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Neither consent nor dissent: Bush''s uncontested war.

Article Excerpt
AS PRESIDENT BUSH RUSHES HEADLONG INTO WAR with Iraq, there are endless reasons for concern; but the one that is most disturbing has been least remarked on. The president can be faulted for waiting so long to consult Congress, the United Nations, America's allies and the Middle Eastern nations likely to be affected (Jordan, Turkey, Iran). And he certainly can be faulted for rashness, impetuosity, arrogance and an impressive indifference to the rule of law--even if, in the end, he is compelled to play by the UN rules that, ironically, he himself invoked. But accountability is a two-way street, and Americans should be equally concerned with their--make that our--dramatic failure to register in politically relevant terms the unease (if polls are to be believed) that we putatively feel about an Iraq invasion.

A few passionate Democrats--Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, Paul Wellstone and John Kerry, and (finally!) Al Gore and Ted Kennedy--along with a handful of Republicans including Chuck Hagel and Dick Armey(!) have been audibly remonstrating with the administration. But the Democratic Party leadership has been working more to change the subject rather than to join the debate. More significantly, though there have been a few petitions and full-page ads, none of the national interest groups and social movements that might have an interest in slowing the rush to war has been heard from.

Where is the women's movement? Sitting out the debate because certain varieties of fundamentalist Islamics belittle women? And the unions? Angry with free-trade liberals and third-world sympathizers who disparage textile and steel subsidies and refuse to feel their pain at jobs hemorrhaging abroad? What about the civil-liberties lobby? More interested in protecting those rounded up without warrant in the war on terrorism than protecting us from an unwarranted war? And the Greens? Oblivious to the connection between the oil lobby and the war lobby? And, again, where is the leadership of the Democratic Party? Playing the same election politics it accuses George W. Bush of playing by mortgaging its civic conscience to a desperate gamble that if it can give Bush his war it can get Americans to focus on the economy again?

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE IS AN UNHAPPY CONVERGENCE of trends that...