TheMillerCircle.org

I believe that impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney must be the highest priority of our congress and I believe that Nancy Pelosi’s argument that impeachment is off the table needs to be reconsidered. Indeed, we need to demand it. The extreme arrogance and power grab that Bush and Cheney have assumed will not go away after the next presidential election. The new “tool box” of power that Bush and Cheney have created for the presidency has made that office much closer to the one we revolted against under the first King George in 1776. Whoever is elected to the presidency in 2008, Democrat or Republican, will not turn around and say “well, I have too much power, let me make sure I give some back to congress.” Under no circumstance will that be the case. Instead they will happily continue to use that power in the same way their predecessor did and the march towards an aristocracy will be almost complete. Except that it will be a militaristic aristocracy, something like Japan had before WW II. When you have a military the size of ours, it jades the way you view the world.

The only way to insure that congress takes its authority back, and restores co-equality with the president for national governance, is if congress itself acts in the clearest and most direct form it has available– to impeach both Bush and Cheney. As much as remove Bush and Cheney from office for their high crimes and misdemeanors, we must impeach them to make sure we empty the new toolbox of power that they have created that will be assumed and expanded upon by the next president, whether they are a Republican or Democrat. So as much as we need to punish Bush and Cheney for their abuses, we need to impeach them to protect our future democracy: it is now so frazzled and tattered that few of our constitutional principles are intact and the supposed checks and balances of our system, as provided in our constitution, has virtually disappeared. This all started at the end of WW II when the anti-communist fears served to whip a compliant congress into giving away huge presidential powers not provided by the constitution, including the formation of a covert army (CIA) whose activities were controlled exclusively by the president and whose budget was not given public disclosure. That too is against our constitution. If we elect a Democratic president in 2008 without impeaching Bush and Cheney beforehand, we are unlikely to impeach a Democratic President (assuming Democrats still control the House and Senate) even if they violate the constitution, as they will invariably do. We have become a war machine, with the president making all the decisions on the targets and means of our wars, aided by a too-compliant congress and press that have no understanding of our constitution. Already, our military is preparing for war with China, perhaps another one with Russia or Iran. But they want to conduct the wars of the future, not from our international base system and carriers, but through the weaponization of space with nuclear capability. We will have a never ending cycle and recycling of enemies. But if we force the president to only go to war if congress declares one and eliminate the secret budgeting that takes place with the CIA and the black budgets within the military (strictly against the constitution) and the complete disregard for the laws passed by congress, we may have a chance of trimming down the military and restoring sanity to our government. But it is already very late in this process. The Republican Party and the industrial-military complex are in lockstep with each other and, through the neocon stimulus package, they have created a modern version of the Roman Empire.

Let me briefly introduce you to our greatest 20th century constitutional hero, Henry B. Gonzalez, a former congressman from Texas. His story is nicely summarized in John Nichols’ excellent book, The Genius of Impeachment. Gonzalez was the son of Mexican-American immigrants who grew up in the barrio of San Antonio. He went to law school and got elected to the Texas legislature, where he led the longest filibuster in the history of that institution in order to prevents laws from being passed that would have circumvented the Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs Board of Education. He was elected to the House of Representatives and served 37 years where he fiercely and effectively represented his district and he fiercely protected the constitution, which he knew better than almost anyone. Gonzalez took the longitudinal view of his time in the House. Early on he supported moves to impeach Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. But he became a major player as an impeachment advocate to address the abuses of power, when he introduced a resolution to impeach Ronald Reagan in 1983 for unlawfully invading Grenada, in clear violation of our constitution. In his impeachment articles, Gonzalez pointed out how Reagan’s actions took resources away from needy American programs. A few days after Reagan admitted that he had lied about his knowledge of Iran-Contra (itself a coverup as Robert Parry has reported), Gonzalez introduced another bill of impeachment against Reagan for even more horrific violations of the constitution with three different articles of impeachment, any one of which would be lauded by the founding fathers. Reagan could just as easily have been impeached, tried, convicted and then prosecuted for his crimes if the Democratic congress had any hint of why Reagan’s actions were unconstitutional. Then again on the eve of president George Herbert Walker Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Gonzalez introduced a bill of impeachment against him for his violations of making war without congressional authority to do so. Although he was not taken seriously by his colleagues in any of his impeachment actions, he said that “I appeal to the future for my vindication.” The future is now and it has surely vindicated his actions. Had we followed his lead and removed Reagan from office, the march to the imperial presidency, which now threatens our very democracy, would have been stopped cold in its tracks. Furthermore, had his impeachment initiative been followed, the press and the public would be much more engaged and much more alert to the kinds of transgressions that Bush and Cheney have now perpetrated on us. Unfortunately, if anything, the public and the congress have become far more complacent than there were in the Gonzalez era, so taking impeachment seriously is going to be an uphill battle. But it is or will be a battle from which our democracy will strengthen, as we begin to recognize the violations of our constitution that have placed our democracy in such peril.

The founders of our constitution used the word “impeachment” six times in the document. Section 4 of article II states “The president, vice–president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” And, article I states “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States; but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment,trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” In other words any public officer can be removed by impeachment and, though the removal does not carry with it any sentence other than removal from office, the impeached and convicted officer can still be subject to indictment through the normal legal mechanisms. Our founders saw the process of impeachment, not as a mechanism of last resort before the republic dissolves, or as the boy putting his finger in the dike to prevent swamping of the city, but rather as a normal, political, curative process, something they anticipated would be used for what they assumed would inevitably happen….a king-like power grab by a future president. Our constitution anticipated that King George Bush would come along someday, so let’s use the tools at our disposal to get rid of him: our framers gave us an effective tool to deal with executive arrogance.  Impeachment was visualized as something natural and would be virtually guaranteed to be used under the right circumstances, forced  by a vigorous, watchful sense of citizenship within the electorate, a vigorous, demanding free press and a congress that would insist on protecting and, if need be,  reasserting it owns powers that should make it impossible for the imperial presidency to get started in the first place. Or if started, at least stopped before too much damage has been done. In the early days of our Republic, a free independent press existed and a high plane of citizenship within the electorate served to insure an elected congress that would insist on their co-equality with the executive branch. Just glance back a few years to see how easy it was to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky affair and you can appreciate how easy it should be to impeach and then to try both Cheney and Bush for their crimes against the government. Admittedly, the trial phase would be challenging as 2/3 majority in the senate is required for conviction and removal from office. But aren’t there 15 Republican Senators who are just as alarmed as everyone else should be about the Bush-Cheney imperialism and illegal war-making? One would think, that since there is now evidence that al-Qaeda is stronger than ever, the requisite number of Republican Senators could connect the dots to see that Bush and Cheney are dangerous heads of state. A long list of impeachment charges can be drawn up to justify initiating impeachment. That will not be a problem.

Under our constitution, the reasons for a president’s removal need not be highly specific. He/she could be removed for behaving like a king, as they were all aware of the old King George whose rule had just been overthrown. Well today we have a new King George and Vice-King Cheney. A recent poll has indicated that 54% favor impeachment for Cheney and 45% favor impeachment for Bush. That should be sufficient to get the ball rolling and already Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney into congress. When asked why Cheney, he responded by saying that going after Bush first, if successful, would get us Cheney as president, implying Cheney first, Bush second. Many websites have now appeared favoring impeachment. The band wagon is rolling, why not jump on?

California has a recall option for removing public officers. You can think back to the time a few years ago when poor governor Davis was recalled and how spirited the electorate in California was about the issue: it electrified the state, even though Davis probably didn’t do anything terribly wrong, he just got in the way of some pissed off Californians. It’s not at all clear that they are better off because of it, but one bets that a lot more Californians are knowledgeable about their state’s problems because of it. At the Federal level, we don’t have recall, which might make things very much easier, but we do have impeachment and there are so many reasons to justify impeachment of Bush and Cheney that we could have a fifth grade civics class put a document together. This is a movement we need to support and a process we need to demand!