As the movement to end the war fires up, our Congressman Thompson
dutifully re-iterated his stand to get out of Iraq sometime. The last date
he picked was Sept. 31, 2006, which symbolically or not, does not exist in
the calendar. Now is the time for him to join his party’s Progressives who
have demanded a 6 month timeline. (Obscenely, this means another 500 dead
American soldiers and another couple hundred thousand Iraqis.) As for
impeachment, the constituents at a Ferndale town meeting early last year
reportedly heard Thompson admit that he would vote for it.
Thompson has shown a hesitance to really get out front in a
leadership role on the crucial issues of War and Impeachment. This has
caused a Congressional district-wide oversight committee to come into being
with the Jan. 4 demos at his local offices. A crucial demand is that
Thompson spend time during the Feb. recess by scheduling a string of town
meetings in the district, including places like Fort Bragg, Arcata-Eureka,
and Garberville. A few hours spent in a variety of towns fielding questions
and comments from his constituents would set in motion, I believe, a radical
make-over worthy of cable TV. Thompson might emerge looking a lot more like
Barbara Lee of Berkeley than one of those Blue Dog Dixiecrats he hangs out
with in Congress now.
But perhaps the fundamental need here is a Community Backbone
movement. First we demonstrate our backbone as a community, then we send
some backbone to Congress. We can’t expect more from Congress than we
ourselves are willing to deliver. Jan 27 and Jan.29 would be good days to
show our community backbone, shaking it well in demands for immediate
withdrawal from Iraq and for the Cheney-Bush impeachment.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein makes the impeachment of George Bush a
moral imperative.. Impeachment continues to put fire in the eyes of those
of us who want the current regime brought to justice. If we don’t impeach
Bush or force him to resign, it may take a World Court decades to nail him.
By then he should have passed Clinton in the number of Iraqi deaths he has
caused (Clinton bagged a million, 600,000 of them children.) There will be a
plenitude of other deaths for G-Dub’s docket, too, all on our consciences.
G-Dub’s standing as a war criminal is certainly on a par with that of
Milosevic or Saddam. The litany is lengthy: aggressive war, falsified
evidence, violations of the law of the land and international law, torture,
arbitrary detention, invasion of privacy, signing statements, Military
courts, etc. etc.. His buddy Cheney will I think fall faster than Agnew
once a look is taken into the economics of the war. (It would be best to
take the two - Cheney-Bush - together as a package so as to insure the
irony of a Congress member - Pelosi - as our next President. But the
important thing is to demand accountability here and now for real Class A
felonies.)
Such impeachment action might simultaneously preserve and improve the
Constitution. Preserve, because the Presidency needs to be reigned in more
than it did when the radical Republican Reconstructionists shook the throne
of Andrew Johnson. Improve, because impeaching Bush would put a radical
limit on the Imperial Presidency such that it would offer a parliamentary
check on its ability to continue doing evil, much as Jefferson’s impeachment
attempts to clear out the nest of Federalists in the federal judiciary would
have accomplished had it been successful.
Nonetheless, this is not a political crisis, it’s not a moral crisis,
or a constitutional crisis. It’s a fork in the road. The high road is
impeachment/resignation, the low road is accommodation. We don’t want a
repeat of IranContra where the aging Emperor is let off the hook as he
mumbles that he can’t remember (Gerald Ford set the standard when he claimed
he couldn’t remember instigating the genocide of the E.Timorese.)
In Bush’s case there’s no excuse because the mental problems of this
president have more to do with an enlarged reptile brain than with senility.
G-Dub is still dangerous, very dangerous because the Congress has for so
long given tacit, wink/wink approval to the Imperial Presidency to the point
that Congress members no longer think they can exert the power they have.
The murders of luminaries like the Kennedys and MLK, Wellstone and lesser
lights, makes every House or Senate member think they could be such a
target. But the Emperor can’t kill the entire Senate can he, like in the
days of Rome? But if it is that serious, perhaps the Congress will at least
act in self-defense - if we offer them the protection of a vital street
movement.
Paul Encimer