The Imperial President

The Imperial President

When we think of imperialism we think of Japan, China, the old Soviet Union, and George Herbert Walker Bush. George Bush with the aid of a conservative supreme court notably, Clarence Thomas has taken the most radical stance, supporting the government’s right to detain even American citizens as enemy combatants without charges. John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general in Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel, who defends the president’s right to order torture if he deems it necessary for national security. By these two quotes I feel that it is no surprise that Bush is considered an imperial president overstepping congress and even his own laws…interpreting them and if not having the conservative supreme court on his side. The importance of this is the fact that Bush is exercising unchecked power and getting away with it because of his scare tattics in the name of “freedom” and the “rule of law”. Every major war, beginning with the Civil War, has engendered expansion of scope in the Federal government and greater concentration of powers that threaten individual rights. Citizens, unified by enemy threat, tolerate regulations and controls that would provoke revolt in peacetime which works to Bush’s advantage for his imperialistic goals.

George W. Bush assumed near-absolute power soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Bush led the "war on terror" abroad and championed both the USA Patriot Act and Homeland Security Department domestically. This led to the Bush Administration’s demand that presidential wartime powers permit the President to assume complete control over any and all aspects of an international war on terrorism such control included establishing military tribunals and eliminating basic rights long recognized under American law. Again Bush acted unilaterally expanding his power as he saw fit to achieve his goal with out any regard to any of the basic rights of men where as all people have whether or not that they are Americans. If he continues to act this way then what was the constitution and our founding fathers thinking when they wrote the system of checks and balances, it its more like King George then