Is
Peace or Impeachment Possible?
By David Swanson
17 September, 2007
Afterdowningstreet.org
[Remarks at September 15, 2007, impeachment rally in Miami, Fla.,
organized by www.floridaimpeach.org ]
It's
great to see such a crowd and so many groups represented. I especially
want to thank Veterans for Peace. Dave Cline was a great leader and
will be badly missed. We should all go out and do as much as he did
with his admirable life.
On a lighter note, I went
to a party yesterday in Washington, D.C. You might think we have very
little to celebrate, but this was a party to say goodbye and good riddance
to Alberto Gonzales!
You won’t hear much about it on the news, but a bill had been
introduced in July to impeach Gonzales, and it was gaining support during
the August recess. In fact a bunch of Congress Members added their names
to the list of cosponsors this month even though Gonzales had already
announced his resignation. This was not the first time that an effort
to impeach helped force out an unjust attorney general. An effort to
impeach Richard Nixon forced him out as well. An effort to impeach Harry
Truman led to the Supreme Court checking his abuses of power. In fact
the threat of impeachment is usually enough to restore a level of justice
and democracy in Washington, D.C. A promise not to impeach, on the other
hand, tends to encourage abuses of power and is itself an unconstitutional
abuse of power.
I wanted to mention Gonzo's
departure because it's the only good news I have. None of the policies
that Gonzales advanced have been reversed, and we are unlikely to see
an honest attorney general assume office anytime soon. Nine of the 10
articles of our Bill of Rights are in tatters. And they don't make us
house soldiers in our homes (which is our tenth and sole remaining right)
because they tax us to pay for barracks and bases in this country, plus
dozens of permanent military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in fact
about 1,000 permanent bases in nations all over the world. We have lost
the right not to be detained and held without charge, the right not
to be tortured, and the right not to be spied on in our homes. We have
lost the World Trade Center, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of
New Orleans. We have moved dangerously close to the point of no turning
back on global warming. We have encouraged the proliferation of weapons
around the world, driven much of the world to hate our nation, and watched
a general this week brag to Congress about how many weapons we are selling
to Iraq. But the term "we" now refers to the private companies
that will profit from the weapons sales, the private companies that
our grandchildren will pay for the reconstruction of Iraq that never
happened, and the private companies we enrich every time we stop at
a gas station. We have lost the right to organize a labor union, and
we are rapidly losing the right to protest. We are penned into Orwellian
free speech zones or arrested for holding a sign on a street corner.
Should a catastrophe hit the US, everything is in place for martial
law. And while it cannot find the decency to hold Bush administration
outlaws in contempt, our Congress holds peace activists in contempt
of Congress, when the Capitol Police don't tackle and beat them in the
halls of Congress. Well, I've got news for you. Not only is there a
huge march and civil disobedience action today in Washington for peace
and impeachment, but we are ready to hold Congress in contempt of the
citizens of the United States of America.
Yesterday a second study
was published. There have now been two studies done of how many Iraqis
have died violent deaths as a result of our invasion and occupation
of their country. The first was done by Johns Hopkins over a year ago
and has been updated by Just Foreign Policy. The second was done by
a well-respected British organization. The results of each study fall
within the margin of error of the other. We are responsible for the
deaths of between 1.1 and 1.3 million Iraqis. Another 4 million Iraqis
out of a population of 25 million have been displaced from their homes,
half of them to other countries. Most Iraqis lack adequate water and
electricity. Half the nation needs emergency assistance. A quarter of
the children are malnourished. And more than that number are traumatized
and filled with hatred. A majority of Iraqis say things are getting
worse and want the US occupation ended. The progress General Petraeus
talks about not only is based on numbers he won't explain, not only
is based on claims disputed by numerous other sources, but it's also
progress that the Iraqi people haven't seen.
Make no mistake, the occupation
is a bigger disaster for Iraqis, for our troops, and for our safety
each year and each month that passes. We're dropping five times the
bombs this year as last year, including 30 tons of cluster bombs in
the first six months of 2007. If Bush and Cheney had unlimited troops,
they would send another half million to Iraq. And the Iraqi people would
still not be pacified. Bush is bringing a minimal number of troops home
for only one reason. He has to. He has no more troops to send. This
is not a victory for Petraeus or for Congress. This is a victory for
the counter-recruitment movement. If you want to make a difference,
go to schools and tell kids the truth about military service. Get a
book called "Army of None."
Nothing in Iraq is getting
better, and nothing is about to get better. Petraeus is arming one religious
sect to kill another and measuring success by body counts. Every body
he counts is 10 friends and relatives eager to kill the occupiers. This
is not a war that can be won or lost. It is an occupation and a crime,
and we must stop committing it! According to Republicans in Congress
the real danger lies in people who would dare question the authority
of a general. I set up a website called BetrayUsReport.com, so I must
be part of the real problem. But then so must Petraeus's boss, Admiral
Fallon, who calls him (and you'll have to excuse me, but these are his
words), "an ass kissing little chicken shit."
Somehow the Bush White House seems to attract an unfair share of ass
kissing little chicken shits. I watched Bush's speech the other night
on ABC, in which Bush admitted, as his report yesterday effectively
admitted, that none of the so-called benchmarks had been met. Senator
Reed gave a good but vague and non-committal Democratic response. And
then George Stephanopoulos of ABC, something of an ass-kissing little
chicken shit himself, came on and immediately explained what it all
meant. He didn't remind anyone of all the promises Bush had made back
in January. Instead he announced that the Democrats can talk about ending
the so-called war but cannot do anything about it because they don't
have 67 Democrats in the Senate.
Let's get one thing straight:
that is a lie. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can announce tomorrow and
could have announced nine months, several hundred troops, and tens of
thousands of Iraqis ago, that they will not bring up any more bills
to fund the occupation. A Republican proposal to fund the occupation
could be blocked by 41, not 67, Senators. The Democrats could also pass
bills ending the occupation or funding only the withdrawal and have
them vetoed and pass them again and again. This is no secret and there
is no dispute that Congress has this power. Senator Feingold held hearings
at the start of the year at which experts overwhelmingly agreed that
Congress can simply stop providing funding. Bush has plenty of money
to bring the troops home, and Congress can provide new money for that
purpose.
Congress can provide funds
for the reconstruction of Iraq by Iraqis. Congress can encourage the
United Nations and the Arab League to organize transition efforts. Congress
can ban the use of any funds for an attack on Iran. It's only a question
of will.
There's no question of where
the public stands. Democrats.com which I work for commissioned a polling
company this week to ask the public what it wanted.
Forty percent said they wanted
all troops home in 6 months, using existing fund to do it.
Another 14 percent want them
home in 6 months and will pay $50 billion to make it happen.
Another 19 percent want them
home in a year and will pay $200 billion for it.
And 13 percent want what
Congress is considering doing, giving Bush another $200 billion with
no strings attached.
Seventy-nine Congress members,
including only two Floridians, Corrine Brown and Alice Hastings, have
signed a letter saying they won't vote for more money unless it "redeploys"
the troops by January 2009. This effort is led by Progressive Caucus
chairs Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey. Woolsey is getting a lot of heat
in DC right now because someone published the transcript of a private
conference call on which she advocated pushing primary challenges to
pro-war Democrats. But Lynn is not only right morally. Hers is a pro-Democratic
Party position. Primaries are good for a party as well as a country.
And the leadership of the Democratic Party is in very bad shape right
now. They have made clear that their goal is to keep the occupation
of Iraq and Bush and Cheney around until November 2008, believing that
will help them win elections. Rahm Emanuel has told the Washington Post
this, and Congressional staffers tell me this frequently. And the occupation
and impeachment fit together, not just because there are so many impeachable
offenses related to the occupation, but also because trying to end the
occupation would lead to impeachment.
Congressman Brad Sherman asked Petraeus what he would do if Congress
ended the occupation but Bush illegally kept it going. Petraeus said
he'd have to ask his lawyer. But Sherman was right to assume that Bush
will not end the occupation as long as impeachment is off the table,
which is one more reason the Democrats will avoid a serious effort to
end the occupation unless we force them to act. The thinking on the
Hill right now is that if enough Democrats sign that letter and stand
firm, Pelosi will go with a bill to please Republicans and win their
votes. Pelosi operates in accordance with George Stephanopoulos's myth
that she simply must pass a bill, any bill. In fact, when you get away
from the topic of war, on every other issue this Congress can address,
the consensus among Democrats is that they have two choices. One is
to pass atrocities like the Protect America Act, which Bush will sign.
That was the bill that erased the fourth amendment and legalized unconstitutional
spying. When they get around to the "Love, Harmony, and Joy"
Act, you can be sure we're all about to be killed.
The second option, as they
see it, is to pass bills and have them vetoed. Of course they know in
advance that it's all theater, that their bills are destined to be vetoed,
but they view their whole job as an election campaign, and they don't
think the public will catch on to what they're doing.
I think there's a third option.
Impeach Bush and Cheney, remove them from office, and then pass bills
that mean something.
With Bush and Cheney in office,
even bills that are signed into law are altered or reversed with signing
statements. And these are not just empty statements. The Government
Accountability Office studied a sample of Bush's signing statements
and found that in 30 percent of them, his administration has proceeded
to violate the laws that he announced he had the right to violate. So,
while I applaud groups like the ACLU again and again pushing to redundantly
recriminalize torture, I long for the ACLU of 1973 that had the decency
to stand for impeachment.
Depicting Pelosi and Reid
as sheep in ads is all very good, but not if we're sheep too, not if
we go along with the removal of impeachment from the Constitution which
leaves Congress with nothing to be other than sheep.
The purpose of impeachment
is not just to take back control of our government, not just to end
an occupation, not just to prevent an attack on Iran. The purpose of
impeachment is to inform future presidents that they must obey laws.
But this is not something that concerns many Congress members. Their
chief concern tends to be whether the next president will belong to
their party.
Twenty Congress members have
signed onto H Res 333, Dennis Kucinich's bill to impeach Cheney. Many
more signed onto the Gonzales bill or signed on during the last Congress
to the Conyers bill for a preliminary impeachment investigation. And
others have said publicly or privately that they favor impeachment.
But these members have not signed onto Kucinich's bill on Cheney and
have not introduced their own on Cheney or Bush. I've spoken to a lot
of them and their staff and to constituents who've spoken to them. They
have about 15 excuses, most of which are very easily rejected, a few
of which it is going to be very hard but not impossible for us to get
around.
Excuse #1: You can't judge
articles of impeachment prior to a committee investigation. That gets
the process out of order:
This is a complaint with
Kucinich's bill, which lays out three specific charges against Cheney.
Inslee's bill on Gonzales got around this by simply proposing that the
Judiciary Committee investigate whether Gonzales had committed impeachable
offenses. A new bill could do the same for Bush and Cheney and would
not have to be wholly devoid of content. It could suggest the area or
areas of inquiry.
Excuse #2. We don't have
all the facts we need in order to impeach.
Well, of course that's what
an impeachment investigation is for. But in fact we do have the facts.
The Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment against Nixon
for refusing to comply with subpoenas. Bush and Cheney and Rice have
indisputably refused to comply with subpoenas. That one is an instant
impeachment. Just add backbone. The signing statements is another instant
impeachment. So is Bush's confessed violation of FISA, although it is
complicated politically by Congress's recent legalization of this crime.
Bush is on videotape being warned about Hurricane Katrina and on videotape
claiming he wasn't. He and Cheney are on videotape lying about the reasons
for war, and the evidence that they knew they were lying is overwhelming.
That is the impeachable offense our founding fathers most worried about.
James Madison and George Mason both argued as well at the Constitutional
Convention that impeachment would be needed if a president ever pardoned
a crime that he himself was involved in. The commutation of Scooter
Libby's sentence (another notable ass-kissing little chicken shit) is
another obvious impeachment. The list is endless. Congressman Conyers
has published a lengthy book documenting many of the felonies and abuses
of power.
Excuse #3: Impeachment would
take too long.
Nixon took 3 months. Clinton
took 2. They've spent 9 thus far avoiding it, and with very little to
show for it. Impeachment for refusal to comply with subpoenas would
take one day.
Excuse #4: Impeachment would
distract from other things.
Yeah? Like what? Since when
is restoring the Bill of Rights a distraction? A distraction from funding
wars and legalizing spying is fine with me. A distraction from passing
bills that will be vetoed does not worry me.
Excuse #5: We need to focus
on ending the war.
OK, but if you focus on ending
the war for two full years and don't actually end it, I wish you luck
getting people to turn out next November. When Congress moved toward
impeachment of Nixon, it found the nerve to end a war, and he backed
off on his veto threats. Congress passed a menu of progressive legislation
in part because of, not despite, the impeachment threat hanging over
Nixon. And ultimately of course impeachment is going to be needed to
end the current occupation of Iraq.
Excuse #6: Impeachment would
be divisive.
Actually that's not true
among Democrats. Eighty percent favor impeachment. But as far as bipartisan
harmony on Capitol Hill goes, the dangers of creating divisiveness is
sort of like the danger of violence breaking out if we leave Iraq. It's
too late already! And it's too late because the Republicans never give
a damn for bipartisan harmony. Were they in the majority with a Democratic
president holding the all-time record for unpopularity, they would long
ago have impeached him and forced every Democratic Congress member to
either defend him or run away from their own party. Does anybody remember
Al Gore picking Joe Lieberman as a running mate and pretending he'd
never met Bill Clinton? That was the result of an impeachment without
a Senate conviction. (John Nichols says: impeachment is not a constitutional
crisis. It's the cure for the one we're in. Aspirin is not a headache
crisis. Impeachment is not a constitutional crisis.)
Excuse #7: We don't have
the votes in the House to impeach.
Well, you would if Pelosi
whipped on it. And Congress members back bills all the time that are
not predicted to pass. If their colleagues fail to join them, that's
between their colleagues and their colleagues' constituents. And again,
impeachment usually does its work without getting all the way to impeachment.
A move to impeach for refusal to comply with subpoenas, for example,
might result in compliance with subpoenas. And it is the only thing
that might. Holding people in contempt through the courts will take
forever and probably fail. Inherent contempt is a tool Congress doesn't
have the backbone for. And Congress is not about to use either type
of contempt against Bush or Cheney.
Excuse #8: We don't have
the votes in the Senate to convict.
Well, you might if you put
the crimes on television and if the house impeached. But you would do
good for the nation and Democrats would do good for their party even
with a Senate acquittal. Nothing would better identify for the public
the Senators who need to be thrown out of office. And impeachment even
without conviction would reverse the public perception of Democrats
as having no spine. They may hold even in the next election without
impeaching anyone or getting us out of Iraq, but if they want to win
new seats, and if they want to win the White House with a large enough
margin to not have the election stolen, they will reverse their current
position and act!
Excuse #9: I won't sign onto
Kucinich's bill because he hasn't asked me to, and he's a liberal, and
he's running for president.
Well, yes, dear Congressman
or Congresswoman, but this is the government of the world's largest
and most powerful empire. This isn't high school. We expect you to sign
onto a bill based on the merits of it, or to introduce your own.
Excuse #10: You can't impeach
over policy differences because you don't like war. You have to impeach
for a crime.
Well, Kucinich's bill charges
Cheney with the felony that involves misleading Congress and with the
crime of threatening war on Iran. Cheney is on videotape doing so. Conyers'
book lists lots of felonies. But in fact, not every crime is an impeachable
offense and not every impeachable offense is a crime. When Nixon cheated
on his taxes or Clinton cheated on his wife and lied about it under
oath, no impeachable offenses were committed. When Nixon lied to the
public or when Bush ignored warnings prior to 9/11, no crimes were committed,
but the offenses were impeachable.
Excuse #11: If I backed impeachment,
the media would be mean to me.
Yes, Congressman; Yes, Congresswoman.
And if you don't people will die. Which is worse? A majority backs impeachment
now for Cheney and a majority or close to it for Bush. Those numbers
will go up, not down, if you act, regardless of what the media says.
You know those 18 percent of Americans who approve of the job you're
doing? Even they don't like the media. No campaign email raises more
money than one that begins, "Fox News just attacked me."
That's 11 excuses so far.
I think those 11 can be refuted. The next four are harder to get around.
Excuse #12: Impeachment would make Bush and Cheney sympathetic and rally
people around them.
The idea of making Cheney
in particular an object of sympathy may seem ludicrous. But then so
did the idea that Saddam Hussein was about to attack us with unmanned
aerial vehicles. Common sense is not enough in Washington. We need hard
numbers. I think Congress should start with Cheney and watch as Republicans
are forced to abandon him. The Republicans would have done this to the
Democrats years ago. The idea that impeachment would help Bush and Cheney
originated in Republican National Committee talking points published
in May 2006. Pelosi immediately adopted the idea as her own. It flies
in the face of the historical record. When the Republicans have moved
impeachment, as against Truman for example, they've benefited at the
polls. When the Democrats tried to impeach Nixon, who was popular compared
to Cheney or Bush, they won huge victories. When they promised not to
impeach Reagan, they lost in the next elections. The exceptional case
is the Clinton impeachment which was uniquely unpopular. Nonetheless,
the Republicans hung onto both houses of Congress and the White House.
In fact, they lost very few seats, fewer than is the norm at that point
in the tenure of a majority in Congress. The Democrats may be risking
more by not impeaching than they would be by doing it. But unless we
can get polls done in swing districts that show overwhelmingly that
the Democrats will lose seats by not impeaching, they are unlikely to
act. This is what their staffers tell me. And polls showing they'd gain
seats by impeaching may not be enough, if they think they'd do OK without
it. And we'll have to show that Republicans save their seats by backing
impeachment if we want any Republicans to act. Of course this is all
utterly disgusting. Human life and the future of democracy are not concerns
that even come up. It's all about elections.
Excuse #13: Impeachment would
remind people of Bill Clinton.
Well, would that be so horrible?
I was no fan of Bill Clinton, but compared to Bush and Cheney he looks
like a saint.
Excuse #14: Nancy Pelosi
opposes impeachment.
Excuse #15: Hillary Clinton
opposes impeachment.
The way we bring them around
is to show that the Democrats have a better chance at the White House
as the party with backbone and integrity than as the party that just
isn't the Republicans.
So, what can we do?
Raise your hand if to get
rid of Bush you'd do for him what Monica did for Bill.
Nine patriotic Americans!
Thank you!
OK. May not be needed. There's
a saying that goes like this: let's save our pessimism for better times.
We cannot afford the luxury
of pessimism. While there are things Congress refuses to even consider,
like ending the occupation or impeaching Cheney or Bush, there are also
things that we as citizens have a responsibility to consider but rarely
do. We can shut down our Congress members' offices with endless repeated
sit-ins. We can make it impossible for them to work. That changes the
whole calculation. We can shut down the city of Washington. The next
big march is on the 29th, following a camp in front of the Capitol from
the 22nd to the 29th. If we bring a million people and on the 29th refuse
to leave, if we block the streets and fill the jails, all bets and probably
all wars are off.
Whether we can manage such
feats or not, if we keep building and pushing an impeachment movement,
not only do we communicate to the world our good intentions, but we
are prepared should some new event help trigger a pulse in the corpse
of Congress. And let us hope that event is not an attack on Iran.
We can also organize in and
do polling in swing districts to try to show the electoral advantage
to be gained from doing the right thing.
We can also keep pressuring
key Congress members like Congressman Wexler and Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz.
We can do this through local media activism, PR, letters to editors,
calls to shows, through visits, phone calls, emails, faxes, letters,
post cards, posters, billboards, through honk-to-impeach events where
you hold posters saying "Honk to Impeach" at the side of the
street outside their offices, and through events where we sit in and
read the Constitution aloud, refusing to leave.
We can also take our demands
directly to the people Congress listens to: the media. The fact is that
if we had had Fox News and if the other outlets had been in 1974 what
they are now, Nixon would never have resigned. Today, the media do not
cover the crimes, the evidence, or the public outrage, and do not poll
the public's opinions on impeachment. We forced the Downing Street minutes
into the news two-and-a-half years ago by flooding the media with phone
calls, emails, and protests in their lobbies. That needs to continue.
Taking the all-consuming
focus off the elections that are over a year away would give us a healthier
democracy, but we also need to think in terms of electoral threats,
or we are taking our power off the table the same way Congress has.
We should promote primary challengers who use the issue of impeachment.
We should promote third party general election challengers who use the
issue of impeachment. Many are already doing so. To refuse to make these
challenges is to fail to grasp the gravity of our situation. In terms
of the presidential race, there is something we've not considered. If
every person who likes Dennis Kucinich but believes he can't win were
to send him $100, he would win quite easily and influence Congress immediately.
Be the change you want to
see in the world.
No sleep till impeachment.
Thank You.
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