This diary makes the case for concerted action aimed at the resignation of GW Bush, President of the United States. In the past, Bush resignation demands have been viewed as futile gestures, best left to scattered petition drives of grass-roots zealots, while impeachment has been considered the proper focus of serious efforts to remove Bush. I argue that resignation is not only the most practical means of removing the Bush regime from power, but also the most expedient and democratically appropriate course. My argument lays out a plan for coordinated demands for resignation from the Congress, the public, and the press. I believe that the weight of these demands, in conjunction with the formation of a suitable interim government, will be sufficient to force Bush from office before he can further damage our nation.
The case for resignation
Resignations occur commonly in all types of organizations because they are the most efficient way to change leadership. A resignation is the equivalent of a surrender without a battle. Battles are often costly and disruptive, and most leaders will resign once they are convinced that they are unlikely to prevail in a struggle. It hardly matters how voluntary a resignation is. What matters is that a resignation results in a leadership change with a minimum of institutional trauma and disruption.
It is important to remember that President Nixon was never impeached. He resigned because he wished to spare himself and the nation of the pain and discord that an impeachment process would entail.
The urgency of removing Bush
The long catalog of Bush administration malfeasance will be summarized below, but what makes the removal of Bush particularly urgent is the immediate danger that he will launch a new war in the Mideast. Circumstantial evidence regarding military movements, and an increasingly bellicose clamor from right-wing advisors of Bush, point toward a planned war with Iran. Some even maintain that Bush could use nuclear weapons in attacking Iran. To any sane American, the prospect of an unprovoked American nuclear attack on Iran is unacceptable. For this reason alone, it is simply irresponsible to wait for Bush's term to expire, or to commence the lengthy and difficult process of impeachment.
Simply put, Bush is a mentally unstable ticking human bomb. His closest advisors have told him that he should ignore public opinion and attack Iran because he answers only to God. At his whim, he can launch a ruinous war or declare martial law in the United States. He has stated that he can ignore laws passed by Congress, and his theory of the "Unitary Executive" holds that a president can rule by decree in wartime. To protect America against this dangerously delusional leader, Bush should be compelled to resign as soon as possible by concentrating the forces of the Congress, the press, and the public in a coordinated plan.
The futility of investigations and legislative checks
The Bush administration is such a homgeonous monoculture of authoritarian political hacks that any attempt to remove individual malefactors is like removing a few of a shark's teeth. They are quickly replaced with equally harmful successors. Yes, the Democratic Congress now has the power of investigation and subpoena, but this power is incapable of fundamentally altering the character of the phalanx of ruthless and incompetent ideologues that fill the ranks of the Bush administration. Nothing short of a wholesale house-cleaning of all the cabinet departments will restore good government to the Executive Branch. Not a week goes by without some fresh revelation of malfeasance or incompetence in the Bush administration. While the exposure of these problems may be gratifying to Bush critics, exposing them is not the same as remedying them. As long as Bush is allowed to "fix" his own problems, our government will remain broken.
The record of Bush's malfeasance
A quick review of the swath of destruction Bush has cut through America will be a helpful reminder to those who doubt the urgency of removing Bush from office. Each of the following categories of Bush malfeasance could easily be expanded into a volume of detailed damage assessment.
- Administrative incompetence. The gross incompetence of the Bush administration requires no documentation. Throw a dart at any newspaper or magazine and it will hit a story of negligence, corruption, cronyism, or destructive vindictiveness in the Bush administration. From Katrina to Walter Reed, seldom has an American President been responsible for such a long series of wretched failures of management of the people's business.
- Violation of human rights. Under the cover of the "War on Terror," the ruthless suppression of human rights has been a consistent characteristic of this administration. From domestic protesters, to "enemy combattants, to "suspected insurgents," the Bush administration has accumulated a horrific record of illegal and disgusting breaches of human rights, including rape, torture, and murder.
- War crimes. Launching an illegal war of agression against Iraq has led to a consequent cascade of war crimes in our occupation of that country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been imprisoned, wounded, and killed in this misbegotten war. At Guantanamo we hold hundreds of men prisoner under conditions violating the Geneva conventions. They will live or die under the control of President Bush and his "military commission" kangaroo courts.
- Attacks on civil liberties. American citizens have been abused by the Bush administration. Jose Padilla, an American citizen accused of being a terrorist was held for years in a legal limbo and tortured until he is no longer mentally competent to stand trial. American protesters are penned, like cattle, into "free speech zones" far from TV cameras. Americans are targets of illegal spying in gross violation of existing laws. Bush has asserted the authority to declare any Americans to be "enemy combattants," then to arrest, torture, and murder them, with no appeal to justice available. Nothing has been done to check these abuses.
- Corruption. The Bush administration has presided over a cornucopia of no-bid contracts, featuring the unaccountable outsourcing of vast segments of government activities. Mercenary companies, answerable only to their Republican paymasters are now actively involved in staffing government agencies, steadily replacing Civil Service professionals. Decades of reform of government agency staffing have been swept away, and the highest bidder now gets to perform almost any government function, with non-existent accountability. Thus Blackwater provides a mercenary outlaw army in Iraq and Bearingpoint provides a mercenary policy staff in the State Department. Halliburton and countless other politically-connected companies are fattening at the outsourcing trough, and America suffers grieviously from their gluttony.
- Politicization of all policy. Karl Rove uses every lever of Executive Branch power to increase the influence of the Republican party. All personnel decisions are made politically. All policy decisions are made politically. All budget decisions are made politically. Policy has effectively disappeared as a recognizable component of our government. EVERYTHING has become politicized - even the appointment and firing of Federal attorneys, studies of global warming, and NASA presentations on cosmology.
- Undermining our Constitutional government. Bush's theory of the "Unitary Executive" holds that in wartime the President has unlimited powers. He has issued "signing statements" that proclaim his right to ignore any law passed by Congress. Bush's officials regularly lie to Congress, under oath, with no consequences.
The mind reels at the totality of this criminal folly, but it all bears the name of Bush. Only the removal of Bush and the gangster clique he brought to power with him will end these appalling misdeeds. Impeachment is too slow. Waiting until the end of his term is too dangerous. Bush must be forced to resign as soon as possible.
The plan for forcing Bush to resign
The key prerequisite for successfully forcing Bush and Cheney to resign is agreement on an interim national unity leadership for the Executive Branch. Consultations between Democratic and Republican members of Congress should be held to identify a new President, Vice President, and recommended cabinet members for an interim government that would serve out the remainder of Bush's term. Members would be selected from both parties, with a preference for moderates. A panel consisting of the senior members of the House and Senate should select an experienced and respected Republican to replace VP Cheney and eventually to become President. Cheney should then resign. After Bush resigns, the appointed Vice President will become President, and will be expected to name a Vice President (prefereably a Democrat).
The new President will then request the resignations of all cabinet secretaries and install a new cabinet with roughly equal Republican and Democratic membership. These new cabinet officers will be confirmed by the Senate. The new President would be expected to de-politicize the White House by removing Rove and all Rovian operatives from the executive branch.
It may be objected that this process would adopt de-facto the parliamentary model of a vote of no-confidence leading to the Replacement of an American President, and thus break from two centuries of American tradition. So be it. If the alternative is to keep in office a delusional and mentally unstable individual who may launch a disastrous war of aggression at any moment, then a parliamentary purge of the Presidency is the far lesser evil. As long as the departures of Bush and Cheney are resignations, the text of the Constitution will be respected.
Once the composition of the national unity leadership has been determined,an intense coordinated campaign to force the resignations of Bush and Cheney should begin. This campaign would have the following components:
- All members of Congress (so inclined) publicly and jointly call for the resignation of Bush, Cheney, and the Bush cabinet and the installation of the interim unity government, to hold office until the next Presidential election.
- Media organizations explain and support the resignation plan.
- A single national citizen's petition supports the resignation plan.
- State and local governments support the resignation plan
- Democrats halt all legislation, filibustering until the resignation plan is accepted.
- National strikes, of increasing duration, are held until the resignation plan is accepted.
- Economic boycotts, of increasing duration, are held until the resignation plan is accepted.
Removing the Existential Threat to American Democracy
The bogeyman of Al Qaeda is frequently cited by the Bush administration as an "existential threat," something that could destroy America. A ragged band of Islamic fundamentalists could never destroy the nation that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and wore down the Soviet Union. The real existential threat America faces is from the delusional authoritarians of the Bush administration who believe that their mission from God requires the trampling of the US Constitution and the military domination of the world. These individuals are working as hard as they can to turn America into an authoritarian state engaged in an endless Orwellian war.
When Jonathan Schell wrote his epochal book, "The Fate of the Earth," he radically transformed the dialogue on nuclear disarmament by stating the problem not as an international political issue, but in terms of the threat to human survival posed by "nuclear winter." We react to the threat of extinction far differently than to the threat of a political challenge.
Once one understands that the administration of GW Bush is potentially an extinction-level event for American Democracy, the urgency of seeking the resignation of Bush becomes clear. Every day he remains in office, Bush plays Russian roulette with America. How many more times will we let him pull the trigger?