"Suppose...": Arguments for an Impeachment Resolution By Bernard Weiner

http://www.democraticunderground.com/crisis/05/030_bw.html
"Suppose...": Arguments for an Impeachment Resolution

September 27, 2005
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

Suppose it could be proven that the integrity of the vote-
counting in the 2004 election had been seriously compromised,
and that Bush-Cheney probably lost. What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration told
huge lies to get the U.S. military into Iraq, thus leading to
the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, the maiming of
tens of thousands of others, the deaths of more than 100,000
innocent Iraqi civilians? What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration
effectively has turned over the writing of pollution-control
legislation to the corporations that create much of the
pollution? What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush inner circle knew that
a huge terrorist attack was about to go down in the Fall of
2001 and chose, for whatever reason, to ignore the warnings.
What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that high officials of the Bush
Administration, for political reasons, deliberately revealed
the identity of a covert CIA officer, and that of a CIA mole
inside Osama bin Laden's inner circle? What would you do about
it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration
concocted a legal philosophy that would permit the President to
ignore laws passed by Congress, and has "disappeared" a number
of American citizens into military-base prisons away from
public or legal scrutiny - in effect, making the President into
a kind of dictator? What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that under rules devised by the Bush
Administration, confidentiality between lawyer and client no
longer exists, federal agents can enter your home and conduct a
search without you being present or even being told it happened
("sneak & peek," it's called), can hack into your computer and
read your private emails without you being informed, can check
what library books you're reading and prevent librarians from
telling you they've done that. What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration devised
legal rationales for torture of suspected terrorist-prisoners
in U.S. care - with more than 100 dying while being
interrogated - and that key detainees are being sent to U.S.-
friendly countries where extreme torture methods are used? What
would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that because of their incompetence
and delay in responding to the Gulf Coast Katrina catastrophe,
more than a thousand innocent American citizens drowned or
starved to death? What would you do about it?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration,
hostile to science, has denied the reality of global warming
and its effects on regional weather changes, such as the
increase in monster hurricanes like Katrina and Rita, and thus
devoted little or no attention to the deadly implications. What
would you do about it?

"WHAT DO I CARE WHAT YOU THINK?"

Well, you get the idea. You or I could continue this list
forever - civil liberties, church and state merging, humongous
deficits, activist judges enlarging the power of the central
government, treating certain citizens (especially women and
gays) unequally, etc. etc. And then we'd always come back to
the same closing question: "What would you do about it?"

The reason I ask is that the Bush Administration has been
caught in the spotlight on these issues for the past four-and-a-
half years, with documented evidence reported in the mainstream
media. Scandal after scandal, corruption after corruption, high
crimes and misdemeanors - and yet, nothing happens.

As Bush himself once said about his critics, almost in these
words: "So what, I'm the President. What are you going to do
about it? What do I care what you think?" As long as Bush is in
the White House, with all the power at his command, with all
his loyalist toadies keeping real-world consequences away from
him, he feels that he and his inner circle in the bunker with
him are untouchable.

And, to date, he has been. So what are you, what are we, going
to do about it?

ALMOST AT CRITICAL MASS

I suggest that anti-Bush critical mass is just about achieved
in the body politic, especially after the disgraceful, shameful
neglect and bungling associated with the Katrina scandal, which
led to the deaths of so many American citizens. Nearly two-
thirds of those polled these days agree that the Iraq War is a
mistake, and the troops should be brought back home soon.
Bush's approval rating is now in the high-30% range. If and
when in the next few months indictments are unsealed against
key Bush Administration officials - perhaps including not only
Karl Rove and Scooter Libby but John Bolton and, maybe as
unindicted co-conspirators, Bush and Cheney - true critical
mass could be achieved.

At that point, we don't want to be just sitting there watching
the unfolding of the Bush Administration's self-destruction, or
witnessing their last, dangerous, martial-law death throes. We
need to have protected ourselves, and helped prepare the way
for the moral/legal/political turnaround that is coming.

One way to lay the necessary foundations is to get the
citizenry talking seriously about the possibility of
impeachment. Now. And, in addition to raising the issue amid
the chattering class, perhaps the best way of getting the word
out more widely is for an impeachment resolution to be
introduced in the House. Now.

As I see it, such a move will not have a chance of success if
such a resolution were introduced only by a single, and easily
dismissible, member of Congress. No, this impeachment
resolution - calling for hearings into the alleged high crimes
and misdemeanors of Bush and Cheney - ideally should be
introduced by a huge number of Representatives, including
whatever courageous Republicans can be convinced to join.

There also is strength in numbers, perhaps giving members
courage to take the giant step in the company of many of their
peers. Who will start the process by talking along these lines
to their fellow members of Congress? My guess is that if
someone with the stature of John Conyers and Jim Leach began
talking up the idea of an impeachment resolution, others might
well consider signing on. Even better would be if Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi were to bite the bullet and join in. I'd
say a minimum of 40 names would be necessary to break through
into the major media as a "serious" movement afoot.

WHY MANY REPUBLICANS MIGHT JOIN IN

Why would Republicans want to abandon the Bush cabal that
helped turn them into the majority party in Congress? Well, for
one thing, they want to get re-elected and Bush could well be
an embarrassing and politically radioactive albatross around
their necks in 2006. If Bush and Cheney were to go, they could
run campaigns devoid of their association with that pair, and
might well return to their seats of power in the Congress.

Likewise, CEOs and other business types, including stock market
brokers and economic powers that be, see the damage being
inflicted on the budget, on deficit financing, on the economy,
and so on, and might well believe that three more years of this
bumbling, ideologically-driven administration could well take
the country down with it. Better to cut their losses now by
abandoning Bush & Co. to the retribution of the public for four-
plus years of reckless rule, and then stabilize things and get
the country back on track.

So many retired military leaders and traditional Republicans,
conservatives all (in the pre-Bush meaning of that term),
already have cut themselves loose from a party kidnapped by far-
right extremists. It's not outside the realm of possibility
that these GOP forces might coalesce into a movement that sees
the forced eviction of Bush & Co. from the White House as in
the best interests of themselves, their party, the economy, and
the American people in general.

Now, introducing such a resolution calling for impeachment
hearings could well fail when it comes up for a vote. But Bush
& Co. may have gone so far over the acceptable edge, it's not
outside the realm of possibility that such a bill could pass.
(Members of Congress were talking about the impeachment of
President Nixon in the early-'70s and, though no such
resolutions passed, they helped set the stage for Nixon's
resignation later as the Watergate scandal unfolded.)

In any event, discussing the reasons for impeachment outside
the fringes of internet discourse - actual governmental
officials talking about it - would significantly alter the
respectability of the topic being raised in the public sphere.
Suddenly, it would be a serious issue being discussed
seriously, both out on the street (where there would have to be
unrelenting rallies and civil disobedience) and in the
corridors of industry and political power.

NO SEX BUT PLENTY OF DEAD BODIES

The basis for impeachment of Bush-Cheney would not be a
personal indiscretion a la Clinton - extremely bad judgment,
but a private sexual act between consenting adults - but crimes
and misdemeanors that have resulted, and continue to result, in
the death and destruction of American citizens and their
property, both abroad and at home.

As for the wording of such a resolution, my guess is that the
experts in such things will opt for a simple, all-inclusive
indictment rather than a laundry-list of specific offenses,
which will come later. For example, Bush and Cheney took their
oaths of office swearing to "preserve, protect and defend" the
Constitution and, by implication, the citizens of the United
States. They have done neither.

The Constitutional protections designed to shield citizens from
an overbearing federal government are in shreds; citizens are
being killed in a war based on lies; we Americans are less
secure than we were before the invasion of Iraq; and monster
storms have become more deadly because of unfeeling
incompetence and a denial of scientific realities.

It is long since time to take corrective action. Many
progressives and Democrats have been moving in that direction
for a long time, but the time may be ripe, or may soon be ripe,
for significant factions of the Republican Party to join in the
movement to pry the grasping fingers of Bush & Co. from the
levers of power.

Introducing a resolution calling for impeachment hearings is
the first serious step along that road back to political sanity
and moral accountability for our country. Let's demand that our
Representatives in Congress do it, and if they won't, we will
elect those who will.

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations,
has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor
with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The
Crisis Papers. For comments, write crisispapers@comcast.net.