There's a lot of concern on the Democratic side of the aisle about the mere mention of impeachment of the President and Vice -President of the United States. (Yes. Bear with me. This has to be a package deal, or the task is meaningless.)
The James Webb encounter with the President continues to throw the nature of our President into sharp relief.
Paul Krugman in "Two More Years"extends the analysis of this President by touching on the Webb matter and proceeds to point out the pervasive way in which Bush has intimidated both the White House inner circle and the vast bulk of Beltway insiders. Though Krugman's page is subscription-only, I'll quote significant sections.
"How’s your boy?" asked Mr. Bush.
"I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
"That’s not what I asked you," the president snapped. "How’s your boy?"
"That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President," said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an "independent assessment." If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.
Unsurprisingly, the trumped-up Iraq Commission is an abject failure. So much talk about its recommendations before the election! After all, it is just a commission. Its word does not have the force of law. Essentially, the commission was an anodyne produced to make it appear as though the President was willing to consider options.
Now, after successive visits to Vietnam and the Baltics, it's clear that he's not willing to adjust his failed strategy in any way. Ironically, when questioned in the States, we hear nicey-nice vagueness about the Commission. When he visits other countries and is asked about the issue, we hear very different comments:
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: "We’ll succeed unless we quit."
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush’s character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
Also, in Latvia, Bush inexplicably had this to say:
RIGA, Latvia - The United States will not withdraw its forces from Iraq before its mission of building a stable democracy is complete, President Bush said Tuesday.
"There is one thing I’m not going to do. I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," Bush said in a keynote speech at the University of Latvia just before a summit of the NATO defence alliance.
He said Washington would continue to be flexible and make the necessary changes in its tactics to deal with sectarian violence.
Now he promises to speed the training and handing over of security responsibilities to the Iraqis. Excure me, but isn't that what he said he was doing all along?
It's also abundantly clear that this President will not work with Congress on any issues of substance. The White House policy, which is heavily documented everywhere on DKos, is to resist any form of cooperation even with their own ideological allies, much less a suddenly Democratic Congress and Senate.
Why else is impeachment necessary? First, I wil state what we are for.
What we Believe in
We believe that the government has a legitimate role in regulating business and its markets; a legitimate role in building and promoting infrastructure and scientific research; a legitimate role in promoting the health and safety of its citizens.
We believe in an updated Jeffersonian ideal of keeping one foot rooted in technology, another foot firmly rooted in the earth.
We care about the institutions that this country is founded on. The rule of a just law is a paramount concern. While our nation's history is replete with incidences and social traumas that belie the original ideas that founded this country, we see the system as perfectible and valuable - not as something to be manipulated and commandeered for the heedless pleasure of the entitled few.
We care about our relationships overseas. We bend our efforts to respect all those who respect us, and lend a careful ear to their counsel.
We care enough about our gallant soldiers that we will not spend their lives in combat unless the need is compelling. When the need is compelling, we ensure that none can stand against us. When it is over, we offer a true olive branch to the adversary and endeavor to help them rebuild their society. We have a template for this and it works, in such disparate places as Japan and Germany.
We care most of all about our precious right to discomfort the government and all other powerful institutions of this country through the furthering of a free, unfettered press. An active, antagonistic press, whether analog or digital, is the bulwark standing between untrammelled power and the vulnerable lives of ordinary citizens. Consolidate it, intimidate it, warp it with the clandestine infusion of government funding for false commentarians and the result is ultimately a pale shadow of freedom - both of the press and of the society at large.
What we See
What do we see, six years into the twenty-first century?
We see a President and an entire Administration having gained power illegitimately in two consecutive national elections, using technology and the methods of mass persuasion originally perfected by Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.
This President hands out Medals of Freedom to incompetent administrators and drooling political shills, glorifying incompetence and rewarding errors that will haunt our country for years or decades to come.
We see a President, owning an MBA degree, who is trained in the art of short-term thinking. He thinks nothing of sending an American army group to the other side of the world to fight a war on pretenses whose only epistemological support is propaganda and not a basis in fact. He thinks nothing of spending our hard-won budget surpluses on a war against a foe whose demise was a short decade away.
We see a President whose ability to evaluate talent is limited to promoting toadies and lickspittles to the highest levels of government and counsel, from which positions said individuals wreak incalculable harm on the domestic and foreign interests of our Nation.
We see an entire Administration peopled at the highest levels by those who deliberately avoided service to their country during a divided and tempestuous era, who usurped the title "patriot" and sent our precious soldiers into a needless battle that continues to this day, while targeting decorated veterans of the wars that they themselves avoided, with deeply personal slurs and accusations of treason, when those heroes should have the temerity to publicly speak in opposition.
We see an Administration that rejects all accountability and places its foreign combat expenditures outside the Federal budget to help conceal the true cost of the wars that are bleeding our country dry.
We see an Administration that is compelled to adopt secrecy as the primary tenet of every enterprise in their purview, in an effort to thwart accountability for their high crimes and misdemeanors.
We see a President performing acts that are without precedent in American history: the acquisition of a secret prison network, inherited from the Gulag Archipelago of the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe and former Soviet provinces, so that those who oppose us can be tortured and interrogated by executive ukase to any level deemed necessary.
We see a President who issues direct orders to kidnap innocent citizens off the streets of their own countries and spirit them away under the pretext of "extraordinary rendition" into the maw of the new American Gulag.
We see a President promulgating policies of torture and brutal interrogation techniques in the very countries we invaded on the pretext of spreading freedom and democracy.
We see a President holding prisoners, on his direct orders, for years without arraignment, without indictment and without even the chance to see a judge or legal counsel of any kind.
We see a President, when bluntly contradicted by the Supreme Court of the United States, as in Hamdan V. Rumsfeld, willfully delay and devalue the requirement to comply with the law.
We see an Administration that drifts from catastrophe to shipwreck to disaster, with every event further establishing their complete and utter disregard for the welfare of our country.
We see a President who covers us in shame wherever he goes.
We see a President who freezes in fear when confronted with a crisis.
We see, in short, an entire Administration that warrants impeachment, and a complete auditing of all enterprises under their purview.
We see an Administration actively working to undermine the precious separation of Church and State for the pleasure of a small minority of people who cannot accept differences of opinion and outlook, who openly and publicly wish to impose a theocratic tyranny on our nation while accepting massive government handouts of taxpayer money.
We see a President who politicizes the gathering of sensitive foreign intelligence, the analysis of the budget, the economic forecasts, the reporting of the weather, the stewardship of the forests, and any other governmental agency with the remotest connection to the desires of one of the President's favored pressure groups.
We see a President who utterly failed to manage and govern the rebuilding of a tragically hurricane-destroyed region of our country, placed his chief political adviser in charge of the rebuilding effort, placed billions of rebuilding dollars in the hands of no-bid contractors closely tied to the Vice-President's former corporate employer, and has impeded all efforts to audit and expedite divers aspects of the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.
We see an Administration whose levels of corruption have yet only been hinted at, but through the few signs thus far revealed in the press strongly indicate a level of cupidity and greed possibly unmatched since the Grant Administration. In response to a newly Democratic Congress, the Bush Administration promises a "cataclysmic fight to the finish."
We cannot accept a President that connives to undermine Congressional legislation through the promiscuous application of signing statements, which effectively attempt to turn the President into a monarch, answerable to no one.
This is no longer about ideology. This is about our beloved country, our constitutional republic which is now in the hands of scoundrels who disregard its meaning and treat it and its people like cheap objects of contempt.
It is time for all of us to shrug off the fear and disregard the calumny and the childish rage of our adversaries. It is time for a muscular, forceful but principled and disciplined Democratic effort to recapture our birthright and the stewardship of our nation.
This President is stubborn to the point where he will dare Congress to impeach him.
At some point, I forecast we will have to oblige him.