The next president of this country is going to have a hard enough time dealing with the bungled Iraq war.
It would be unfair, to say the least, if President Bush were to complicate matters further by making long-term promises and negotiating the installation of a permanent U.S. military base in Iraq in the waning months of his tenure.
Yet that seems to be the purpose of a signing statement the president issued this week after putting his signature to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008.
The crux of the matter is a proviso in the defense act in which Congress prohibits spending taxpayer money to put a permanent military base in Iraq. It was an effort by federal lawmakers to head off the commitments that Bush seems to be making that will long outlast his time in office.
It is among the sections of the bill that Bush, by issuing a signing statement, said he would not obey because it infringes on his presidential powers.
It has been widely reported that the Bush administration has been negotiating a long-term pact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that maps how the U.S. would be involved in Iraq, including keeping its government safe from internal and external threats.
Some in Congress and academia believe this meets the textbook definition of a treaty, and if it were one, Congress would have to approve such a pact.
The Bush administration has been forceful in its opinion that the agreement it is forging with Iraq is not a treaty, and therefore does not need to go to Congress.
Whether it technically is a treaty is an important issue, but not the only one. Bush has had nearly five years in pursuing his policies in Iraq. It has been a disaster. It’s time he stops creating messes that the next president, and ultimately the American people, will be responsible for cleaning up.
Beyond that injustice there also is the president’s continuing abuse of presidential signing statements.
President Bush has used them prolifically to say he doesn’t intend to comply with certain sections of bills that he believed to be unconstitutional.
The president justifies his actions by saying Congress cannot pass laws that infringe on the powers the Constitution gives to the executive branch. The trouble is, this administration has a rather expansive interpretation of executive power.
In the last month, Americans have demonstrated a considerable appetite for participating in caucuses and primaries in an effort to choose the next president. The presidential race involves a critical choice in light of many pressing issues, including the Iraq war, which has left many Americans disillusioned and angry.
The last thing this country needs is for the decisions of this administration to become an even heavier millstone around the neck of the next president.
