Impeaching Bush. Enough is enough...by an Egyptian prof

[Gloria]

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/776/op2.htm

Impeaching Bush
Enough is enough. Before George W Bush leads the world into greater catastrophes yet, he should be legally removed, writes Hassan Nafaa*

The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.

Perhaps more than any other in the world, the US system of government is equipped with robust methods for enforcing the application of and respect for the rule and processes of law. The best testimony to this was the Watergate scandal. On 27 June 1972, the FBI arrested five individuals caught in the act of planting wiretaps in the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate building in Washington. When the trail of evidence surrounding this illegal activity led directly to the Oval Office, Congress initiated impeachment proceedings against the president. Anticipating the inevitable conclusion of those proceedings Richard Nixon tendered his resignation in August 1974.

Nixon had been no run-of-the-mill president. It was he who had brought an end to the Vietnam War, normalised relations with China and augmented the US influence in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab- Israeli War of October 1973. None of these achievements came to his aid at the time of the Watergate hearings, especially when it came to light how brazenly he had lied to the American people who, in November 1972, had elected him to a second term of office, which would have ended in 1976.

One cannot help but admire a system of government that is so well equipped with mechanisms for investigating misconduct on the part of the holder of the highest office of the land, and unseating him if necessary. When one compares Nixon's misdeeds with those of Bush today, one cannot help but to wonder whether these mechanisms will be set into motion again, thereby delivering the people of the US and the rest of the world from his immense evils.

Naturally, this is not the first time this question has occurred to me. However, whenever I started to contemplate it before I felt that my personal feelings were getting the better of me and dismissed it. I have this set image of Bush being deficient in thought and probably innately deficient in mind. Until November 2004, I entertained the hope that the American people would not re-elect this president. At the time I wrote, "if the American people renew their confidence in Bush, their decision can only mean one thing: that the immune system of the American political system has broken down and that American democracy has succumbed to viruses of the neo-conservatives who will not release their grip on it until it dies. If, on the other hand, the American people decide to oust the current president, whom they have tested over the past four years, this decision will herald the end of the age of the neo-cons and, perhaps, the beginning of the collapse of their evangelistic imperialist project."

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including comments on how Bush got religion, the Neocons, etc. etc. all in one short, sweet, succint piece