Tag Archives: Congress

The tempting of George Bush

(Washington, D.C.): President George W. Bush has indisputably proven himself a world-class leader. For proof, one need look no further than the extraordinary progress he has made since Labor Day in moving the Nation and the world on the question of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Today, Mr. Bush is poised to receive overwhelming, bipartisan congressional approval for whatever actions he deems necessary to deal with Saddam. Such an accomplishment seemed unimaginable back in August when the Bush Administration seemed adrift as it was buffeted daily by Republican and Democratic critics. At this writing, the President is preparing further to consolidate his base of support by taking his case to the American people via a highly publicized speech in Cincinnati.

Temptation #1: Fuggedabout Regime Change

At this critical juncture, however, Mr. Bush is clearly being subjected to a potentially irresistible temptation: Abandon his commitment to regime change in order to translate his mandate from Congress into support from the “international community.” This would, he is being told, be expressed in a more-or-less satisfactory new UN Security Council resolution authorizing intrusive inspections finally to “disarm” Iraq.

Like most seductive propositions, this one would be so easy to agree to, yet so problematic once that has been done. For one thing, Mr. Bush may or may not get the Russians, Chinese and French (who, together with Great Britain and the United States wield vetoes in the Security Council) to go along with a new resolution to his liking. Certainly, they are more likely to do so if the toppling of their client, Saddam Hussein, is off the table. But even then, the past track record of such nations suggests that they will be working to help Saddam undermine the latest inspection regime, and get away with it, before the new resolution’s ink is dry.

While “W.” is clearly aware of this danger, he is probably being told by Secretary of State Colin Powell that a UN agreement can be achieved if only the President will permit him to finesse the regime change bit. In fact, Mr. Powell floated this as a trial balloon last week, suggesting that Saddam could stay in power if only this time he actually went along with being disarmed.

You can just hear the pitch to Mr. Bush: Security Council backing would give political cover to Saudi Arabia and other fair-weather friends, making possible the sort of grand coalition Mr. Bush’s father enjoyed at the time of Operation Desert Storm. It will be the world against Saddam, redux. And nattering left-wing congressional Democrats — and maybe even Al Gore — who say they are for ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction but are leery of trying to topple the man who has amassed them — would be silenced, if not actually brought on board.

It may even be that Mr. Powell is telling Bush #43 what he, among others, told Bush #41 eleven years ago: We do not have to worry about actually toppling Saddam; his hold on power will be mortally affected by the embarrassment he will suffer at UN hands. This time it will come in the form of intrusive inspectors, perhaps backed by armed multinational units with a mandate to go “anywhere, anytime.”

George W. Bush must not fall into the same trap that wrested defeat from the jaws of his father’s victory over Saddam in 1991. Unless the UN approves the one outcome that has any hope of actually disarming Iraq — regime change in Baghdad — a new inspections mandate will actually impede termination of Saddam’s WMD programs. Inspectors will, at best, buy the Iraqi despot more time to pursue his megalomaniacal agenda; at worst, they will become hostages and “human shields” against future U.S.-led military action. The latter danger may be alleviated by, as some are proposing, accompanying the inspectors with up to 50,000 heavily armed troops. If such units wind up having to fight, however, they and their charges may be badly bloodied before they can be reinforced or extracted, a la “Blackhawk Down.”

Even in that event, some may argue — as they did in 1991 — that the United States must refrain from removing Saddam Hussein from power since it has no UN mandate to do so. Absent such a mandate, we would be warned once again that the grand coalition would fall apart and the Arab “street” would rise up against so-called “moderate” governments in the region. We would be blamed for “aggression,” a crime the new International Criminal Court may try to prosecute.

Temptation #2: Saddam Lite’

There is another temptation to which Mr. Bush is clearly being subjected: We need not worry about the time-consuming, potentially costly and politically challenging business of liberating Iraq if Saddam is assassinated or exiled by one of his cronies. Unfortunately, replacing the devil we know with what is likely to be “Saddam Lite” will not ensure that the weapons program pursued by the ruling clique actually is terminated.

The Bottom Line

More importantly, succumbing to either of these temptations will forfeit the one thing that holds promise of ending the threat Iraq poses to its neighbors and the world: The prospect of freeing an Arab nation from tyranny. By sticking to real regime change as his central war aim, President Bush may have to reject the seductive promises of help, support and solidarity from unreliable quarters at home and abroad. But if he can bring about the genuine liberation of the Iraqi people, he will not only have given peace the best chance it may ever have in that region. He might also succeed in bringing the “blessings of liberty” to an Arab world that has never known them — and that will be transformed by them, as have others who have been so blessed.

The Case Against Saddam (IV): What International Community’?

(Washington, D.C.): Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer once again today displayed the strategic acumen, moral clarity and articulateness that on 5 September earned him the Center for Security Policy’s 2002 “Mightier Pen” Award. In an essay published in the Washington Post, Mr. Krauthammer illuminated the mendacity of the premise relied upon by many who argue that the United States must not act to counter the growing threat posed by Iraq unless the United Nations’ approves: There is no such thing as an “international community.”

Mr. Krauthammer starts by stripping away the preposterous notion that the UN General Assembly actually matters, let alone that its lynch-mob majorities reflect anything remotely akin to a higher moral authority. He makes a similar, and no less correct, assessment of the mostly tiny countries and in some cases (notably, Syria) downright problematic governments that currently cast votes in the Security Council as non-permanent members of that body.

What one is left with then, after counting Great Britain as with us, are three veto- wielding states who, Mr. Krauthammer correctly observes, will act in the UN as elsewhere to advance their own national interests. Nothing more, nothing less. To the extent that those interests diverge from Saddam Hussein’s, whom the French, Russian and Chinese governments have long regarded as a valued client, there may, repeat may, be a basis for concerted action by the United Nations. Our experience in the past, however, is not encouraging — in particular, these countries’ joint and several efforts over the last eleven years that have, in Mr. Krauthammer’s words, “been responsible for the hopelessly diluted and useless inspection regime that now exists.” Under no circumstances should their current self-interested posturing be confused with a legitimate claim to moral superiority, let alone authority to speak on behalf of the “international community.”

What is at stake in the present debate is not merely the future of the Democratic Party in the United States — whose sorry regression is pointedly addressed by Mr. Krauthammer’s comparison of President Kennedy forty years ago with his brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, today. Neither is what hangs in the balance confined to the question of whether Saddam Hussein will actually be disarmed in the only way that will prove effective — i.e., by the liberation of Iraq from his misrule.

Rather, we must reckon with the reality that nothing less than our sovereignty as a free, independent and powerful nation is risk. For far too long, the American people have been subjected to the creeping assertion by the “international community” of its authority over our ability to act in self-defense, to conduct our international and domestic trade and even to exercise certain rights guaranteed by our Constitution. This steady erosion of our sovereignty — which some have dubbed “post-Constitutionalism” — must be understood for what it is, and strenuously resisted by all those who, like Charles Krauthammer, cherish our freedoms and security.

The Myth Of ‘U.N. Support’

By Charles Krauthammer

The Washington Post, 4 October 2002

“This nation is prepared to present its case against the Soviet threat to peace, and our own proposals for a peaceful world, at any time and in any forum — in the Organization of American States, in the United Nations, or in any other meeting that could be useful — without limiting our freedom of action.”

— President John F. Kennedy, Cuban missile crisis, address to the nation, Oct. 22, 1962

“I’m waiting for the final recommendation of the Security Council before I’m going to say how I’m going to vote.”

— Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Iraq crisis, address to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Sept. 27, 2002

How far the Democrats have come. Forty years ago to the month, President Kennedy asserts his willingness to present his case to the United Nations, but also his determination not to allow the United Nations to constrain America’s freedom of action. Today his brother, a leader of the same party, awaits the guidance of the United Nations before he will declare himself on how America should respond to another nation threatening the United States with weapons of mass destruction.

Ted Kennedy is not alone. Much of the leadership of the Democratic Party is in the thrall of the United Nations. War and peace hang in the balance. The world waits to see what the American people, in Congress assembled, will say. These Democrats say: Wait, we must find out what the United Nations says first.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, would enshrine such lunacy in legislation, no less. He would not even authorize the use of force without prior U.N. approval. Why? What exactly does U.N. approval mean?

It cannot mean the U.N. General Assembly, which is an empty debating society. It means the Security Council. Now, the Security Council has five permanent members and 10 rotating members. Among the rotating members is Syria. How can any senator stand up and tell the American people that before deciding whether America goes to war against a rogue state such as Iraq, it needs to hear the “final recommendation” of Syria, a regime on the State Department’s official terrorist list?

Or maybe these senators are awaiting the wisdom of some of the other nonpermanent members. Cameroon? Mauritius? Guinea? Certainly Kennedy and Levin cannot be saying that we must not decide whether to go to war until we have heard the considered opinion of countries that none of their colleagues can find on a map.

Okay. So we are not talking about these dots on the map. We must be talking about the five permanent members. The United States is one. Another is Britain, which supports us. That leaves three. So when you hear senators grandly demand the support of the “international community,” this is what they mean: France, Russia and China.

As I recently asked in this space, by what logic does the blessing of these countries bestow moral legitimacy on American action? China’s leaders are the butchers of Tiananmen Square. France and Russia will decide the Iraq question based on the coldest calculation of their own national interest, meaning money and oil.

Everyone in the Senate wants a new and tough inspection regime in Iraq: anytime, anywhere, unannounced. Yet these three countries, whose approval the Democrats crave, are responsible for the hopelessly diluted and useless inspection regime that now exists.

They spent the 1990s doing everything they could to dismantle the Gulf War mandate to disarm Saddam Hussein. The Clinton administration helplessly acquiesced, finally approving a new Security Council resolution in 1999 that gave us the current toothless inspections regime. France, Russia and China, mind you, refused to support even that resolution; they all abstained because it did not make yet more concessions to Saddam Hussein.

After a decade of acting as Saddam Hussein’s lawyers on the Security Council, these countries are now to be the arbiters of America’s new and deadly serious effort to ensure Iraqi disarmament.

So insist leading Democrats. Why? It has no moral logic. It has no strategic logic. Forty years ago, we had a Democratic president who declared that he would not allow the United Nations or any others to tell the United States how it would defend itself. Would that JFK’s party had an ounce of his confidence in the wisdom and judgment of America, deciding its own fate by its own lights, regardless of the wishes of France.

Or Cameroon.

Return of the ‘San Francisco Democrats’

(Washington, D.C.): In 1984, Jeane Kirkpatrick gave expression to a feeling of revulsion experienced by many of her fellow “Reagan Democrats” about their political party. Reflecting on the locus of its national convention that year, she described the party’s dominant, liberal wing as “San Francisco Democrats” who were inclined to “blame America first.”

It took the Democratic Party eight more years to learn that most Americans found this coloration objectionable. The party only regained the White House when Bill Clinton and Al Gore ran as “New Democrats” on a platform that was consciously centrist and, in particular, sharply critical of the then-incumbent President, George H.W. Bush, for his handling of Saddam Hussein. Although the Clinton-Gore Administration’s foreign policy failed to deliver on the promised improvement over its predecessor’s, in succeeding years, Democratic leaders have by and large eschewed public embraces of the sorts of policies that drove Dr. Kirkpatrick and so many others to vote Republican.

The Week That Was

Until last week, that is. The Democratic Party’s apparent reversion to form began with a speech given by former Vice President Gore — delivered, appropriately, in San Francisco. As the crowd hummed “Hail to the Chief,” Mr. Gore denounced President Bush for dealing with what the one-time-Veep believes is a less-than-immediate threat from Saddam Hussein in an unduly hasty, unilateral and politicized fashion.

Al Gore’s sudden transformation from one of the few Democrats who bucked the San Francisco wing to vote for Desert Storm to their standard bearer vis a vis Iraq sent shock waves through his party’s political firmament. In short order, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle caved to pressure from liberals in his caucus opposed to quick and favorable action on a war resolution against Iraq. He took to the Senate floor to deliver one of the most emotionally overwrought political appearances since 1972 when Senator Ed Muskie — another darling of the Democratic left — destroyed his presidential candidacy by weeping while campaigning in New Hampshire. The Majority Leader joined Mr. Gore in questioning whether President Bush was politically manipulating and exploiting the issue of war with Iraq.

Not to be outdone, the senior congressional champion of the Democrats’ left-wing, Senator Ted Kennedy, took up the baton on Friday with a speech at Johns Hopkins University. Like Messrs. Gore and Daschle, the Massachusetts legislator wants it both ways, averring that Saddam is a menace, but declaring himself unpersuaded that the Iraqi despot is an imminent one. If the United States acts without the UN’s blessing and cooperation, he suggests, the world will be justified in joining the San Francisco Democrats in blaming America.

Then there was the spectacle of three Democratic Representatives assailing Mr. Bush from Baghdad via Sunday television programs and other media outlets. Exemplifying what can most charitably be called the naivete of their wing of the party, Reps. David Bonior, Jim McDermott and Mike Thompson are confident that this time Saddam will live up to his promises of access for inspectors, obviating the need — and foreclosing the opportunity — for U.S. military action any time soon. In a vintage display of blame-America-firstism, Rep. McDermott went so far as to declare: “I think the president would mislead the American people” about the justifications for going to war with Iraq.

What the Democrats’ Leftward Lurch Portends

Taken together, these bellwether events suggest that the long-dormant, but never extinguished, left-wing of the Democratic Party has decided to make its bid for renewed dominance in the shadow of the 2002 mid-term elections. Al Gore is evidently going to run for President in the months that follow by positioning himself to appeal not only to his audience last week in San Francisco but to the leftist peace activists, Council of Churches types and environmental extremists that Jeane Kirkpatrick associated with that city for all time. Other Democrats with national aspirations are clearly tempted to follow suit.

There are, of course, Democratic leaders who have, thus far, resisted this temptation. At this writing, their numbers would include: Joseph Lieberman, Zell Miller, John Breaux, John Edwards and Evan Bayh in the Senate and Dick Gephardt in the House. It remains to be seen whether their centrist views are the product of conviction, rather than calculation, and, if so, whether they will be punished for deviating from the party line the current San Francisco Democrats will try to enforce on Iraq — as Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson was for his apostasy on Vietnam a generation before.

Alternatively, maybe the majority of the Democratic Party will finally conclude that aligning themselves once again with the blame-America-first crowd is not only bad for the national interest but bad for the party’s bids to be entrusted with control of the Congress, let alone the White House.

The Bottom Line

Until the Democrats sort it out, President Bush would be wise not to make concessions to the San Francisco crowd — either in Washington or at the UN — in the hope of creating the appearance of broad bipartisan support. While such support would be nice to have, it must not be obtained at the expense of clarity of purpose, objectives and means on matters of war and peace.

Let the “Loyal Opposition” declare itself publicly on the need to deal swiftly and decisively with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Then let the chips fall where they may.

Will Bush ‘Go Wobbly’ by Accepting ‘Coercive Inspections’?

(Washington, D.C.): The TV networks’ Sunday talk shows — those closely monitored barometers of the latest shifts in Washington’s political and policy high-pressure fronts — suggest that, in the wake of President Bush’s sensational address to the United Nations last week, serious consideration is now being given to a truly hare-brained idea: Sending international inspectors back to Iraq accompanied by up to 50,000 heavily armed U.S. and other troops.

The notion is that these forces would permit so-called “coercive inspections” to be conducted. According to its proponents, if Saddam tried to play hide-and-seek with the UN, as he routinely did from 1991 to 1998, the military units assigned to the inspectors would wack him. Perhaps, we are told, they would respond by destroying the facility or palace to which the Iraqis were denying access; perhaps they would “coerce” better behavior by going after some other target of interest.

A Prescription for Disaster

It is not an accident that the advocates of coercive inspections are, by and large, people who have opposed Mr. Bush’s declared strategic objective of effecting regime change in Iraq — an objective that was actually first made U.S. policy in 1998 by Congress and then- President Clinton. Ironically, their proposal has most, if not all, of the down-sides of a military campaign with regime change as its goal, and none of the advantages.

For starters, if the United States forcibly inserts armed units into Iraq for the purpose of liberating the latter’s people, it will be able to tap into considerable support from the Iraqi citizenry. If, on the other hand, its forces enter under the UN banner, not to end Saddam’s tyranny, but in what will likely be seen by the locals — and certainly portrayed by the Iraqi dictator — as an unwarranted willingness to shoot up the place, the new inspectorate is likely to face open and perhaps life-threatening hostility from those we should be helping to free.

It does not take much imagination to see how this situation could deteriorate into one that would make “Blackhawk Down” look like the Somalis treated our GIs to a church social. The difference would be that — instead of facing AK-47s and anti-tank missile-wielding “technicals” in the hands of ill-trained ruffians — if we lack popular support in Iraq, Saddam could ensure that Baghdad and other targets for inspection bristle with skilled and disciplined irregulars armed with sufficient firepower to decimate the inspectors and their “coercive” companions.

Backing into an Invasion

Such attacks could, of course, provide the pretext for an international onslaught that would, at last, bring down Saddam Hussein. And, it is assumed, such a possibility will deter the Butcher of Baghdad from interfering with the inspectors — let alone allowing them to be shot at. If, however, this calculation turns out to be but the latest in a series of underestimations of Saddam’s capacity for psychopathic behavior, at the very least, large numbers of UN and other personnel may lose their lives. Even well-armed units in-country would find it difficult to defend themselves.

In such an event, the United States would likely be called upon to lead an invasion of Iraq for the purposes of rescuing American and other countries’ nationals effectively held hostage there. If so, our commanders would be obliged to conduct operations that will surely prove more complicated and, in all likelihood, considerably more costly than would be the case if President Bush were simply now to authorize them to liberate Iraq and, thereby, to secure the active support of the vast majority of the Iraqi people.

Doomed to Fail

The inadvisability of “coercive inspections” is only further underscored by the fact that, even if Saddam does not interfere with their conduct, the inspectors are unlikely to disarm Iraq. In the first place, given the four years (or more) that Saddam has had to squirrel away his weapons of mass destruction programs, absent his unimaginable cooperation, inspections will require impracticably comprehensive access, incredible forensic skill, breakthroughs made possible by defectors and considerable luck to get at what are sure to be widely dispersed, deeply buried and/or mobile WMD facilities.

At best, this will take time. Hans Blix, the current head of the UN’s inspection arm, has said he might be able to provide an idea about what Saddam Hussein has in the way of weapons of mass destruction within a year. In the meantime, the Iraqi despot may be able to achieve the nuclear wannabe’s brass ring: a functioning atomic or even thermonuclear device — thereby dramatically changing the complexion of the strategic threat posed to us and others by Saddam’s regime.

The final problem with the inspections approach — whether coercive or otherwise — is that, even if they could somehow be made completely effective and actually achieve Iraq’s complete disarmament, so long as Saddam remains in power, he will retain the know-how and trained personnel needed to reconstitute whatever chemical, biological and/or nuclear weapons program he desires. This may take no more than six months. But it could take considerably less time if the international community foolishly declares Iraq “disarmed,” ends sanctions and officially allows the resumption of unmonitored trade with Iraq.

The Bottom Line

For many years, the U.S. government has wisely resisted appeals for the creation of a UN army, or the permanent assignment to the United Nations of American forces for military operations. President Bush would be ill-advised to what would amount to a departure from this sensible policy, especially for a mission as poorly conceived and fraught with peril as “coercive inspections” in Iraq.

Fortunately, Mr. Bush appears to have appreciated that only after Saddam and his ruling clique have been removed from power and the Iraqi people liberated will we be able to ensure that “the world’s most dangerous weapons” are truly kept out of such malevolent hands. Yet, his under intensifying pressure to accept an alternative that is, despite its clear defects (or perhaps because of them), satisfactory to the UN and others opposed to regime change in Iraq. At such a moment the President would do well to recall what Margaret Thatcher once therapeutically told his father: “George, this is no time to go wobbly!'”

Beware ‘Leadership by Consensus’

(Washington, D.C.): There has been a subtle change in the unsolicited advice George W. Bush is receiving from prominent figures concerned that he is determined to lead the Nation to war against Iraq. The current fashion is to agree that Saddam Hussein’s misrule and his megalomaniacal pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should be ended. But only, Mr. Bush is now being told, if he can secure the permission of the so-called “international community,” or at least our key allies.

The Baker Gambit

This argument was framed most recently by yet another of Bush 43’s father’s officials, former Secretary of State James Baker, on the op.ed. page of last Sunday’s New York Times. Reduced to its essence, in that essay Mr. Baker recognizes that Saddam must go and that U.S. military action will be required to accomplish that goal. He insists, however, that the President first has to try to get a new UN Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to accept new inspections “anywhere, anytime” before he undertakes the liberation of the long-suffering Iraqi people.

This amounts to what Margaret Thatcher once famously derided (about the time she was warning Bush pre and his advisors against “going wobbly” over Iraq in 1990) as the impossibility of “leadership by consensus.” She recognized that, on matters of surpassing importance, the United States has to lead by providing direction and initiative, around which a broader or narrower consensus will ultimately form — not try to get everyone else to agree in advance to do what it believes must be done.

We know in advance that the Baker diplomatic gambit would be a fool’s errand, adding obstacles not clearing them away. Ever since the end of the Gulf War, the UN Security Council has been ever-less-willing to support intrusive inspections in Iraq. This was hardly surprising since at least three of the permanent, veto-wielding Council members (France, Russia and China) were anxious to curry favor with Saddam Hussein — especially if they could frustrate American policy in the process. Under present circumstances, an effort to secure from the UN what would amount to a casus belli with Iraq is more likely to produce further evidence of international opposition to U.S. action there, and intensify the multilateralists’ contention that we lack the authority to undertake such action.

Checking American Power

In truth, this is but the latest manifestation of a struggle that has been going on since the end of the Cold War. Foreign governments, particularly the unfriendly ones (which has in recent years included a number of our allies), have striven to establish via treaties, “international norms” and other devices means of constraining the American “hyperpower.” This sentiment enjoys considerable currency as well among the Vietnam generation of the U.S. security policy elite.

During the Bush 41 administration, when Mr. Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger were last in office, Washington frequently acceded to such pressure. Usually, it claimed that doing so was necessary to: fashion multinational coalitions (so as to prosecute Operation Desert Storm), maintain “stability” (for example, to preserve the “territorial integrity” of Yugoslavia) and advance fatuous arms control objectives (notably, “ridding the world of chemical weapons.”) The American foreign policy establishment embraced the idea that diminishing U.S. sovereignty in these and other ways was an unavoidable, if not actually a desirable, component of forging a “New World Order.”

During its eight years in office, the Clinton team greatly exacerbated this trend. It became practically axiomatic in the 1990s that the United States could not, and certainly should not, consider doing anything internationally without a UN mandate. A series of “global” agreements — governing everything from climate change to nuclear tests to war crimes — were consummated with active U.S. involvement and with manifest disregard for American sovereignty and constitutional processes. Over time, the Nation inexorably became hamstrung like Gulliver, both by myriad institutionalized constraints and obligations and by the logic that the United States was just another country, one whose vote and influence in multinational councils should count no more than any others’.

The Bush Doctrine

Since taking office, President Bush has confronted this syndrome time and again. To his great credit — and to the outraged howls of self-described “internationalists,” he has repeatedly acted to reassert our national sovereignty and to restore our ability to act unilaterally. He has renounced the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and “unsigned” the International Criminal Court treaty. He has also withdrawn the United States from the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty, clearing the way at last for the accelerated deployment of missile defense systems — including at sea, a highly promising option about which Mr. Bush was briefed last week in Crawford.

The party line from the foreign policy establishment types at home and abroad is that such behavior constitutes damnable “unilateralism.” The putative fear is that America will revert to isolationism. The real concern, however, is very different — namely, that the United States will appreciate that it is able to act alone where it must, and that it may just have the will to do so.

The Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that the world is a safer place, not only for American interests but for those of freedom-loving people elsewhere, when the United States has the military, economic and political power to engage unilaterally where necessary and is led by an individual who is willing competently to exercise such power. And, contrary to the critics’ assertions, when President Bush does that on behalf of the people of Iraq and our vital interest in putting Saddam Hussein and his WMD programs out of business, he will enjoy the support of the majority of Americans and the gratitude of untold millions elsewhere around the globe.

Time to Rethink Peacekeeping

(Washington, D.C.): Late last week, President Bush once again showed the stuff of which he is made. On the margins of his meeting with other G-8 leaders in Canada, Mr. Bush decided that the United States would exercise its Security Council veto to block UN peacekeeping mandates that failed to protect American forces from the predations of an unaccountable International Criminal Court (ICC). To the horror of the State Department, foreign diplomats and other ICC enthusiasts, the first such veto was cast on Sunday, blocking a six-month extension of the UN’s peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

Why We Need Relief

This step was made necessary since the International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over all military personnel and their civilian superiors — even those from states that are not party to the 2000 Treaty of Rome which established the ICC on July 1, 2002. Mr. Bush had previously made sure that the United States could not be considered a party to that treaty by renouncing his predecessor’s scurrilous decision to sign it at the last possible moment during the waning days of the Clinton Administration.

It turns out that “unsigning” the ICC treaty is not enough, however. Americans engaged in international peacekeeping operations must be assured that, in so doing, they are not losing rights assured under our Constitution (for example, the rights to due process, jury trials, confronting their accusers, etc.)

Commendable efforts in this regard are being made via domestic legislation by Congressional leaders like House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Sen. Jesse Helms, the chief sponsors of the American Servicemembers Protection Act (ASPA). ASPA would prohibit U.S. cooperation with the ICC. Still, in the absence of the sort of internationally agreed exemptions being sought by the Bush Administration, U.S. forces and officials participate in peacekeeping operations at their own peril.

The Larger Problem with Clinton-style Peacekeeping

Even if ways could be found and agreed upon to dispose of the menace posed by the International Criminal Court problem, there are a number of other, powerful arguments for reconsidering the Clinton practice of routinely assigning American personnel to international peacekeeping missions. Fortunately, these have just been helpfully dissected by one of the U.S. government’s most knowledgeable experts in the field: Fred Fleitz, a senior advisor to Under Secretary of State John Bolton.

In his new book, “Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests” (Praeger, 2002), Mr. Fleitz supplies a comprehensive and highly critical assessment of the Clinton legacy with respect to peacekeeping operations. The wellspring was the same misbegotten notion as underpinned Mr. Clinton’s support for the ICC: a deep distrust of American power and a conviction that only by subordinating it and putting it to the service of multilateral organizations and institutions could it be exercised safely.

Specifically, the Clinton team thought it was okay for the United States to engage in what Madeleine Albright once famously called “aggressive multilateralism,” code for defining U.S. interests as dictated by some international lowest-common-denominator. During a period when Mr. Fleitz’s duties required him to support peacekeeping operations, he had a unique opportunity to observe (usually with horror) as such notions were translated into policy — most especially in the form of President Clinton’s Presidential Decision Directive Number 25 (PDD-25).

The Clinton Legacy

From this mind set, as Mr. Fleitz ably chronicles, we saw a succession of U.S.-backed United Nations peacekeeping “fiascoes” in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, Angola, Cambodia, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Importantly, he recalls not only the flawed theoretical foundation of this policy but also the UN waste and corruption and the human costs that resulted from it.

In his book, Mr. Fleitz lucidly considers — and draws valuable lessons from — the following, among other debacles: How the failed UN mission in Bosnia led to genocide and peacekeepers being taken hostage by Bosnia Serbs to serve as “human shields”; how the predictable fiasco in Somalia and our cutting and running in its wake emboldened terrorists the world over; how the UN operation in Cambodia enabled a ruthless dictator, Hun Sen, to consolidate and retain power in Cambodia; how Mrs. Albright lied that the Clinton Administration was ignorant of genocide taking place in Rwanda and the steps that it took that actually had the effect of magnifying the scope of that genocide; and how the peacekeeping operation in Haiti collapsed, with the billions of dollars squandered on it principally benefitting Haitian President Jean-Bertrande Artistide and a handful of Clinton cronies who entered into corrupt investment deals with him.

The Bottom Line

Importantly, Mr. Fleitz offers the Bush Administration a blueprint for salvaging UN peacekeeping so as to maximize the chances that it will actually serve to advance the cause of peace in various conflicts around the world and be consistent with vital U.S. interests. It could prove highly useful to a President who wisely does not subscribe to the tenets of the failed Clinton PDD-25, but has yet fully to replace them with his own vision for limiting the use made of American troops in peacekeeping operations and safeguarding our personnel when they are so engaged.

The Senate Democrats’ True Colors on Defense

(Washington, D.C.): Since September 11th, some congressional Democrats have imitated chameleons, altering their observable ideological coloration for tactical political advantage. Like their reptilian counterparts, the motivation has been simple: Survival. The transparent calculation has been that if they marched in lock-step with a popular Republican President on national and homeland security matters, while highlighting disagreements over domestic policy, Democrats would get credit for bipartisanship while denying the GOP the benefits of its most potent wartime appeal.

Until now, the strategy has largely worked. Early on, President Bush showed his appreciation by publicly embracing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Democrats have approved nearly all of the funding sought by the Bush Administration for the war effort and for rebuilding/transforming the U.S. military. And, Democrats have assiduously sought to portray themselves as more committed to homeland defense even than Mr. Bush, championing for months the Cabinet-level agency reorganization he embraced two weeks ago and trying to add billions of dollars more than he deems needed for new spending in the name of protecting the Nation and its people here at home.

No Finessing the Missile Defense Issue

Within hours of this writing, however, Senate Democrats will be forced to show their true colors. Republicans are expected to offer a floor amendment to the Fiscal Year 2003 defense authorization bill (S.2514)1 that would undo the damage done last month at the instigation of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin to President Bush’s effort to protect the American homeland against ballistic missile attack — the one real and growing threat against which we are currently absolutely defenseless.

Specifically, over unified Republican opposition, Sen. Levin persuaded the Committee’s Democratic majority to cut $814 million — more than 10% of the total request for missile defense. The latter also imposed legislative language that will make it difficult, if not as a practical matter impossible, to use the money they did approve in such a way as actually to develop and deploy effective anti-missile systems. As one of Sen. Levin’s staffers recently boasted to a colleague, the objective is clear: “We killed Brilliant Pebbles [a promising, space-based missile defense program pursued by President Reagan]. Now we will kill this [one].”

Lest there be any doubt as to the effect of the Levin gambit, the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, warned that the bill now before the full Senate would “fundamentally undermine the Administration’s transformation of missile defense capabilities.”

The GOP amendment to restore full funding and strip out the hamstringing Levin language will offer Senate Democrats an opportunity to show what they are really made of. Are they as determined as President Bush and others in his party — if not more so — to secure our homeland against those who wish to do us harm? Or are they really most interested in protecting themselves politically?

Democrats cannot have it both ways. Either they are serious about affording the public and our country with the means to counter enemy attacks — whether undertaken with fuel trucks, ship-borne containers, commercial airliners, crop-dusters or missiles — or they are not. Their true colors will be apparent to all if their ideological opposition to missile defense is seen as trumping their purported commitment to defending the homeland.

Incredibly, the Levin gambit would also seriously interfere with the President’s efforts to provide protection to our troops overseas and allies — many of whom are currently under direct threat of missile attack. Before September 11, even Democrats who opposed anti-missile protection for the United States claimed that they strongly supported so-called “theater” missile defenses. So why would responsible members of the Democratic Party agree to legislation that would, in Gen. Kadish’s words, “eliminate the opportunity for the earliest possible contingency against medium-range ballistic missiles abroad”?

Enter Jacques Gansler

Some Democratic Senators may try to justify their vote for Sen. Levin’s position on the grounds that — now that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is no longer an impediment to development and deployment of effective missile defenses — they are worried that Gen. Kadish may use too streamlined an R&D, acquisition and management approach. How dare he use such time-tested business techniques as “spiral development” and “capabilities-based acquisition” to ensure that something actually comes from the billions spent on missile defense?

Before going with this particular color scheme, though, such legislators should be aware of a letter written to members of the Armed Services Committee on May 6, 2002 by President Clinton’s Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Jacques Gansler. In it he endorsed Gen. Kadish’s approach saying “To minimize risk (and cost) but have an early deployed deterrence, the use of spiral development and capability-based acquisition is definitely appropriate — from both a management and a military perspective.”

The Bottom Line

In short, Senators like Jean Carnahan, Zell Miller, Joseph Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Daniel Inouye and Fritz Hollings have a chance to demonstrate whether, for them at least, the pledge of bipartisanship in the face of a common and resourceful enemy and the profession of a shared commitment to do what we must to prevail in the war on terror is a subterfuge or the real thing.

For those of us whose fondly remember the courageous leadership within the Democratic Party on such matters of the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, we can only hope that his genuine commitment to bipartisanship in the service of the national security will be shown to live on in the hearts and minds of his counterparts in the Senate today. If not, they will hand Mr. Bush and others who share his determination to deploy missile defenses “as soon as possible” a winning issue for the elections ahead.







1 The results of this vote will appear in the Center for Security Policy’s soon-to-be-released National Security Scorecard.

The ‘Next War’: Will Carl Levin Be Allowed To Leave America Vulnerable To Missile Attack?

(Washington, D.C.): The baying of Congressional Democrats last week over unfounded allegations that President Bush “knew” beforehand about the September 11th attacks prompted, appropriately, a heated response from Administration figures. White House Press Spokesman Ari Fleischer, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, even the President himself took turns firing back.

These and other officials explained: the lack of “actionable” information; the reality that, without benefit of hindsight, it was very hard to “connect the dots” before 911; and the fact that the possibility of commercial aircraft being used as lethal missiles had been discussed since President Clinton was in office, but had not been recognized by either administration as an immediate danger.

Cheney’s Warning

The most effective riposte to date, however, came from Vice President Dick Cheney. Interestingly, it was not the Veep’s shot- across-the-bow to those he called “my Democratic friends” on Capitol Hill, whom he strongly discouraged from playing politics with these charges.

Rather, it took the form of a warning Mr. Cheney issued in the course of his appearances on Sunday television talk shows: Another al Qaeda attack against this country is “almost certain.” He cannot say when it will eventuate; “it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying.”

Every American, irrespective of party affiliation or political philosophy, is thus on notice: Notions that it is now safe to go back to business-as-usual partisanship on national security are premature and irresponsible. More to the point, Mr. Bush’s critics now have the sort of warning they claim to have wanted prior to September 11th.

The question then becomes: What form will the next attack take?

Rumsfeld’s Warning

There is a certain irony that many of those most critical of the military for focusing exclusively on the sorts of threats confronted in the “last war” are now studiously ignoring a next-war warning first sounded four years ago. It was issued by a bipartisan commission chaired by the man who is now the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Asked by Congress to assess the danger of ballistic missile attack on the United States, the blue-ribbon Rumsfeld Commission declared: “Sea-launch of shorter-range ballistic missiles…could enable a country to pose a direct territorial threat to the U.S. sooner than it could by waiting to develop an intercontinental-range ballistic missile for launch from its own territory. Sea-launching could also permit it to target a larger area of the U.S. than would a missile fired from its home territory.”

This theoretical possibility becomes palpably real when one considers that, according to a recent U.N. assessment, the Taliban had roughly 100 Scud shorter-range ballistic missiles. Al Qaeda is believed to own ships; certainly most terrorist-sponsoring nations do. In fact, there are an estimated 25,000 vessels at sea on any given day, the majority of them flying flags of convenience. For the most part, our wildly overtaxed Coast Guard has no clue what even those ships in or near U.S. waters contain, where they are headed and who are their crew. Sailing 100 miles off our shores, a ship capable of launching one of these Scud-type missile could range most of the Nation’s largest population centers.

Senator Levin’s Skulduggery

Unfortunately, should the next al Qaeda attack involve such a missile being fired at us “tomorrow” or “next week,” there is nothing in place to stop it. It will, all other things being equal, reach its destination with devastating effect. Worse yet, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee — whose colleagues have so recently assailed President Bush for not acting on warnings he had received prior to September 11th — have recently decided to hamstring Mr. Bush’s ability to address the missile threat. They propose to cut funds sought by the President and Secretary Rumsfeld to build missile defenses by roughly $800 million and introduced new bureaucratic impediments to swift acquisition of such defenses.

This proposal is the handiwork of Committee chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. He induced even colleagues who have long been supporters of missile defense, like Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, to go along, apparently by brazenly transferring missile defense monies to ship-building and other member-directed priorities. As a result, the Levin proposal was adopted by the Committee on a straight party-line vote — even though it cut funds from air-, sea- and land-based programs that have long enjoyed the support of legislators like Max Cleland of Georgia and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

In fact, Sen. Reed declared in a speech at a National Defense University breakfast on May 25, 2001 that: “We are pursuing Theater Missile Defense programs…such as [the Patriot] PAC-3, THAAD, Navy Area Defense, Navy Theater Wide and Airborne Laser. Those are systems we should really put some energy and resources behind, even more so than we are doing today.” Instead, the defense authorization bill the Senate will soon consider — perhaps before adjourning for the Memorial Day recess — inflicts deep cuts in many of these and other programs that could produce near-term contingency deployment options, leaving us defenseless even if a missile attack by al Qaeda or from some other quarter comes a year from now.

Bottom Line

On Thursday, President Bush told Senators he would veto the defense authorization bill if it included the $450 million he had requested just last January for the Crusader artillery program, before it was cancelled by Secretary Rumsfeld. The least he can do is inform legislators that this bill will meet a similar fate if does not provide the full and unencumbered $7.6 billion he believes is necessary to defend against what may prove to be the next, incoming terrorist attack.

Veto Bait: Levin Efforts to Replace Treaty -Based Impediments to Missile Defense with Legislative Ones Must Be Thwarted

(Washington, D.C.): On June 14th, the United States will complete its withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, clearing the way for the expeditious development and deployment of effective U.S. missile defense systems. Unless, that is, Sen. Carl Levin and a few other congressional Democrats have their way.

The problem arises from the fact that Senator Levin is no longer simply one of the most liberal defense critics in his caucus. Today, he happens also to be the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mark-Up’

Each spring, that committee and its House counterpart go through what is called the “mark-up” of legislation that authorizes appropriations for the Pentagon during the next fiscal year. Even during peacetime, the defense authorization bills that emerge from the Congress (usually late in the year) largely reflect the President’s request and priorities. This is even more true during wartime periods, such as that in which we have found ourselves since September 11.

And so it was last year, when Sen. Levin initially sought to cut over $1 billion from the budget George W. Bush had proposed to ready for deployment of a limited national missile defense. The Senator seemed determined to do so, even after the attacks of 9/11 validated the central point of Mr. Bush’s argument for such a defense: There are people in the world determined to kill a great many Americans. Some of them are getting their hands on weapons (whether designed for the purpose or otherwise) capable of destroying thousands of us at a time — including the most efficient means of doing that, ballistic missiles equipped with weapons of mass destruction. It is, therefore, a matter of time before we are at the receiving end of such a deadly attack.

As an ideologically committed opponent of missile defense, Carl Levin remained unpersuaded by this logic. The Senator nonetheless appreciated that he would have been soundly defeated had he brought to the Senate floor a bill mandating such deep cuts and chose to fight another day over funding for missile defense.

Death by Legislative Red Tape

In the same way, and for the same pragmatic political reasons, a still-more-insidious Levin initiative died aborning after September 11th: The Armed Services Committee’s chairman decided not to pursue a plan to impose — via new legislative language — impediments calculated to preclude near-term deployments of effective anti-missile systems.

If President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld do not act quickly and decisively, however, such obstructionism may yet emerge from the Committee mark-up Sen. Levin will conduct over the next few days.

For example, Senator Levin has suggested that each of the armed services be required to certify that expenditures by the Pentagon’s independent Missile Defense Agency enjoy their full support and are more important than their own, individual priorities. This transparent divide-and-conquer stratagem would directly, and perhaps mortally, erode the Secretary of Defense’s ability to establish and execute programs for the Defense Department as a whole.

Chairman Levin has also expressed an interest in denying President Bush the ability to streamline and greatly accelerate the development and acquisition of missile defenses. Toward this end, he would like to subject this priority effort to the same unbelievably sclerotic bureaucratic arrangements — featuring numerous, ponderous program reviews known as “milestones” — that typically keep new weapon systems from coming on line in less than twelve-to-fifteen years.

Even more obnoxious is Sen. Levin’s reported interest in requiring the Pentagon to get prior congressional approval before missile defense programs are allowed to undergo such “milestone” reviews. Then, after defense officials have performed their review, he thinks Congress ought to have the right to second-guess the department’s decision.

The Bottom Line

Such micro-management is a sure-fire way to prevent anything useful from coming out of the billions of dollars President Bush is allocating to end our increasingly dangerous vulnerability to missile attack. It would also go a long ways towards frustrating the intended effect of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. The combined impact would be to position Senator Levin and others on the Left to rail disingenuously in the future as they have in the past — namely, that there is not much to show for the money spent on missile defense, that the technology is not ready to deploy, that the costs and risks of doing so are too great, etc., etc.

Since President Bush came to office, he has exhibited impressive steadfastness and the courage of his convictions with respect to missile defense. He made the case for getting out of the ABM Treaty. He worked skillfully to create conditions that all but eliminated any international turmoil when last December he actually exercised the United States’ right to do so. And he has wisely rejected appeals from the Russians and the American Left to enter into a new agreement with the Kremlin aimed at limiting missile defenses in some fashion.

The historic and strategic significance of all of this may be substantially eroded, however, if he were now to allow determined congressional opponents like Carl Levin to strangle the missile defense program in unwarranted, counterproductive and politically/ideologically motivated red tape. To avoid this, Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld should put the Congress on notice forthwith: Any effort to continue the garrotting effect of the restrictive ABM Treaty via legislatively mandated congressional micro-management will precipitate a presidential veto of the defense authorization bill.

House Armed Services Committee Needs to Restore, Strengthen Pentagon Role in Critical Export Control Decisions

(Washington, D.C.): Late today, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is expected to consider an amendment offered by its chairman, Rep. Bob Stump (R-AZ) to make vitally needed changes to H.R. 2581, the Export Administration Act of 2001. The Committee must adopt the “comprehensive manager’s amendment” Chairman Stump has drawn up if Congress is to avoid making the fight against international proliferation and the effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems even more problematic than it has already become.

Specifically, the Stump Amendment will ensure that the Department of Defense and the President of the United States have the necessary and direct responsibility concerning transfers of sensitive dual-use technologies — not just the Commerce Department, which has hardly ever seen a proposed export that it considered to be too dangerous to U.S. security interests to approve.

Highlights of the Stump Amendment

In a 4 March letter to his HASC colleagues, Rep. Stump illuminated the key “fixes” his amendment will effect. It would:

  • Preserve the Military Critical Technologies List (MCTL) created by the original 1979 EAA and charge the Secretary of Defense with responsibility for this list. In addition, improvements would be mandated to DoD’s management of the MCTL.

    • The MCTL is a list of dual-use technologies vital, as the name suggests, to the U.S. maintaining the military superiority and “qualitative edge” upon which America’s security depends. Such items include: low-observable technologies and jet engine “hot sections.” Under the proposed Amendment, items on the MCTL could not be licensed for export without the approval of the Secretary of Defense, and only the SecDef could add or remove items from the list. What is more, only the President would have the authority to overrule a decision by the Defense Secretary. Neither the Senate version of the EAA (S. 149) nor the version drafted by the House International Relations Committee (H.R. 2581) of the bill reauthorizes the MCTL.

  • Enhance the Secretary of Defense’s role in export license approval. Under existing law, the Departments of State, Commerce and Defense grant militarily sensitive licenses in consultation, but the Pentagon is not allowed to exercise a veto over dual-use exports it deems harmful to the national security. This Amendment would require unanimous approval of the three agencies, preserving DOD’s prerogative to raise objections on national security grounds. In those presumably relatively rare instances were the relevant Cabinet officers simply cannot resolve their disagreement, the matter would be presented to the President for his decision.
  • Afford the Secretary of Defense a role in determining which countries should be deemed eligible for certain exports and which items could contribute to the military or terrorism potential of a state-sponsor of terrorism.

    The amendment alters the Secretary of Commerce’s basic authority over national security controls in Section 201 to require the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense on such matters, rather than simply his consultation. In addition, it prohibits the President from delegating his authority for assigning countries to export tiers.

In addition, the Stump Amendment deals with a variety of computer- and satellite-related and foreign-availability issues, as well as the establishment of a notification requirement to Congress of changes in the National Security Control List before those changes are implemented.

What is more, it would equip the legislative branch with the information it requires to evaluate such changes: “Under this provision, the chairman or ranking member of the Armed Services Committee (and other committees) would have the right to require a detailed report by the Secretary of Commerce on the proposed change and the justifications for it, along with the Secretary of Defense’s national security assessment, before the change is implemented.”

As Rep. Stump put it in an explanatory summary of his amendment: “In addition to mandating a notification and report requirement for the Congress, the intent of this provision is to require the executive branch to do its homework and have a full understanding of the national security impact of changes in the export status of the item before it is decontrolled….”

How We Got Into this Fix

Ever since the Export Administration Act expired in 1994, there have been repeated efforts to reauthorize it in ways that would seriously weaken the Nation’s national security export control regime in deference to companies anxious to sell their wares to foreign customers. Fortunately, these legislative efforts have heretofore come to naught and the original EAA was simply extended on an annual basis. During President Clinton’s tenure, however, the Administration did immense harm by engaging in successive decontrol initiatives on its own authority. Particularly reprehensible was Mr. Clinton’s deliberate take-down of the only multilateral export control mechanism with teeth: the invaluable Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM).

The war on terrorism has made manifest the need for something more than the interim — and minimalist — licensing and review of controllable items currently administered under the authority of the International Economic Powers Act (IEPA). Even before September 11th, this reality was obvious to many. For example, a study of U.S. exports to the People’s Republic of China undertaken by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Proliferation in 1999 disclosed that between 1988 and 1998, “the U.S. Commerce Department approved more than $15 billion worth of strategically sensitive U.S. exports to the People’s Republic of China.”

Things went from bad to worse when President Clinton signed Executive Order 12981 on December 6, 1995. This directive required the Departments of Defense and State, as well as such entities as the National Laboratories, to provide the Secretary of Commerce with a recommendation to approve or deny a license application within 30 days. As a practical matter, rigorous national security reviews of sensitive dual-use technologies often cannot be performed in so short a period of time. Under the Clinton approach, rather than ensure the risks were really understood and avoided where necessary, when the clock ran out, the export license would generally be approved.

The Bottom Line

There is a real — and growing — cost to the U.S. military that is incurred as the qualitative edge upon which it relies is steadily eroded through ill-considered technology transfers. This is especially true in the area of asymmetric warfare, whereby potential enemies acquire hardware and capabilities aimed at defeating, not trying to match, our armed forces’ considerable conventional strengths.

In this connection, it is instructive to recall the impact of Toshiba’s sale of advanced machine tools to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. For a few tens of millions of dollars, the Japanese company and its Norwegian partners gave the Kremlin the capability to reduce dramatically the noise signature of its submarine force. This had the effect of degrading the U.S. Navy’s acoustic anti-submarine warfare capabilities to an extent that the Reagan Pentagon estimated would take over a billion dollars to restore to pre-sale levels.

Needless to say, it is the height of folly in wartime to exclude the Defense Department from deliberations that can result in similar erosion — if not even more egregious degradation — in our qualitative edge. This is especially true if no effort is made to compensate the armed forces for additional costs associated with ill-advised exports of sensitive dual-use technologies. Now more than ever, it should be apparent to every sentient Member of Congress that the Nation literally cannot afford to have export control decisions made exclusively on the basis of the parochial interest of the affected American companies and at the sole discretion of their representatives in the Department of Commerce.

Favorable HASC action on the Stump Amendment, and subsequently that by the full House, will be a litmus test of the Congress’ seriousness about the war on terror.