Posted on 06/11/2002 12:48:15 PM PDT by Lance Romance
House Democrats Sue President Bush Over Withdrawal From ABM Treaty
Published: Jun 11, 2002
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The United States officially leaves the treaty on Thursday, six months after Bush announced his intentions to do so. The Pentagon plans an earth-breaking ceremony on Saturday at Fort Greely, Alaska, to begin construction on the first portion of a new missile interceptor system.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the lead plaintiff, said the president does not have the authority to unilaterally withdraw from a treaty and should first seek the consent of Congress. "The Constitution of the United States is being demolished and we need to challenge that in court," he said.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also names Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell as defendants. The plaintiffs are all Democrats, except for one independent who usually votes with Democrats.
It states that while the Constitution is silent on the role of Congress in treaty terminations, treaties have the status of "supreme law of the land" equivalent to federal laws and that laws can be repealed only by an act of Congress.
"I am troubled that many in Congress appear willing to cede our constitutional responsibility on this matter to the executive branch," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. He tried unsuccessfully Monday to bring a resolution to the Senate floor stating that the president cannot withdraw from the treaty without Senate approval.
Kucinich last week tried to get the House to vote on a similar resolution, but House Republicans unanimously rejected a motion to bring the issue to a vote. GOP lawmakers generally support the administration's decision to withdraw from the treaty, which prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from building major missile defenses and has been an impediment to the administration's plans to move ahead with a missile defense system.
"This is so far out of touch," said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a longtime proponent of a missile defense system. "The end of the ABM treaty marks a significant milestone" enabling the Pentagon to adjust to post-Cold War changes and emerging threats, he said.
The lead lawyer for the House lawmakers, Peter Weiss, said they are asking the court for expedited treatment of their suit. But he said that even if the court does not act by the Thursday withdrawal date, a later decision agreeing that the president must first get congressional consent could be retroactive.
In House debate last week, Republicans argued that past presidents have terminated dozens of treaties without consulting Congress. Kucinich pointed to an 1835 House vote blocking President Jackson from pulling out of a treaty with France.
In 1979 the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., sued President Carter over his decision to terminate a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan when he established diplomatic relations with the Beijing government. The Supreme Court, without ruling on the constitutional issue, vacated or threw out an appeals court ruling in favor of Carter and ordered it sent back for reconsideration. Four of the justices said it was a political matter that should be decided between Congress and the president.
Where have I heard this name before. If this is how they plan to gain in the 2002 Congressional elections, it's as sad a Joey Lieberman's Enron hearings.
Don't these jackals have anything better to chew on, like an old water buffalo bone?
Maddy Albright is back in town?
Even if you agreed that the President cannot withdraw from a treaty without Senate approval, the lawsuit should still be thrown out. House Democrats have NO standing in the court. The lawsuit can only come from the Senate.
Nevertheless, the Senate would lose such a lawsuite also.
Eaxctly.
We (FREEPERs, in particular) are the only thing standing between the destruction of this country and these democRAT, liberal scumbags.
LIBERAL = COMMUNIST
There are a number of problems I have with this suit, but this is not one of them. There is a well-established doctrine in international law called "state succession" which keeps countries from getting out of treaties by changing their government. The US successfully used this doctrine to keep the USSR from getting out of treaties signed by Czarist Russia, and it is equally applicable now to bind Russia to treaties signed by the USSR.
International Meeting 2001 World Conference against A and H Bombs Peter Weiss President, International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms (IALANA)
I am sorry but I was not able to attend your meeting yesterday. I was at the IALANA board meeting discussing, among other things, how to support the growing number of non-violent direct action nuclear resisters who are trying to get courts in various countries to affirm the obvious illegality of the threat and use of nuclear weapons.
After the Indian nuclear test in 1998, XXX Roy, the Indian novelist, wrote a powerful pamphlet called "The End of Imagination". The title tells the whole story: "We have lost the capacity to imagine what a nuclear bombs would do to human beings, to the environment, to society.
All of us, that is, except those living in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Here, the air is still filled with memories of the horror of that August 6 morning, 56 years ago. Before it happened, no one could have imagined how awful it would be. After it happened, those who witnessed it tried to forget, but could not.
If we could today get people to imagine what another Hiroshima, not to mention a tenfold Hiroshima, would be like, we would build the antinuclear movement overnight into a force that could sweep away all nuclear weapons forever.
As it is, we must heed the call of another author; Jonathan Shell awoke the world to the reality of nuclear weapons some thirty years ago with his seminal book: "The Fate of the Earth". In 1999, he returned to the antinuclear theme with another book, "The Gift of Time". His thesis, this time, was that the end of the cold war had opened a window within which the elimination of nuclear weapons was possible, but that we must not squander this opportunity before time runs out again.
That is the challenge before us. We have President Bush to thank for putting the nuclear problem back on the front pages and the TV screens with his weird and incoherent plans for national and theater missile defense, NMD and TMD. We have only ourselves to blame if we do not seize this opportunity to complete our work.
On June 26 of this year, mayors of leading American cities signed a declaration calling on the U.S. government to take the lead in ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Their statement was subsequently endorsed by the entire Conference of U.S. Mayors.
Here is what we anti-nuclearists must do:
1. To mobilize world opinion to demand that the unanimous mandate of the International Court of Justice to pursue and bring to a conclusion negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament be complied with now, not at some indefinite time in the unforeseeable future
2. To get the world know that the 13 steps toward nuclear disarmament to which the nuclear weapon states agreed at the end of the NPT Conference last year are very far from being carried out
3. To join the Hague Appeal for Peace in getting the message of peace , which include nuclear abolition, into as many educational institutions as possible, through a program of comprehensive peace education, and
4. To alert the world to the imminent danger of the weaponization of space.
Let me leave you with these thoughts: The only deterrent worth supporting is that which will deter the nuclear weapon warriors from their mad drive toward world domination. The only workable missile defense is that which will turn missiles into scrap heaps of metal to be converted into tractors and toys. The only means at our disposal to accomplish these ends are public opinion and the force of law. Let us spare no effort in using both to the fullest. And, if I may make a suggestion to my Japanese friends, rather than rescind Article 9, Japan should take the lead in making Article 9 a universal principle for the entire world. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
War is not justified under international law
By Peter Weiss
Inter arma silent leges: When force speaks, the laws are silent. And the more brutal the force, the more complete the silence of law.
But even "a war to rid the world of evil," as President Bush calls it, should be subject to the laws of war.
According to Lassa Oppenheim, one of the giants of international law, "War is a contention between two or more states through their armed forces, for the purpose of overpowering each other, and imposing such conditions of peace as the victor pleases." A terrorist attack, no matter how heinous, committed by nonstate actors, is not an "act of war," except in a metaphorical sense. It therefore cannot justify a state resorting to war against another state in response to the attack, unless the other state's responsibility for the attack has been unambiguously established.
But no such responsibility has been definitively proven. Bush speaks of making war against countries that "support", "tolerate" or "harbor" terrorists. Saudi Arabia refuses to this day to extradite the 11 men indicted in the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers, in which 19 U.S. airmen were killed and 370 injured. Does this mean we will be at war with Saudi Arabia? A recent study by the Congressional Research Service alleges that Osama bin Laden's organization has bases or tentacles in 37 countries. Will we be at war with all of them?
The use of war terminology also has grave legal consequences.
At the level of international law, the proclamation of a state of emergency, which is normally less than a state of war, allows a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, such as the United States, to "derogate" from its obligations under the covenant in respect of several basic human rights, including freedom from forced labor, the right to bring habeas corpus proceedings, freedom of movement, equality before the law and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
A war naturally triggers the right of self-defense by any state affected. The Taliban has already prepared the Afghan people to fight a holy war against the United States. Every other state against which military action is taken by the global antiterrorist coalition will consider itself entitled to respond with armed force against any member of the coalition. The United States, with its far-flung global outposts and its long list of potential target states, is particularly vulnerable in this respect. Thus, conducting the impending antiterrorist operation under the banner of war perpetuates the cycle of violence.
Proceeding under a flag of war will also have, indeed has already had, grave consequences in terms of domestic constitutional law. While Bush has not formally invoked the War Powers Act -- presidents hardly ever do -- Congress has made it unnecessary for him to do so and has approved in advance the uncharted voyage on which he and the armed forces are about to embark.
While a few courageous members of Congress may be heard to say that the joint resolution they passed on Sept. 14 does not give the president a blank check for any type of military operation, it does in fact do so for at least 60 days and, judging from past experience, as well as the ambiguous language of the resolution, well beyond that time.
The saving grace of the resolution is that it is limited to the use of force against those nations, organizations or persons which the president "determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist acts that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001." Hence, it is not an authorization to use force for the extirpation of every kind of terrorism with a global reach, though that is what Bush is planning.
As always in times of national emergency, there will be restrictions on the civil liberties of the American people. Some may be justified but, if history is any guide, most will go beyond what is necessary. Freedom will be a casualty in this war waged in its name.
A crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions has been committed on our territory. The perpetrators of this crime, and those who may be planning similar atrocities, must be hunted down and brought to justice with every resource of the world community -- short of war.
To embark on such a course would compound the tragedy and give the bin Ladens and their ilk exactly what they want: a holy war, with vastly greater numbers of innocent victims than those who suffered horrible deaths on Sept. 11, and, if not the end of democracy as we know it, at least its diminution. We must not allow this to happen.
Peter Weiss is president of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (www.lcnp.org) and of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (www.ialna.org). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!
OOh boy!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!
They were assumed by Turkey.
Their conclusion:
"the Senate’s claim to a role in treaty termination is actually quite weak. The constitutional treatment of appointments shows that Senate participation in approving a presidential action does not imply Senate participation in undoing that action. And aside from the Senate’s role in approving the making of treaties, there is no constitutional language that, even by implication, could suggest any role for the Senate in terminating them.Finally, as a practical matter, this is not a radical assertion of presidential power. As noted, Presidents since George Washington have exercised substantial power in foreign affairs, controlling the diplomacy and foreign policy of the nation in an exercise of their executive power. In modern times, to cite two leading examples, Franklin Roosevelt terminated the Treaty of Friendship with Japan in 1939, in the course of the deteriorating relationship between the two countries that eventually lead to war, and President Carter terminated the mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1979, upon U.S. recognition of the Beijing government. As a result, President Bush’s constitutional power to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty should not be doubted. It is well within his power to implement treaties and exercise the executive’s power over foreign affairs.
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