Impeachment: It’s now or possibly never for Democracy

www.ImpeachforPeace.org
by Mikael Rudolph

Two weeks.

That’s what we have left of the August “Summer District Work Period” – realistically our last local opportunity to push for impeachment while ‘our Representatives’ are home.

If there isn’t a surge of cosigners the week following Labor Day when Congress returns to D.C. onto H. Res. 589 calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and/or H. Res. 333 calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and/or new articles introduced against either of them or President George W. Bush then the likelihood of anything actually moving forward drops off noticeably.

Zero or little progress in this direction wouldn’t be the death of the possibility of impeachment taking place and most certainly shouldn’t lead to the accountability and justice movement’s heat being turned down, but clearly the momentum needed for critical mass to be reached and impeachment proceedings to begin would not have been actualized.

It’s likely now or never.

Unbelieveably, members of the House of Representatives are still arguing with their constituents against impeachment in fear that Cheney will become President, that there are no impeachable offenses on record, that impeachment would be harmful to Democratic Party chances in the “˜08 elections, that impeachment proceedings will extend the Iraq War and that the proceedings would get in the way of important legislation the Democratic Congress is pushing forward.

Facts to educate your under-informed Representatives with posthaste:

1). H. Res. 333 and H. Res. 589, which call for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales respectfully, are the only impeachment resolutions currently filed with the House. There is no resolution in the 110th Congress at this time to impeach President Bush. It makes perfect sense to impeach and remove consigliere Gonzales first to remove the Bush Administration’s criminal shield, then go public with investigations of Cheney. Impeachment of Bush would be a slam dunk after evidence revealed in the Cheney impeachment were front page news across the nation.

2). There have been hundreds of articles written detailing the impeachable offenses of the Bush Administration. One of the best was done in series form by my ImpeachforPeace.org cofounder Jodin Morey, entitled “Bush’s Impeachable Offenses”:

PART 1: Illegal War

PART 5: Illegal Use of Signing Statements

To argue against these facts can only be due to ignorance as a result of intellectual laziness or chronic denial. We of ImpeachforPeace.org have not ever had a single legitimate charge-by-charge challenge of these facts. We can only conclude that they stand on their merits.

3). What is proving most harmful to Democrats in Congress is that they are revealing themselves to be far better enablers of every bad thing the Bush Administration has wreaked upon the world than the honorable defenders of the Constitution they swore an oath to be on our behalf. My own freshman Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) personally saw to it that my 4th Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure died a gruesome death on August 3rd by inexplicably voting “yea, I favor fascism” on S. 1927. It is misguided ‘leadership’ such as this that has many activists and the most extremely politically engaged considering running for office or pushing for third party support across the nation, setting up another “Nader-effect” possibility.

4). The Iraq War will not end while Bush is in office. The House does not have enough votes to override any veto, and the supposed 51-49 Democratic Party majority-led Senate has, for all intents and purposes, a one vote Republican majority while Tim Johnson (D-SD) has been ill, Political Shapeshifter Joe Lieberman (Whatever-CT) continues to be morally bankrupt and President of the Senate Cheney holds the tie-breaking vote. Bush has made clear that American forces will remain in Iraq as long as he is in charge, so impeachment is the only way that we will possibly move toward peace before 2009. Pleading for peace without insisting upon justice through investigations leading to impeachment is akin to supplying an alcoholic with booze and begging them not to drink.

5). Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) grandious promises last November notwithstanding, the only meaningful legislation to have survived Bush’s veto and signing statements is a minimum wage increase. That important gain could only be made at the cost of more ‘blank check’ funding of Bush’s war-profiteering cronies. Far more progressive legislative progress was made during the Clinton impeachment trial.

Educating your Representatives of the impeachable offenses and negating their specious arguments against honoring their oaths isn’t all that you can do. The benefits of pursuing justice and putting honor and integrity before political expediency are legion.

Decades from now, if man is still alive and woman should survive we may find that among the enduring benefits of the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush was that the American electorate, less than half of whom had historically turned out for even the most important national elections, were suddenly made aware that indeed, America had proved to be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’ despite all evidence during the Bush Administration to the contrary. Every good thing the Pelosi-led Congress claims to be fighting for would have the tidal wave of support of the newly enfranchised citizenry.

The Democratic Dream may come to fruition after all. It cannot happen without you. You are the one you have been waiting for.