IMPEACHMENT: OR THE TWILIGHT OF OUR DEMOCRACY: A CALL FOR A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO FACILITATE THE IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH AND CHENEY, ETC.

The Twilight of Our Democracy?

When Fascism comes to America
it will be wrapped in The Flag
carrying a cross.”

------SINCLAIR LEWIS------

With the Democrats in the majority in Congress for the first time in 12 years, and after six years of executive corruption and civil liberties suffocation by the Republican administration and Congress, one would think impeachment would be in a “cause-in-the streets” like Vietnam era protest and resistance.

But many progressives and Democrats—even some who have been on the front lines demanding investigations and prosecutions—view impeachment as the wrong approach and a waste of effort.

They say that impeachment can’t take place without Republican backing, which will never happen. They say that impeachment will take time and energy away from more important business, such as getting out of Iraq, lowering taxes, congressional ethics and pulling our budget back into line.

This is a self serving rhetoric of Congressional cowardice that clearly has the Congress being accomplices to every act of Presidential criminal perversion.

These arguments present the smoke screen of a false poorly fabricated spin made dilemma, however. The choice is not between impeachment and Iraq, or impeachment and ethics, or impeachment and the budget. Impeachment proceedings are not the beginning but the end result of a healing process for the nation that needs to begin now.

Impeachment begins with investigations.

The facts supporting the justified, I might say, undeniable obvious legal mandate to move to impeach have already been totally documented, revealed and eloquently articulated on the Internet. The Congress need look no further for the foundations for investigations.

The daily mounting list of criminal wrongs by this administration has been hypocritically ignored by the Republican Congress. The media is simply too afraid of the administration to act responsibly.

They are waiting for all hell to break loose in the streets before they can declare coverage as necessary news. We will be happy to come to their aid.

When you remember what the Republicans did to Clinton over a peccadillo and compare that to the high crimes committed by Bush and his administration, there should not even be an argument over whether to move toward serious investigations with impeachment in mind.

We are not talking bipartisanship; we are talking about law, morals, our Constitution, the essence of the integrity of democratic system, and the hideous destruction of human life.

The charges against this administration are so extensive that there are several books that have make the legal case (John Nichols, Elizabeth Holzman, Center for Constitutional Rights, David Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky, Howard Zinn).

Impeachment groups have formed across the country; at least one major city council, San Francisco’s, passed an impeachment resolution; the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, has issued a 200-plus page report; and there has even a citizens’ impeachment trial, complete with indictment, hearing and verdict.

The grounds for impeachment are far greater now than they were when Congress threatened to impeach President Nixon and there the developing tremendous groundswell for impeachment is such that the newly-elected Congress would do well to heed, unless that is; that they want violence in the streets to justify their need to act.

Congress must start the national healing process by selecting an independent prosecutor. We don’t need another commission to merely make a report that finds some comfortable middle and allows the administration to play the national security card to further hide its wrongdoing.

A prosecutor will be able to gather evidence from all corners, interview those with real information and see the entire picture. He or she can decide, on the basis of the law, where culpability lies and what charges to bring. Given the nature of the Bush administration crimes the task will be of short duration.

Everyone knows the man and his henchmen and woman are guilty as hell. I don’t know why our species is so inclined to drag our feet like looking at a growing, spreading skin cancer on our forehead, waiting for it to bleed before doing anything.

A sitting president or vice president cannot be tried in a court of law, except for Treason, and there are those who are fashioning, with justification of legal basis, out of frustration with Congressional timidity, just that avenue of attack. I would encourage them to continue those efforts.

This is why impeachment is necessary at the end of investigation, when the criminal actions of this administration are formally and legally defined. When an independent prosecutor finds that our leaders have committed crimes, this information must be brought before the House, and that body must vote to bring impeachment charges against them. Then the political option to do nothing will be eradicated by the legal Constitutional requirement to act!

The prosecutor could wait until the officials leave office, but there are strong reasons not to do so. First, our leaders are criminals; they should not be permitted to retain office a day longer; impeachment will stop the criminality and present culture of corruption from continuing.

If we allow criminal officials to remain in office, we are as guilty as they for their crimes.

It is already clear that this administration has severely damaged America’s reputation abroad and undermined our ability to hold other nations accountable to high moral ideals.

Impeachment will ameliorate some, albeit sadly, minimally, of these effects.

Finally, the angry gnawing sense of powerlessness and rage that the American voter clearly expressed in the midterm elections cannot be denied or ignored.

To do so would accomplish precisely what the Bush folks have endeavored all along to accomplish; render American elections as meaningless as any mock election of a Fascist state.

But more than elections are needed to address the festering concerns so many American people are internalizing. An unhealthy, sickening nagging malaise of the spirit, a dark side depression has afflicted this country, and ordinary people—those who are not politicians or journalists or activists or lawyers—have no outlet for these feelings and no sense of remedy.

Sooner or later people simply will not be able maintain control over the illness. Suppression of the frustration and sense of hopelessness is becoming intolerable and dangerous.

People are no longer satisfied with taking it out on some convenient, administration provided scapegoat like immigrants just doesn’t dull the pain, and just about everyone has written that hopeless mess of as pretty much a post election non- issue.

Democracy is about the power of voice, the power of expression, be it verbal, written, song or visual. Everyone has the right to speak and to be heard. The past six years have muffled in fear, silenced in civil rights abuse millions, and merely putting the Democrats (whose track record, since the ascension of would be King George, is not sufficiently better than the Republicans to warrant celebration) back into office will not end the silence or cure the depression or the sense of powerlessness and futility.

Every American knows that crimes, including mass murder have been committed in their name. Are we without a collective conscience as a nation?

I know that many wish that the wrongs would simply fade and all would be as it was before, that somehow it could all be forgotten like a bad dream or nightmare, explained away as one of those temporary depravities of man’s nature that has to be from time to endured, as opposed to confronting the issue and dealing with it forcefully, and maybe painfully for awhile.

Iraq is painful but for so many just in the abstract, and abstracts tend not to motivate one to forceful actions of righteous outrage.

We all know that crimes demand punishment. This administration is high on law enforcement and punishment and vehement in its defense of Capital Punishment; the only complaint Bush had with the execution of Saddam was that it was sloppy, not carried out with Texas-like ritual precision.

Punishment is the only way to even partially repair the damage.

Immediate investigation with an eye to impeachment may also prevent an ill conceived war with Iran. Nothing is going to prevent further tragedy in Iraq at this point. The blood of hundreds of thousands will stain George Bush’s hand in the pages of history.

That is a historical judgment, not a legal prosecution and conviction. Cabinet members facing a criminal investigation and impeachment will think twice before they commit more criminal acts. Many may in fact resign and plea bargain to stay out of prison.

The right wing is already regrouping and launching anew, attacks against Democrats who threaten their belligerent drives. We have the initiative now.

We will lose it if Republicans take the stage and are allowed to divert attention away from the real issues. We will lose if we shy away from every political mouse trap the administration loads up to divert and busy us with political worry.

Damn it; take the issues on head on and attack and resolve some of the lingering legislative issues, and I don’t mean the token 100 hours window dressing issues. That is what America voted for in November. We did not vote for some Tapioca bipartisanship.

We didn’t expect that, and if it take a brawl to get down to the meat of the issues at hand; then let’s get down and dirty and bring it on!

This nation has been deeply injured, but not by the continued threat of terrorism. Instead, we have been afflicted by the criminal acts and methodical executive destruction of our Constitutional system by this administration.

Cancer cannot be healed by being avoided; if we do not root out the causes, this cancer will spread from within.

If we do not find a way to begin healing now and learn to engage again, rise up in healthy national discourse, do battle for our nation now, the Democrats cannot save us; nobody can and our way of life is lost.