The Coming War with Iran (Part One): Consequences

By now everyone knows that President Cheney-Bush is preparing to attack Iran. Aside from the fact that Iran poses no threat to the U.S.; aside from the fact that nuclear experts worldwide are agreed that Iran is approximately ten years or more away from developing a nuclear weapon, if that is their goal; aside from the fact that Iran is permitted to engage in plutonium enrichment for nuclear power purposes under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty; and aside from the fact that no one in the Bush White House or anywhere else has presented one shred of indubitable evidence that Iran is either fighting in the Iraq war or is attempting to build a nuclear weapon, an attack on Iran would be a gross violation of International Law and all ethical and legal codes concerning war.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Coming War with Iran (Part One): Consequences

Right click here to download The Coming War with Iran (Part One): Consequences

The Coming War with Iran (Part II): Ethical Norms Concerning Attack

As we established last week, no one today doubts that Vice President Cheney and his sidekick President Bush salivate when they think of bombing Iran before they leave office. The only questions concern how we will convince those who undoubtedly will come to support it to join us to stop it. When it comes to discussing a U.S. invasion of Iran or other Mideast countries, it is important to come to an understanding of the principles that underlie both domestic and international laws of war, as well as military training manuals. These principles have an extended history, are universal and widely used. The laws of war and military manuals are instantiations of these principles.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Coming War with Iran (Part II): Ethical Norms Concerning Attack

Right click here to download The Coming War with Iran (Part II): Ethical Norms Concerning Attack

The Coming War with Iran (Part III): International Law

Last week, we performed an ethical analysis on President Bush-Cheney’s planned attack on Iraq. However, I readily acknowledge that persons are so naïve as to believe that an appeal to moral principles is sufficient for a critique of the Bush administration’s unwarranted and dangerous military actions in the Mideast. However, a population of U.S. citizens who know the ethics and the laws of war and who demand that Bush and Cheney stand down when it comes to Iran, at the cost of the Republican party being thrown out of power in all branches of American government, might be more of a deterrent than appealing to their (lack of) consciences and lack of living by the rule of law. It is the rule of law that we appeal to in this commentary in order to help consolidate that anti-war population.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Coming War with Iran (Part III): International Law

Right click here to download The Coming War with Iran (Part III): International Law

The Democrats' War Investments

In a recent article written by Abid Aslam, a reporter for the Inter Press Service, it was reported-and, of course, ignored by corporate media-that The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group, reported that members of the Democratically-controlled Congress invested just under 200 million dollars in companies that provide military equipment and services to the U.S. armed forces. Maybe we should start studying our Karl Marx again, for Marx warned us that when business money unites with government, no democracy is possible.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Democrats' War Investments

Right click here to download The Democrats' War Investments

We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part I of III)

Now that the hoopla and liberal condemnation of the Iraq war from the fifth anniversary of the invasion has subsided, perhaps it would be a good time for some sober analysis of the decision to invade Iraq. The purpose will be to show that the reasons used by those who supported the invasion were vacuous even at the time they were used. I will choose some of the prominent media voices who were pushing for the invasion in 2003. They are to be taken to task for their lack of reasoning and ethical shortsightedness.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part I of III)

Right click here to download We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part I of III)

We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part II of III)

Last week we examined the arguments favoring the Iraq invasion from frequent New York Times contributor, Sidney Pollack. Not to be outdone, Christopher Hitchens, frequent contributor to Salon.com, adds his own evidence to the justice of the cause of going to war with Iraq. Assuming the veracity of his evidence, it is still not enough to make the case for invasion of another country when the United States is not directly or imminently threatened.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part II of III)

Right click here to download We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part II of III)

We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part III of III)

For the last two weeks, we have commemorated the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by analyzing the arguments of the main proponents of the invasion. We have found that their arguments were filled with factual errors, logical inconsistencies, and significant ethical lapses. So let us draw some final conclusions concerning the arguments of those who supported the war.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part III of III)

Right click here to download We Won’t Get Fooled Again! (Part III of III)

What True Patriots Fight and Die For

For what issue might you risk your comfort? For what cause might you put your freedom and even your existence on the line? Many people would say "for my country." "Country" presupposes a constitution, and there are normative principles that underlie every constitution and are instantiated by that constitution. It is those principles that unite us as a people. Therefore, it is those principles that are worth fighting and dying for. It is allegiance to those principles that make for a true patriot.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
What True Patriots Fight and Die For

Right click here to download What True Patriots Fight and Die For

What Should be the President's Emergency Powers?

For the past two weeks, we have been discussing the emergency powers President Bush granted himself in his Presidential Directive called NSPD-51. Today, I would like to conclude that discussion by asking this question: What should be the President's emergency powers? Should we entitle the President to take over all decision-making processes in the event of a national emergency? This affirmative answer to this question is in fact the position of the ultra conservative judicial theory espoused by the Federalist Society and by Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas. While this describes some of the evidence that underlies conservative judicial philosophy, there is far more and far weightier evidence in these very same thinkers and documents to allow us to discount this position as an extreme one.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
What Should be the President's Emergency Powers?

Right click here to download What Should be the President's Emergency Powers?

The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part Two)

Last week we began our analysis of President Bush's Directive NSPD-51, in which he gives himself unprecedented Executive powers should he declare that the United States has experienced a "catastrophic emergency." Specifically, one must pay careful attention to two words he uses in this order: the words "coordinate" and "comity." Unless we wake up and see the President's power grabbing for what it is, the next national emergency could result in something we would not recognize as a democracy.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part Two)

Right click here to download The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part Two)

The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part One)

On May 4 of last year, President Bush penned, signed, and released without press conference or even a public comment, an Executive Order that could allow him to claim vast, unprecedented Executive powers, should a "catastrophic emergency" hit the U.S. The power that is left for the Congress and the Judiciary during an emergency as declared by the President under NSPD-51, is called by this order, "comity." Bush's definition of "comity" is one in which even the Congress is to be kept in the dark about presidential power grabs, and is not permitted to even know what its powers are during a national emergency. We need to examine the significant constitutional boundaries that are pushed by Bush's order.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part One)

Right click here to download The Latest Presidential Power Play (Part One)

Corporate Personhood

Do you think that corporations are persons? For more than 100 years after our constitutional democracy began, the right to free speech was said to be exercised by its citizens. There was not even a thought of extending that freedom to anomalous entities called "corporations" until 1886. Today we are seeing the fruits of the Supreme Court ruling that granted corporations personhood, in the claim by major pharmaceutical companies that their alleged First Amendment rights are immune from government regulation.

Click here for Dr. Abele's commentary on
Corporate Personhood

Right click here to download Corporate Personhood