B3 note: Good for George McGovern. Good for the Washington Post for running this important timely commentary
in its Sunday edition. Question: how many other papers will run it?
The McGovern piece reminds me of a major political point: that a big reason the Pelosi Democrats in
Washington have so cravenly caved in to the Bush initiatives, on the war and much else, is because Pelosi wrongheadly pulled the impeachment issue off the table before the last election. This meant, among other things, that the Democrats at the first bugle lost their most important bit of muscle and leverage. The result has been disastrous and the war is now surging.
It’s good that Cindy Sheehan is running against Pelosi and will force these issues into the public arena. Maybe, just maybe, Pelosi will be forced to debate Sheehan and will be forced in the November election to conduct a real campaign for the first time in her home territory to keep her Speaker of the House post.
Personal note about McGovern: he comes from South Dakota, a state so conservative that it has outlawed abortions. Its eastern border is l7 miles or so from my northwestern Iowa hometown of Rock Rapids. I have followed him closely through the years. I still marvel that a liberal of his force and eloquence could represent South Dakota for so many years in Congress. Imagine if he were the Speaker of the House.
Why I Believe Bush Must Go
By George McGovern
The Washington Post
Sunday 06 January 2008
Nixon was bad. These guys are worse.
As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have
belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is
to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach
President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign.
I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an
expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
Today I have made a different choice.
Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment.
The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial
partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and
statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the
chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.
But what are the facts?
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses.
They have repeatedly violated the Constitution.
They have transgressed national and international law.
They have lied to the American people time after time.
Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country
to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world.
These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional
standard.
From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team’s assumption of power was the
product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially
challenged – perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed
throughout the Bush-Cheney regime.
The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous,
illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq.
That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many
times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an
estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from
the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their
country.
The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is
expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed
from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9
trillion – by far the highest in our national history.
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that
the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in
violation of international law.
This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional
law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic
torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon
administration.
But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the
case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election.
The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon
presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national
history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of
killing, immorality and lawlessness?
It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived
Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had
nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an “imminent
threat” to the United States.
The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in
the 9/11 attacks – another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I
have recalled Jefferson’s observation: “Indeed I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just.”
The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of
fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the
invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the
illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents.
The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative
members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and
Muslim world – more than a billion people.
Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off
the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries
without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August
that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to
the country and the world.
This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the
Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran.
I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush
invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S.
influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.
Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of
their administration, their policies – especially the war in Iraq – have
increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States.
Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush
and those of his son.
When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George
H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United
Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel
Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost.
Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration
established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international
arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions.
Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten
others.
Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military
occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil
strife.
It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James
A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all
opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral
responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the
Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.
The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: “I
have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this
situation in New Orleans.”
Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the
collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst
natural disaster in U.S. history.
Impeachment is unlikely, of course.
But we must still urge Congress to act.
Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution
to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land.
It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some
of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to
support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray.
This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the
Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, “it wasn’t until the
most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of
hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – and argued that, as Commander in
Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override
our country’s laws – that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as
I did during Watergate…
A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law – and
repeatedly violates the law – thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.”
I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in
the opening decade of the 21st century.
This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a
series of rational presidents and Congresses.
At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult
rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long
enough to see the healing begin.
There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have
sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as
the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II.
We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic
blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.