May 5, 1999

Gun Shy

As the gunfire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, continued to echo, many conservatives kept on taking potshots at what they dub the "culture of death." The COD covers a lot of territory: the video game Doom, shoot-'em-up movies, abortion, Jack Kevorkian, demonic shock rock... you know the drill. Dan Quayle, who was ghoulishly sound-biting against gun control before the blood was dried, has been repeating the mantra, "it's not guns, it's values." Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's number-two, railed against a moral breakdown in society and placed a bull's eye on the violence-obsessed entertainment industry.

The attack on the entertainment industry and the Internet is a bipartisan affair, with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and other V-chip Democrats calling for a forceful policing of the culture in addition to more extensive gun control. But the "culture of death" remains the rhetorical property of the right. To the anti-CODers, the sweep of the "culture of death" may seem damned (literally) large, but they have defined it narrowly. How many of the rightwing critics of horrific, blood-drenched video games also oppose the death penalty? (And toss Clinton and Gore into this category.) Which conservatives who attack gun-filled movies (without attacking GOP action heroes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis) also raise questions about the bombing raids in Iraq? Did the Republicans who now call for Marilyn Manson's head object to the Reagan Administration's coziness with death squads in El Salvador, the murderous Argentina junta, and Panamanian strongman and killer Manuel Noriega? How many of the decriers of the "culture of death" oppose the ongoing NATO air strikes because they validate violence as a legitimate tool for resolving disputes? Does Gary Bauer, Patrick Buchanan, and Jerry Falwell speak out as loudly against US weapon sales to non-democratic governments across the globe as they do against images on celluloid?

There are messages in movies. Only a fool would argue that violent movies and computer games have no impact on those who absorb their images. After I watched Natural Born Killers at one of the two big screens remaining in Washington, I burst out of the theater, pumped up with anxious energy, and wanted to kick ass and destroy property. You cannot watch a thirteen-year-old yelping with delight as he causes video-game carnage and not wonder how such play affects his psyche. But there are messages in real life as well. More importantly, there are examples. Politicians who call for executing criminal scum signal that it is proper to blow away people deemed a threat. Genocide in Rwanda happens, and we watch it on television, as our leaders do nothing -- a declaration that those lives are not worth the effort. The Republican Party, for one, does not cherish life above all else. It pockets millions of dollars each year from the tobacco industry, money from profits accrued by seductively marketing a life-threatening product.

Most amusing -- in sad fashion -- was LaPierre's attack on Hollywood's fixation on violence. This remark came from a fellow who leads a constituency enamored with guns. So obsessed are they that the NRA opposed a ban on designed-for-massacres assault weapons and cop-killer bullets. Guns and violence are not one and the same, but there does exist a gun culture, which encourages a fascination with weapons. (When I used to read Soldier of Fortune magazine for insights into the secret wars of the Reagan Administration -- hey, loose-lip mercenaries like to brag of their adventures -- I often saw ads featuring curvaceous babes, barely attired, toting the hottest firearms.) In his book, Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America, Tom Diaz, a former NRA member and competitive shooter who became a gun control activist, shows that the gun industry in recent years responded to flat sales by producing increasingly deadly guns. But the gun culture -- centered on a device that enables lethal violence -- is not part of the right's "culture of death."

The conservative-values posse blasts Manson for enticing teens into darkness. The NRA recruits as well for its gun-centric world. It aims quite young. At a 1998 convention, a gun enthusiast could buy NRA baby bibs and infant wear and children's products featuring Eddie Eagle, the group's mascot. (Think of a Joe Camel who is packing.) According to a study produced by the Violence Policy Center, which advocates gun control, the NRA in 1997 announced a $100 million campaign to reach children, and its youth magazine, InSights routinely contains ads for firearms with violent-sounding names, such as the Savage Arms Predator, a combination rifle/shotgun. Two of the four guns used by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were Savage shotguns.

There is an obsession with guns in the United States not found in other Western nations. There is a high rate of gun violence in the United States not found in other Western nations. But the foes of the "culture of death" do not criticize the gun culture. For good cause: it was with the support of gun aficionados, who were enraged by Clinton's gun-control efforts, that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 elections.

Hastily last week, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Denny Hastert, aping Clinton, called for a national dialogue on "youth and culture," and a GOP aide said the Republicans "hoped to make the point that gun control legislation isn't automatically the answer." This aide is correct in that gun control is not the only answer. Gun control laws, which are necessary, will not counter the causes of violence -- which means that Quayle, too, is right... in a sense. It is values. But what values? Where is the attack on the real-life glorification of guns and on the values of violence presented not on movie screens but during television news shows? Quayle and his gun-stroking comrades would rather focus on the imaginary than the actual. Perhaps it's an easier target for them to hit.

Missing In Action

On a true life-and-death matter, Congress last week demonstrated a lack of seriousness. During one stretch of debate, the GOP-led House voted not to declare war on Yugoslavia, not to terminate the bombing, not to permit President Clinton to introduce ground troops without congressional authority, and not to approve the bombing campaign. So what then does the House stand for? Go figure. The votes were forced by Representative Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican from California who believes Congress should not shirk its constitutional duty to decide whether war should be waged, but the Republican leadership did not want to put their party on the line. The GOP would not denounce the bombing or support the air strikes. Its bottom line: when it's ground troops time, we'll come up with a position -- until then, don't bother us.

While the Republicans ducked, the Democrats covered. Led by minority leader Dick Gephardt, the Democrats pushed a measure that backed the bombing campaign, trying to come to Clinton's rescue. They failed on a tied vote, 213 to 213. Nearly nine out of ten Democrats voted for the legislation; only 31 Republicans sided with them. When the Republicans offered the bill requiring congressional approval for the use of ground troops, eight of ten Democrats voted nay. So once the fog cleared -- partially, that is -- the lines were drawn: the Republicans, who don't mind an unauthorized bombing campaign, do not want Clinton to go further without their permission, and the Democrats, with the exception of a couple dozen progressives (who are becoming increasingly skeptical about this military intervention) and a few isolation-inclined conservatives, are willing to let Clinton run this little war as he fancies.

An intriguing constitutional brouha, ha is shaping up. Under the War Powers Resolution, the President has 60 days from when he deploys the military in hostile circumstances in which to receive Congress's okay. That can come in a declaration of war or a reasonable facsimile. If Congress does not provide its consent, the President is obligated to withdraw the forces. Within that 60-day period, Congress can vote to force the President to pull out. (That's what Campbell tried to do, and lost.) But if Congress does nothing explicit, the President's war is supposed to end by the 60-day mark.

The Kosovo clock is ticking. The 60-day free-hand phase expires at the end of May. And the Clintonites, who once promised that less than a week of air strikes would tame Slobodan Milosevic, are now talking about an extended-run bombing campaign that will stretch into the summer. (Have they started worrying yet about the Y2K bug and the war effort?) So what might happen if the House in the next four weeks does not vote to approve the aerial assault? Will Clinton abide by the law and shut down the bombing?

There's not much precedent for this situation. President George Bush won votes in Congress before taking on Iraq. The mini-wars in Panama and Grenada were turkey-shoots, finished within the 60 days. White House lawyers are probably preparing various arguments. They might assert that because Campbell's resolution to terminate the bombing was rejected, the House did not not tell the President to stop. (The Senate has already passed a resolution supporting the bombing.) They might point to congressional approval of spending for the Kosovo operation as all the permission that is needed. ("Spending is not authority," argues Michael Ratner, an attorney at the left-leaning Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist on the War Powers Resolution. Ratner, who has been consulting with Campbell and the House Democrats opposed to the Kosovo war, maintains that after Congress failed to say yes to the bombing, Clinton has no authority to continue the strikes.) Or the Clinton mouthpieces might challenge the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a measure that previous administrations have tried to wiggle around.

War is the most extreme action of government. The drafters of Constitution purposefully inconvenienced the Commander-in-Chief by handing Congress the power to declare war, and the War Powers Resolution, a Vietnam War offshoot no doubt supported by Clinton at the time, sets up strict rules for the use of force abroad. Will Clinton flout the rule of law -- paging Henry Hyde! -- if Congress does not authorize the bombing? Might the don't-ask-us House Republicans not authorize the bombing but, subsequently, ignore Clinton's violation of the War Powers Resolution? In Washington, what provokes the greater outrage: lying about sex or not following the law that governs war? That question may soon be answered.

Exporting War

In railing above about the right's narrow conception of the" culture of death," I noted that conservatives who preach values politics generally do not get riled by U.S. weapon sales to thuggish and violent governments abroad. Last week, a Washington group called Demilitarization for Democracy released a report noting that in 1997 the United States sold $8.3 billion in weapons to non-democratic nations. That year, the Clinton Administration also set a record for worldwide military sales: $21.3 billion. And over a third of the 208 combat exercises conducted by the Pentagon with foreign troops involved training forces in countries that are not democracies. "In Algeria, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, and in the Kurdish areas of Turkey," the study says, "recipients of U.S. military support used U.S. arms and training in internal conflicts and repression." In the name of humanitarian intervention, should the European Union -- which last year passed a code restricting arms sales to dictators and human rights abusers -- blockade the United States to prevent weapon sales to brutish regimes? The fellow in the White House signing orders for bombing raids that are supposed to stop ethnic cleansing doesn't do so with clean hands.