The people must impeach Bush and Cheney

Jack Rabbit

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Apr-09-06 02:06 PM
Original message

The people must impeach Bush and Cheney

Senator Kerry said this morning that impeachment talk is a waste of time.

Talking about impeachment may be a waste of time in the Capitol, but for us on the grass roots it is imperative that we push the issue. Otherwise, it will remain a waste of time in the Capitol and we will continue to be ruled by tyrants and elitists.

Don't wait for the so-called leaders to act. To think of them as leaders is part of the problem. It is we, the people, who are the leaders. It is we, the people, who must impeach and remove Bush and Cheney. The politicians in Washington won't do it unless we do it first.

From the time the Bush regime seized power after losing the election of 2000, it has been a enemy of American democracy. Bush and his advisors and even many of his followers are adherents to some kind of elitism, a belief that some people have a natural or divine right to rule over masses of others. That right may stem from a supposed ethical superiority of those who are wealthier than most, those who are of a certain ethnic stock or who follow a particular religion.

Elitism is not democracy. It is root of royalism and fascism and all that is undemocratic. It is what justifies a slave owner in claiming another person as his private property or an imperialist in claiming that the natural resources of other nations belong to him and his people. It is what Iranian mullahs use to justify an election system where a council of stuffy old men determine who is a good enough Muslim to run to public office. It is what members of the Bush regime use to justify government secrecy and duplicity in what is supposed to be an open system.

Elitism is always promoted for the best of reasons. The elites, if they are not born leaders, have somehow demonstrated an ability to lead and their right should be obvious. However, whether elitism is hatched in darkness by cynical men who know that they are for their own selfish ends telling lies to masses or by well-meaning men who believe the masses are best served by a social hierarchy in which elites will be trained in the ways of wise and benevolent government, all elitist system sooner or later degenerate into tyranny, a system where the so-called elites simply take from the masses because they believe the world is owed to them on a silver platter.

In America, we are living in an age where tyrants are ascendant. Our elites are the politicians who steal elections and the businessmen who fleece their employees and their customers. Our political leaders go to war based on lies and arrange for corporations in which they have an interest, without competition or oversight, to rebuild a nation after they bomb it. The government operates in secret. Absurdly, the headlines today (Sunday, April 9, 2006) are full of a story in which secret documents were secretly declassified. This was done not in order to inform the public of all that the public needed to know in order to make an informed decision, but in order to silence someone from informing the public that those in power had betrayed their public trust.

This tyranny must be countered by a strategic stroke of democracy.

Democracy is a state where:

Citizenship is universal. Each person born within the boundaries of the state is a citizen, as is one born abroad to at least one citizen parent or who swears allegiance to the state in a rite of naturalization.
Citizenship is equal. Each citizen has an equal opportunity to participate in and influence public affairs. Every adult citizen shall be enfranchised with the right to vote. Decisions are made by a majority voting based on the principle of one man/one vote.
Citizenship is inalienable. A guaranteed set of civil liberties is in place to assure full and open public discourse of civic affairs. No citizen may be stripped of his citizenship or otherwise punished by the state for expressing any point of view, no matter how unpopular or even absurd.

Democracy is not a system where followers wait passively for their leaders to act. Democracy is a system where the people lead and those whom the people have entrusted with power follow. It is time for the people to rise up and demand of their leaders that they be held accountable.

The founding fathers of America feared the power of government, and with good reason. The history of politics up to and including the eighteenth century was a history of tyranny. Kings assumed wealth for themselves because they thought it was owned them. They were, or so they said, God’s representatives on Earth. In Britain, King George believed he could tax British colonists in North America of whatever he thought he needed or, if he so desired, of everything they had. The colonists rightly believed that they knew how to spend their own money to construct their own social needs better than did the King. They fought for and won independence and became the greatest nation on Earth and a beacon for the common man to come and live a better life free of Old World tyrants still fighting the remnants of private feudal wars in an industrial age. In France, King Louis XV, often after seeking the council of royal mistresses, engaged in a series of wasteful wars that bankrupted the national treasury. Still, King Louis found money to maintain his royal estate, which included a house in a pastoral setting where young girls where kept for his private pleasure. The people of France rightly took matters into their hands and established a government that at least in theory would be responsible to them, and, seeing no further need for the services of a crowned head of state, removed it, crown, head and all.

Looking at this state of affairs, the founding fathers thought the best way to prevent tyranny for getting too far out of hand was to establish a system of government in which the legislative, executive and judicial branches would be separate and co-equal with distinct powers and checks and balances. The executive would enforce laws, but the legislative branch would make them. The executive branch would prosecute wars, but the legislative branch would declare war. If members of the executive branch decide they need not enforce laws, or tried to make laws, then the legislative branch have the option of impeaching and removing the offenders from office.

The present holder of the office, Mr. Bush, like a past holder of the office, Mr. Nixon, claims that as commander-in-chief, the Constitution gives him the power to do pretty much whatever he likes. Mr. Nixon, it should be noted, resigned from office because impeachment and conviction for abuse of power was a forgone conclusion. This theory of the Constitution, now called the unitary executive theory, has no bases. For a good refutation, one may read The Federalist Papers, including those written by Mr. Hamilton, himself an advocate of a strong chief executive.

The right of George W. Bush, former governor of Texas, to call himself President of the United States is questionable. He holds the office as a result of one of his supporters in a key state, who was that state’s chief elections officer, refused to count votes as directed; subsequent investigation showed that Mr. Bush would have lost that state, Florida, and the election had that officer performed her duties as directed by law. In addition, that same elections officer prior to the election had engaged in a scheme to purge voters from the rolls who fit a demographic that usually votes against Mr. Bush’s party. He won a second term in office as a result of another supporter who also just happened to be the chief elections officer in his state, Ohio, arranged for polling places in areas populated predominantly by voters who usually vote against Mr. Bush’s party to be undersupplied, causing long lines in those areas. Neither the elections in Florida in 2000 nor in Ohio in 2004 can be characterized as free and fair. Mr. Bush’s power rests on election fraud.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush holds that office, whether legitimately or not. At least to humor those few supporters he has remaining, we should seek to remove him from office through legal processes rather than simply storm the White House and throw him and his personal belongings out on the lawn.

We have many reasons to impeach and remove Mr. Bush from office. The grievances of the American people against Mr. Bush include:

Failure, in spite of clear warnings from intelligence sources, to protect Americans from attack on American soil by a specified criminal organization operating in Afghanistan;
Using that attack as cover, entering a conspiracy with other members of the executive branch, including Mr. Cheney, and other foreign leaders, including the Prime Minister of Great Britain, to launch a war of aggression against a sovereign state, Iraq, that was no threat to American security:
- In this, Mr. Bush and his aides implied, with no evidence to support the charge and facts to the contrary, that the government of Iraq was complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001;
- stated repeatedly, with no evidence and facts to the contrary, that Iraq was engaged in a conspiracy with criminal organizations to do harm to the United States or its citizens;
- stated repeatedly, with no evidence and facts to the contrary, that Iraq was in possession of a large biochemical arsenal in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions;
- stated repeatedly, with no evidence and facts to the contrary, that Iraq was actively pursuing a program to construct nuclear weapons;
- disregarding the Charter of the United Nations and the Nuremberg principles in waging the war without cause, provocation or authorization from the Security Council of the United Nations.
allowing his subordinates, including Mr. Cheney, to arrange for government contracts for businesses in which they have a financial stake in conflict with the interest of the American people and taxpayers;
disregarding international treaties, including the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions (1949) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987) in his treatment of combatants, persons residing in occupied territory, those in custody of the government of the United States and in regard to the laws and institutions of occupied nations, in that:

Mr. Bush appointed an administrator to Iraq, a state under occupation by the United States Armed Forces, and directed him or allowed him to alter Iraqi law concerning foreign investment by decree in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention;
denied due process of law for persons held in the custody of the United States government at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, by denying them access to competent council and the right to inspect and challenge evidence against them in criminal proceedings, in violation of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions;
holding protected persons without charge at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions; subjecting prisoners of war and other protected persons to torture or humiliating treatment at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq, in violation of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture;
transfering persons held in custody by the government of the United States to the custody of foreign states where they are likely to be subjected to torture or humiliating treatment, in violation of the Convention against Torture.

Listening to the private conversations through electronic media of American citizens on American soil without a proper warrant from a court of law, in violation of the Fourth Amendment;
detaining American citizens without charge in violation of the Sixth Amendment;
declassifying documents without notification or releasing information in classified documents for personal gain or political retribution in a manner injurious to the security of the United States;
failure to keep infrastructure in repair in preparation for natural disasters;
approval of contracts with foreign companies to supply and service the security of American ports without determining the fitness of those companies to perform said duties, in a manner potentially injurious to the security of the United States.

It is noted the Mr. Cheney, who is next is line to succeed Mr. Bush to the office of the President of the United States, is as much or more an elitist in his philosophy than is Mr. Bushr. To those who say that Mr. Cheney, were he to become President, would be just as much a tyrant as Mr. Bush, if not more so, we note that Mr. Cheney’s name is also associated with many of the misdeeds enumerated above and is also subject to impeachment and removal from office. We are advocating that both be impeached and removed from office. Nothing less will do.

We don’t seek the impeachment and removal of Bush; we seek regime change. The Bush regime reeks of elitism and tyranny. Like King Louis, it must be brought down.

We must also resolve not to stop and pat ourselves on the back and consider it a job well done once the guilty verdicts are announced in the Senate and the Speaker of the House takes the oath of office as President of the United States. There has been much damage done to the American body politic and we will have much work to do in repairing that damage. We must assure that we shall have a democratic rather than an elitist system. We must assure that never again will a mere mortal take the office of President and think that he is above the law. We must assure that never again will a President lie to the people about an alleged national security threat in order to engage in a war for private profit. We must assure that never again will the President say “it isn’t illegal if I do it,” whether he is talking about jaywalking or torture of prisoners of war. We must assure that never again will the President or his aides play politics with national security. We must assure that all citizens have the right to vote and that that vote shall be counted. We have neglected roads and levies and schools to repair. We have terrorist threats with which we must deal in a straightforward and honest way. Above all, we must assure that those entrusted with power are dedicated to open government, human rights, the equality of all citizens and public input to decision making.

Our plan of action is to use the electoral process and make the continuation of these tyrants in office a campaign issue this year. Those who will not at least consider the impeachment and removal of the tyrants and elitists should be targeted for defeat, regardless of political affiliation.

We will use the election as a civics lesson. We will educate voters on why Bush and Cheney and their subordinates should be removed from office as soon as possible. We will educate voters on why they should remain vigilant of what their leaders are doing. Above all, we will educate voters that in a democratic system, they are the ones with the final say in who shall be entrusted with power and what those in power shall do with that power. The power is really ours. The authority is really ours. The leaders are really us. The responsibility is ultimately ours, too.

We know what he must do. Go to the streets and shopping centers now. Go to the churches now. We must urge our friends and neighbors to join us to restore American democracy and make it stronger and more resilient than ever. In November, its on to the polling places. For those who live in areas using electronic voting machines, make sure voting is done by absentee ballot.

We are the people. Make the politicians follow us. Down with tyrants!