Let’s get this meditation underway by first thinking of reasons NOT to impeach George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. I’ll kick-start with the ones I’ve observed in circulation. (1) It’s looking backward when we should be dealing with problems aplenty now facing us; there are many other things we should be working towards that will represent a more profitable investment of our time and energy. (2) Punishing these madmen won’t bring back the hundreds of thousands for whose deaths they’ve been responsible. (3) With only a slender majority in the legislature the Republican resistance could never be overcome. (4) The process would take so long that even if success were possible the duo’s term in office would have ended before they could be rendered accountable.
In way of a single, sweeping response to all this foot-dragging, I’ll treat you to an analogy.
The night sky is violated by a torch as big as his apartment building when Joe Grinacci, longshoreman, returns home from his late shift. Hoses arch their salutes in a ceremony of futility against rotten walls. What happens in that instant to Joe is beyond words to describe, because Joe knows his wife and only son are inside.
One yellow-helmeted man from the brigade of firefighters, spotting Joe about to take a run into the inferno, steps forward into his path and grabs one of his wrists. “Forget what you’re thinking, man! Believe me, your chances of bringing anybody outa there at this point are infinitesmal!
For his troubles the veteran beneath the helmet takes a swift punch in the jaw that serves to disengage the wrist grip nicely – and Joe is streaking straight into the house afire. Nevermind the outcome, whether Joe becomes flaming casualty or hero. The point has been made: When enough is at stake in a venture, in the decision whether to act, the odds AGAINST simply don’t matter.
No one who’s paying attention needs to hear the justification for impeachment of these men who have made fascism fashionable again. The charges are being assembled in syndicated columns, blogs, and editorial pieces on the net.
On February 14, writing for Permalink in a piece he entitles “America! If You Will Not Impeach This Tyrant, Who Will You Impeach?, Sherwood Ross reels off eighteen different reasons, any one of which would constitute grounds. You must forgive me, then, for risking your boredom by redundancy, if I pause for the sake of my own catharsis to pick from his smorgasbord the ones powerfully paramount for me: “for violating… the International Convention against torture;… for usurping the power to imprison people arbitrarily for indefinite periods by making himself judge and jury;… for… reinitiating a nuclear arms race in defiance of the nuclear arms treaty;… for using illegal weapons against Iraq such as white phosphorus, depleted uranium ammunition and a new type of napalm… Then, the double-barreled one that for most of us would go at the top of the list, initiating, unprecedented even in our nation’s heinous foreign policy, preemptive warfare, and “…violating the Genocide Convention by turning Iraq into a charnel house….
What we presently observe in the Untied States is a coup d’etat representing a throwback to that primitive condition of humankind wherein the Natural Rights of Man, as embraced in the French Revolution, are abrogated, the have-nots are the playthings of the haves, the weak are no more than dispensables to the strong. Where we find ourselves in April 2007 is not in a republic, but in a dictatorship. Our Constitution is scuttled, no better than “a piece of paper. The rule of law is a dead letter. Can anyone suppose that Nancy Pelosi’s band aids will heal us?
We have sleepwalked into enormous damage. In our carelessness we have mislaid the preciously unique dream that set us apart in all of history, the experiment with mandating the will of a people. We shall not recover that dream by a simple recycling of despots in 2008. If we are to restore what is lost, we must bring the betrayers of the rule of law to justice, no matter how long it takes.
Let us seek impeachment. But let no consideration of time limits left in the Bush term inhibit our determination. For whether Bush and Cheney are held to account in or out of office, they are war criminals: thieves who have stolen our legacy: monsters of such magnitude that if we allow them to die of natural causes in their beds, our shame, our cowardly complacency, must lose us all the chips, terminating for good the great wager of our democratic dream.
Tom Kingis a founding member of the Teach Peace Foundation. For more information to teach peace, visit www.teachpeace.com.
