Back in 2000, George Bush made this famous quote:
If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.
Michael Goldfarb The Weekly Standard apparently agrees with him:
Pam Hess, the UPI reporter who gave us this extremely moving and persuasive glimpse of the liberal case for the war in Iraq, asked if timetables for withdrawal “somehow infringe on the president’s powers as commander in chief?” Mitchell’s less than persuasive answer: “Congress is a coequal branch of government…the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government.”
True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.
How ironic that one of the justification for invading Iraq and destroying it was to get rid of a dictator?
Glenn Greenwald sums it up perfectly on his blog.
So apparently, the American Founders risked their lives and fortunes in order to wage war against Great Britain and declare independence from the King — all in order to vest “near dictatorial power” in the American President in all matters of foreign policy and national security. And, of course, for the Michael Goldfarbs of the world, “war” and “national security” — and the “near dictatorial power” vested in the President in those areas — now encompasses virtually every government action, since scary and dangerous Muslims are lurking everywhere, on every corner, and the entire world is one big “battlefield” in the “War on Terrorism,” including U.S. soil.