties – advice and consent. Regardless, there must be general agreement of the Executive and the Congress for a war to proceed – and even this was insufficient to prevent subornation of war by a President and his cronies.

If the insurgents displace the former government, in a civil war, it becomes a revolutionary war (in retrospect), otherwise it becomes an insurrection footnote. By the way, does anyone remember if it was the English or the French who won our Civil War? If you answered neither, you win. No nation can win another nation’s civil war for them. Ground level involvement in someone else’s civil war has the same result as trying to separate fighting canines. The “peacemaker” more often than not ends up significantly wounded. Civil wars end when all factions save one are vanquished or the combatants get tired of fighting and dying – and are forced resort to compromise.

The Greek philosopher Demosthenes said “There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.” This was placed in a different context by the Irishman John Philpot Curran in 1790 and is generally paraphrased as “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” The essence of this vigilance is not over outside invaders so much as over those who govern who would tip the bucket of liberty for absolute ideology or to subjugate. The strategy is to dominate and to avert the gaze of the vigilant, the usual tactic is fear. Words do have meaning and the hyperbolic use of powerful words is the regular tool of the demagogue on a mission. War is not a word to be trivialized and we must remain vigilant in the classical sense. The three-legged stool that upholds liberty in our Constitution is easily tipped by imprudent use of this simple three-letter word. It is foolhardy, if not unconscionable to use this word loosely and without a firm understanding of the consequences of its use. Remember, a sword is just a sword . . . unless it’s Excaliber.