Impeachment and Patriotism
When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will
either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest. --Anon.
By Richard W. Behan
03/20/07 "ICH" -- -- We the American people would not do
what George Bush and Richard Cheney have done in Iraq, all of it
in our name. We would not, for utterly fabricated reasons,
invade and occupy a sovereign country without provocation,
killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, driving millions
more from their homes as refugees, torturing prisoners,
destroying the country's economy and infrastructure, fomenting a
vicious sectarian civil war, sacrificing 3,200 American lives,
squandering half a trillion dollars, dangerously destabilizing
the Middle East, blackening our country's character, and
defaming every American citizen.
We are not a devious, savage, and warlike people. With
considerable merit we think of Americans as honest, decent, and
law-abiding, generous, tolerant, and humane. And we are
patriotic, devoted to our country and to its ideals of freedom,
democracy, peace, justice, and honesty in government.
The huge disconnect between who we are and what our government
is doing in Iraq is painfully apparent, and the gap is
insuperable.
It is imperative, therefore, that we hold the President and Vice
President accountable not only for breaking domestic and
international laws, but for violating the ethical and
institutional essence of America and the ideals of her people.
To rescue our country's elemental decency and to assure the
security of its governing principles, it is our patriotic duty
to impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney.
We consented to the invasion of Iraq because history told us we
could trust our government to tell the truth. We were not naïve:
the Vietnam war was also launched on a fabrication, but that was
an aberration. We would not and did not expect it to be
repeated. So we trusted and believed George Bush, Richard
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell when
they spoke to us. They said Saddam Hussein was complicit in the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They said he had
terrifying weapons of mass destruction and the means of
delivering them to our shores. They said he could soon trigger a
nuclear device in our country, killing hundreds of thousands of
American people.
None of this was true. It was propaganda, intentionally designed
by the White House Iraq Group to mislead the Congress and the
American people. That is fraud, and fraud is a crime. Given the
magnitude at which it was practiced, and the epic consequences,
few would disagree: it is a high crime and misdemeanor. We need
to impeach Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, as Elizabeth de la Vega has
written, not as a matter of politics but as a matter law.
Brilliantly and knowingly, the Bush Administration introduced
full-strength surrealism into our public discourse, in the form
of their amorphous and fraudulent "global war on terrorism."
They asked for our consent and the consent of the Congress to
undertake it; thoroughly deceived, both the public and Congress
acquiesced. There was no way a trusting country could know the
"war on terrorism" was a fantasy: what the Bush Administration
launched in fact was an international crime of military
aggression. But, still denied the truth, we reaffirmed our
consent by re-electing George Bush in 2004.
There were doubters and skeptics in the beginning, and the
number of them grew. They dug deeply, researched carefully, and
wrote clearly. In books and blogs the lies and deceptions of the
Bush Administration were gradually unearthed and described for
what they were. We began to sense we were honestly mistaken
about the war and its rationale.
No source of an honest mistake is more insidious than a
deliberate lie from a trusted party. No one wants to believe a
betrayal has taken place. Even to suspect it is uncomfortable.
That is why it has taken so long for some of us-and why it is
taking so long for all of us-to learn the truth.
The election of 2006 measured our progress in doing so: many of
us by then were no longer mistaken-enough to tip the Congress
barely against the President and his war.
The books and blogs became a flood. The facts are there, and if
we are willing to confront them we cannot refute them: the Bush
Administration is unmatched in our history for its duplicity and
criminal behavior.
At least six books make compelling cases for impeachment: The
Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia
Cooper; The Genius of Impeachment, by John Nichols; The Articles
of Impeachment, by the Center for Constitutional Rights; Impeach
the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney, by Dennis Loo
and Peter Phillips; The Case for Impeachment, by David Lindorff
and Barbara Olshansky, and U.S. v Bush, by Elizabeth de la Vega.
Tallying an overwhelming succession of impeachable offenses, all
fraudulently disguised as worthy, even noble initiatives, the
books tell the astonishing story of what the Bush Administration
has done.
Why they resorted to fraudulence and lies about the wars is
another story, and that has been assembled and documented, too.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the
terrorist attacks. They were conceived long before the events of
September 11, 2001, and the planning for both of them, done in
guarded secrecy, was well underway by that time. The wars were
not waged to bolster security at home, nor to spread democracy
in the Middle East, and by no means do they constitute a "war on
terrorism." All this is the carefully crafted propaganda that
was and remains the central core of the fraudulence.
The truth about the wars is distinctly otherwise. They are bald
acts of retrograde imperialism undertaken, as many have long
suspected, for oil: to secure a pipeline route across
Afghanistan for the Unocal Corporation and to force access to
115 billion of barrels of Iraqi crude for American and British
oil companies-specifically Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Conoco/Phillips,
BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch Shell. This is not speculation; it is
sordid fact. This story is also found in the books and blogs,
but a summary can be found on the
AlterNet website,
and a video documentary entitled "The Oil Wars" is in
development.
We were honestly mistaken because a trusted government betrayed
us, but now we have learned the truth. We have a choice to make:
we can cease being mistaken-or cease being honest.
If we are not honest, if we excuse the criminality of the Bush
Administration through indifference to it, then we become
accomplices. In doing so we accept the damage done to the
American ideals of freedom, democracy, peace, justice, and
honesty in government. And if we opt for appeasement now, we
jeopardize those ideals in the future. Nothing could be less
patriotic than failing to face, accept, and act on the truth we
have learned.
Criminal behavior must be held accountable and justice must
prevail. That is the rule of law, the fundamental premise of the
American social contract, and it must not be compromised. If we
are devoted to our country and to the sanctity of its ideals we
must impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Nothing
could be more patriotic.
Impeachment must be fully and clearly understood. To be
impeached by the House of Representatives is to be indicted, to
be formally accused: only that. It does not establish guilt or
innocence: that is determined in a formal trial, with the Senate
sitting as jury and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
serving as judge.
Beyond any conceivable doubt George Bush and Richard Cheney
deserve to be formally accused.
And yet the 110th Congress dallies. It serves up a "non-binding
resolution" of protest that passes the House and fails in the
Senate, while asserting "impeachment is off the table."
Impeachment is too "divisive" and a "waste of time."
The Congress can learn the truth about the Iraqi war as easily
as the rest of us. Many of its members, however, nurture their
ignorance of the hideous facts or remain indifferent, instead
mouthing stern platitudes about our praiseworthy troops and
keeping America safe.
They play the game the Administration has orchestrated. They
take the surreal and fraudulent "war on terrorism" as a given,
refusing to acknowledge its true nature-petroleum imperialism-or
the criminal deception of the Bush Administration in packaging
and selling it that way.
There is a glaring explanation for this timid behavior: the
obscenely premature launch of the 2008 presidential campaign.
The leadership of both parties and a dozen presidential
candidates-many from the Senate--game the system, jockey for
advantage and favorable imagery, and refuse to attack head-on
the greatest episodes of Presidential malfeasance in the
nation's history.
In their indifference-in their unwillingness to face, accept,
and act on the truth and to call for impeachment-these public
figures are less patriots than traitors, trading off the rule of
law, trading off justice for partisan or presidential ambitions.
That must stop. We desperately need the candidates and the
Congress to subordinate presidential politics and focus instead
on defending of our Constitution. And defending the Constitution
demands impeachment.
Only impeachment can assure us and our children that America
cannot and will not tolerate a dishonest government that mocks
the rule of law. Only impeachment can persuade the world America
truly stands for what its people revere: honesty, peace,
justice, and a respected place among the community of nations.
Only impeachment can proclaim, with unambiguous clarity, the
American people have ceased being mistaken.
Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the
northwest coast of Washington state. He is the author of
Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the
Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001) and he is working on his next
book, To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and
America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached at
rwbehan@rockisland.com.
(This essay is deliberately not copyrighted: It may be
reproduced without restriction.)Click here
to comment on this and other articles
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
