Peace and Impeachment Are Possible

[davidswanson]

"Are Peace and Impeachment Possible? Strategies for
Saving our Constitution, Economy, and Environment"
By David Swanson
Remarks delivered in Ojai, California, on April 22, 2008

I'm going to talk for a while and then take some questions,
and maybe even some corrections, since unlike the Pope and
George W. Bush I do make mistakes. Our president, as far as I
know, has never admitted a mistake. And of this I am sure, I
have never publicly done anything as brave as what members of
IVAW do in admitting their mistaken roles in Bush's crusade.
Some of them have said that that has been harder than anything
they did in Iraq, and I believe it. They deserve our gratitude
and our support.

Now, the phrase "support the troops" has a bad name,
since it has come to mean "insist on funding war crimes
that the troops wish they could be done with." But I want
to propose a new initiative to support the troops. Let's take
the next little dollop of war funding in the pipeline, the
$178 billion that Congress intends to vote on within the next
month, and let's give it to the troops now stationed in Iraq.
Very roughly that will come out to $1 million per troop. Those
troops that want to use some of that money to fund
contractors, mercenaries, and war profiteers can give some or
all of it back. Those troops that want to contribute to the
general fund to extend the occupation can do so. And those
troops that want to buy a plane ticket home can make that
choice. This may sound crazy to some people, but what sounds
crazy to me is sending young men and women to kill and die for
greed and power and claiming that you're doing it because you
"support the troops."

Happy Earth Day! Global Warming, according to the World Health
Organization, already contributes to 150,000 deaths each year.
Some of those deaths have been in New Orleans over the past
two and a half years, and global warming has had a little bit
of help. In fact there's a nice video of George W. Bush being
warned beforehand about Hurricane Katrina, and another nice
video of Bush swearing he was not and couldn't possibly have
been expected to imagine what was coming. Today, half the
people of New Orleans have not seen any real progress toward
restoring their homes or compensating them for their loss.
Even if you believed Bush's lie that he had no warning, how
can you defend the past two and a half years of failure, of
intentional and racist failure? And how can we look at this
one act alone and not impeach the president?

Bush is spending Earth Day in New Orleans, working with Canada
and Mexico to use NAFTA as a tool to eliminate such
troublesome laws as those that protect the environment. Can
you imagine anything more arrogant? I don't know... maybe if
he... openly admitted to approving of torture or something
like that? Next Saturday is the White House correspondents
dinner. Maybe Bush will joke about hunting for Weapons of Mass
Destruction in his office again.

Bush attended a church service last week, and his staff talked
with the minister beforehand to make sure, not only that he
wouldn't touch on unpleasant topics, but that he would praise
the president. In fact, I kid you not, maybe it was the Pope
being in the country or something, but they asked the preacher
to compare Bush to a saint. To his credit, the good minister
agreed, but when he got up and gave his sermon, at the end he
said, "We are honored to have been joined this week by
our president. He is a dishonest, duplicitous, murderous
criminal, responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis,
not to mention the millions around the world who could have
been saved with the trillions of dollars he has wasted on
killing, torturing, and turning the world against us, but
compared to Dick Cheney, he's a saint."

OK, that's not really true, but how can we not start with the
guy in charge, with the convener of the secret energy task
force that established our energy and war policies behind
closed doors? How can we not start with the man who told jokes
about global warming at last week's Radio and Television
Correspondents Association dinner? How can we not begin with
the Vice President for torture, Dick Cheney? How can we not
impeach Cheney first?

The words "global warming" should call to mind a
different vice president than the one they usually do, because
Dick Cheney more than any other individual can take credit for
worsening the impact of global warming. And he jokes about it.
And the members of the broadcast media laugh with him. Well,
not WITH him. He doesn't laugh. He just sort of breathes
heavily.

But why does the media laugh? Maybe the impact of global
warming is not felt in Disney Land. The Disney Corporation's
presidential primary debate last week was unable to squeeze a
single question on global warming into a debate focused on
fascistic questions about religion and flags. Yes, I said the
F word. It's hard to see fascism in a flag when it's our flag.
It's hard to see fascism in religion when it's our religion.
Here we are in a town that used to have a German name and
changed it as I understand around the time of World War I, but
changed it to a name originating with the native people of our
own country against whom we had committed genocide. We have
stationed 1,000 U.S. military bases in other people's
countries around the globe in the name of spreading democracy.
We are not a people much given to irony.

But occasionally we see through the fog of war. Someone
recently told me that he was certain we would eventually have
peace on earth, he just hoped humans would be around to enjoy
it. There are two major threats to that possibility. One is
nuclear war and the other is global warming. Remember when our
nukes were supposedly intended purely for the purpose of
destroying the Soviet Union several thousand times if it nuked
us first? The Soviet Union has been gone for nearly two
decades, and we have more nukes than ever, and we now threaten
to use them first and to use them anywhere. U.S. Strategic
Command in Omaha, Nebraska, claims the ability to destroy any
spot on the planet within 60 minutes, and does not strictly
separate conventional from nuclear weapons in its planning.
Happy Earth Day!

Mikhail Gorbachev tried to negotiate nuclear disarmament with
Ronald Reagan, but Reagan wouldn't do it without Star Wars,
without his so-called "missile defense" system. That
boondoggle is still around, although its ability to defend
against an attack has never been demonstrated. Its usefulness
in aggressive war is not in doubt, however. We're now trying
to impose new bases on a number of nations around the world as
part of a so-called missile defense system, including the
Czech Republic and Poland, the main result of which has been
to enrage the people of the Czech Republic, Poland, and
Russia.

At a House Oversight subcommittee hearing last week, Lisbeth
Gronlund, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists said of missile defense: "The program offers
no prospect of defending the United States from a real-world
missile attack and undermines efforts to eliminate the real
nuclear threats to the United States."

Gorbachev last week made some perceptive comments as well,
including these:

"[J]udging from the USA’s military budget, your nation
seems to be at war with the world, and I sense that the
American people don’t like this at all. The size of your
weapons budget is larger than it was at the peak of the Cold
War, and larger than all of the rest of the nuclear nations
put together. Why do you continue to build these weapons? This
is amazing to me!"

Our approach to nukes over the past several years has
encouraged other nations (like Korea) to acquire them and
assisted other nations (like India) in acquiring them. Nuclear
weapons are proliferating when they should be reduced and
eliminated, because we are violating the nonproliferation
treaty and encouraging others to do so. But the fact remains
that up until the moment some nut pushes the first button (why
does a certain Senator from Arizona come to mind?) nuclear
weapons can all be rounded up and destroyed and security
restored to the earth.

That's not necessarily true with global warming. There is such
a thing as arriving too late. At some point it will no longer
be possible to avoid spiraling destruction that builds on
itself. Already we are losing ice that cannot be refrozen,
species that cannot be re-evolved (or re-created or whatever
it is Bush supporters believe happened when God made
everything in the 1950s or whenever it was). Ecosystems are
already gone forever. At some point soon it will be too late.
Throwing away the past seven years strikes me as a more
suicidal act than anything we did during the Cold War.
Pretending the next nine months do not exist is part of that
same suicidal behavior. The time to begin reversing our energy
policies is now. The time to make that shift a focus of our
national government is now. The time to admit that the next
nine months exist and matter is now! The time to impeach
Cheney and Bush is now!

There's a parallel to the destruction of New Orleans in Iraq.
Even if you believe it was justifiable to invade a foreign
nation, even if you believe the documented lies were
well-intended blunders, even if you suppose that Bush had no
possible way of knowing the Iraqis would fight back (and you
ignore the fact that he ended the careers of those, like
General Shinseki and Larry Lindsey who warned him), how can
you defend the past five years of taking a disaster and
intentionally making it ever worse? How can we look at that
one act alone and not impeach the president? This one act, the
occupation of Iraq, more than all the others combined, has
contributed to giving Bush and Cheney the all-time records for
presidential and vice presidential unpopularity.

But of course there's one thing in Washington that's even more
unpopular than Bush and Cheney. If the opposite of pro is con,
then the opposite of progress is....

The occupation of Iraq does not belong exclusively to the
White House. Congress has allowed it and funded it for over
five years, and if WE don't do something, by this time next
month we'll be able to say they've funded it for over SIX
years.

Well, sure, you might say, Congress is responsible too, but
everything is run by parties now, and the Republican party is
to blame for everything. Except that the Senate was in the
hands of the Democrats when it gave Bush and Cheney the green
light to attack Iraq. And both the Senate and House have been
in the hands of Democrats for the worst of the occupation,
which has occurred since January 2007.

Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the
occupation of Iraq, well over 4 million more have been made
refugees, and Iraq has no more been reconstructed than New
Orleans. Most of the money appropriated for reconstruction has
been spent on killing instead. Is there anything more shameful
than the bipartisan demand that the Iraqis start paying the
bill for our destruction, occupation, and reconstruction of
their country? That's the tough talk coming out of the
Democrats in Washington. I saw Hillary Clinton roundly booed
for blaming the Iraqis at a conference in DC a year and a half
ago, but that is the Democrats' strategy today.

The one thing we know about Iraq is that each year is worse
than the one before it. At least 80 percent of Iraqis have
always said that the violence would go down if the United
States got out. And here Bush and Cheney are not alone in
their arrogance. A great many Americans assume that the Iraqis
must be wrong about their own country. And why? Well, because
the same lying chicken hawks who told us about the stockpiles
of WMDs and ties to 9-11 and robot planes attacking us in 45
minutes and risks of mushroom clouds say the Iraqis are wrong.
Who are you going to believe, the people who live there or the
people whose own defense is that they have accidentally gotten
everything catastrophically wrong so far?

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were pretty open in
their testimony earlier this month, not to mention last
September, about having no plan and predicting no success. And
listen to these words:

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has
achieved the status of a major war and a major
debacle....Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies
has fallen. Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by
the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and
various issues concerning the treatment of detainees....[O]ur
efforts there were designed to enhance U.S. national security,
but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for
terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence
throughout the Middle East....[S]enior national security
officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude,
exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining
might have had a better effect."

I've just been reading excerpts from a paper just released by
the National Defense University, which is the Pentagon's
premier educational institution. The New York Times this week
published a shocking scoop of a story, reporting that retired
generals who gab on television actually support the war
machine. I'm shocked! Contrary to the New York Times' spin,
generals who have not just been fed the latest line from the
Pentagon are NOT the ideal objective commentators. And,
whether or not the Times ever breaks the story, we can be sure
that the paper I just quoted from would not have been released
without support from inside the Pentagon.

In last week's Disney debate, Obama and Clinton were not asked
about global warming or nuclear disarmament, but they WERE
eventually asked about Iraq by debate moderators Pluto and
Goofy. Specifically, they were asked whether they would dare
to withdraw any troops from Iraq if military officials advised
against it. Bush, of course, gets rid of anyone who won't do
exactly what Cheney says, but publicly he claims to be taking
his orders from his generals. To their credit, both Obama and
Clinton pointed out that we are supposed to have civilian
control of the military. But they were not asked what I would
have asked them, what many of you might have asked them. I
would have asked them how in the world they can go on claiming
to oppose the occupation of Iraq while funding it? Do they
plan to vote no on the next $178 billion, and if so, is that
just theatrics or will they lobby Harry Reid not to bring it
up and lead a filibuster to block it?

The occupation has gone from bad to worse to a disaster of
biblical proportions. We've driven far more people out of the
Garden of Eden than God ever did. We've borrowed every dime to
do so, and our grandchildren will have to pay China back so
heavily that they'll be lucky if they can shop at Wal-Mart,
which will of course mean paying China back with interest plus
some. Remember how horrible it was when the US death count
reached 2,000 and then 3,000 and then 4,000? Well, the US
death count since the Democrats took control is well over
1,000 and likely to far surpass 2,000 during the time frame
they are about to fund, if we don't stop them. The Iraqi death
count is not only many times higher, it's also rising more
sharply. Our dramatic increase, of late, in the use of air
power in Iraq is one reason that Iraqis' deaths do not always
parallel Americans'. The little reported air surge is one
reason U.S. deaths in Iraq are not higher. Other reasons for
the temporary lull in our import of flag-draped coffins in
late 2007 included purchased cease-fires and ethnic
segregation. This could not possibly have made for, and did
not make for, a lasting peace.

Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and marines are
suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and/or from
brain injuries from roadside bombs. Tens of thousands have
more visible wounds. 4,039 in a recent count are dead, not
counting those who return home and then kill themselves
(officially 18 veterans per day). Of those 4,039, a full 3,900
have been killed since the Mission was Accomplished, 3,578
since Saddam Hussein was captured, 3,180 since power was
transferred to the so-called Iraqi government, 2,602 since the
Iraqis' so-called election, and 1,200 or so since a so-called
opposition party took control of the first branch of our
government in Washington, D.C. Two other things that do not
parallel each other are the violence in Iraq and the U.S.
media coverage of it. In fact, as things have gotten
progressively worse, the media coverage has dwindled away.

Luckily, our representatives in Congress and our candidates
for president listen to us rather than to the media, and are
so opposed to the occupation of Iraq that, rather than funding
a withdrawal, they are now proposing to fund the continuation
of the occupation, as is, for the rest of Bush and Cheney's
terms plus a big chunk of the next administration / Congress.
Suddenly $102 billion is $178 billion, and no committee
hearing is needed - they'll rush it straight to the floor.
Except that, unlike that loaves and fishes routine, somebody
will have to pay for this - pay China for this money we're
borrowing - and that somebody will be our grandchildren.

This started me thinking about some of the things I strongly
oppose and how I could better express my opposition. I've
decided, in fact, to get a new mortgage on all the equity
we've got in our house, and at the same time to max out three
credit cards. I'm going to take all the money and donate it in
equal shares to: Exxon, Halliburton, Blackwater, and four
different health insurance companies. (I thought about giving
some of it to cable and network news corporations, but then I
realized that the fiercest opponents of those companies give
them hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising whenever
we have an election, so I already contribute by supporting
progressive groups.)

Already I feel so much better! I may not have put an end to
Exxon, but I've expressed my opposition to it in the clearest
possible terms, by ruining my family for generations in order
to give Exxon money. That ought to be worth something in my
next campaign for head of household. And, in case I decide to
oppose anything else in the future, I'm looking into the
possibility of stealing a huge amount of money from a charity
organization near my home.

The genius of our congressional leaders has inspired me. I
wonder if you truly grasp the brilliant complexity of their
latest maneuver. Not only can they guarantee the funding of
more slaughter for more months this way, not only can they
move the goal posts so that defunding the occupation by
refusing to bring it up or voting No or filibustering is
completely off the playing field, not only can they kiss up to
the television networks and war profiteers in such an abject
manner that they are guaranteed another masochistically
thrilling ass-kicking, but - and this is the true genius of
the move - they can boost the plausibility of an election
theft by an insane senator from Arizona who will fund the
occupation for 10,000 years without himself even realizing
that he "opposes" it!

Genius.

And yet there remains this fringe leftwing moonbat group
consisting of about 80% of Americans who oppose the occupation
of Iraq in the ordinary sense of not wanting to waste
trillions of dollars keeping it going. And, remember, the true
cost of the occupation includes interest, care for veterans,
the increased price of oil, and other major elements placing
the total in the trillions according to the calculations of
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.

And yet, what can we do? We're pretty helpless, right, we poor
hundreds of millions of Americans who are still sane - we
don't have any power, do we? They beat us at every turn, don't
they? Our best hope is to turn the Democratic Party into a
close approximation of the Republican Party in hopes of
winning like they do, right, and then after the elections when
we aren't needed anymore somehow turn the Democratic Party
back into something else again - something we actually like,
something people would actually vote for.

Are we so helpless as all that? Aren't we the people who
created the single biggest day of global protest prior to the
invasion? Didn't we block the legalization of the invasion at
the United Nations, making the invasion the supreme
international crime? Didn't we force the Cheney-Bush gang to
come up with a pile of lies to justify the invasion? Didn't we
expose those lies? Didn't that help forestall an invasion of
Iran, at least so far (although it's a safe bet some of that
$178 billion will be misappropriated if they still decide to
do it)? Didn't support for the war and the president plummet
just behind awareness of the lies that we exposed? Aren't we
in touch with each other and our allies around the world
through the internet, informing people that Americans do not
support the slaughter? Isn't global warming a top issue for
Americans even though unheard of in the media? If you think we
have no power, consider this. Last week, Senator Hillary
Clinton gave the peace movement credit for her defeat. She
hasn't conceded, but mathematically it's over. She was
speaking specifically about her losses in caucuses, when she
disdainfully referred to us as "the activist base of the
Democratic Party." According to Clinton, these activists
"turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by
their view of [my] positions, and it's primarily national
security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree
with them. They know I don't agree with them."

Any third party should consider that a ringing endorsement. A
Democratic senator who wants to be president declares that the
problem with the Democratic Party is that it has too many damn
active supporters. You know what? Maybe it does. Maybe the
third parties do too. Maybe the entire mad election disease
should be contained, and citizens should put a little bit of
focus on running the country in between elections. Maybe in
the end, that would give us better candidates and elections
too.

In 2006, we elected a new Congress to end the occupation of
Iraq. Even the corporate media understood and admitted that.
We gained enormous strength through that effort, which was
primarily accomplished by the peace movement, not by electoral
campaigning. But the so-called leadership of the new Congress
immediately announced that it would never use its power, the
power of the purse, to end the occupation. And huge segments
of the peace movement shrieked in terror, crawled quietly into
abandoned voting booths, and stood crowded in there shaking
and shivering for the past year and a half. Some made their
position opposition to escalating the war, after having just
won a landslide demanding the de-escalation of the war. If
2008 ends, and Congress has done nothing to end the occupation
of Iraq, the power we gained by electing them to do so in 2006
will be gone. If we cannot hold elected officials to their
commitments, why should they bother even making them next
time?

We don't know who the next president will be or who will be in
the next Congress, but we do know that whatever the answers
are to those questions, the occupation of Iraq will not end
unless we push for it. And we know that it takes time to build
momentum and awareness in a push for change. If we keep
shutting down our movement for a year or more every two years,
we will never win. If we keep pushing forward as citizens
rather than as the pawns of one political party, we will win.
We might even win right away. We might not win for a long
time. But we will certainly win sooner than if we pause in our
work.

I'm fond of the saying "Let's save our pessimism for
better times."

I also read an important remark online recently that was
attributed to I.F. Stone:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you
are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose
and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you
do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major
fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be
willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it — to go right ahead
and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like
a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it."

That means continuing to push Congress to listen to us even
when there is an election within two years. (Guess what? There
is always an election within two years.) It also means
advancing the crucial work in high schools of
counter-recruitment, at which activists in many school
districts have been very successful. And it means recognizing
but not succumbing to the triumph of what this nation's
founders called Factionalism.

Our Constitution does not mention political parties, and our
founders feared their influence. Most congress members today
have almost no concern for what powers the Congress maintains
as against the White House, but have extreme concern for
whether the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican.
This mindset facilitates the transferring of still more power
from the legislature to the now misnamed executive. This means
that for peace or impeachment to happen requires the approval
of the Democratic leadership and of Senator Obama. And that
means that we need to bird-dog Obama until he gets it right,
not in order to defeat him but in order to push him to
positions that will make possible a landslide. I don't know
how many of you have noticed how votes have been counted in US
elections in the past seven years, but I am convinced that
Obama can only take the White House with a landslide. A narrow
victory won't work.

One way to get a landslide would be for Obama to lead a
filibuster against the occupation funding. He could still fund
a withdrawal if he thought that kissing up to the media
required such a superfluous gesture. But when he debated
McCain, he would be able to take an opposing position and not
see it easily dismissed. If the Democrats fund another year
and a half of slaughter, the only people who benefit will be
war profiteers and third party candidates. Republicans may
benefit too, since Democrats make themselves look weak every
time they refuse to stand up for what they supposedly stand
for.

If the Democrats fund more slaughter, they will probably also
take another step that makes them look even weaker. They will
actually legalize the occupation of Iraq. While the invasion
was illegal under the UN Charter, while Bush misappropriated
funds to begin it in secret, while Congress never properly
declared war, while the war crimes have included the illegal
targeting of civilians, journalists, ambulances, etc., and the
use of illegal weapons of mass destruction, etc., the United
Nations has given one level of legal cover to the occupation,
and that legality expires on December 31st. Congress can allow
a further level of illegality to be added and leverage it into
an end to the occupation, and we can really party this New
Year's Eve like it's 1999 and the nightmare is over. Or
Congress can allow Bush and Maliki to negotiate an
unconstitutional treaty to give new cover to the occupation,
something Maliki may already have killed by allowing the Iraqi
Parliament to reject it. Or, and this is the worst option so
you can be pretty sure they'll choose it, Congress can work to
renew the UN fig leaf or provide a new one of its own.
Democratic strategists will find this approach appealing and
in accord with their double policy of doing everything people
oppose in order to win an election in a way that allows them
to avoid immediately doing anything that people want.

Of course, we can fantasize about how great Obama will be as
president, and explain his lack of greatness now as necessary
catering to the corporate media. Norman Solomon thinks Obama
is secretly FDR and points out that FDR didn't sound good in
his first campaign. I'll admit that gives me hope, but FDR's
policies evolved in response to activism, strikes, and
people's movements. FDR told A. Philip Randolph he'd support
his requests if Randolph went out and organized a movement
that made him do so. If we want Obama to be FDR, we'll need to
start now organizing the required activism. We don't have time
to waste volunteering for a campaign that is not yet taking
winning positions. If possible, we will force Obama to take
better positions prior to the election, which will help him
win. If possible, and it is entirely possible, we will end the
occupation funding this month, guaranteeing huge popular
support or whoever in Congress helps bring the troops home
alive.

But, I have to tell you, I place saving human lives ahead of
any election, and I place saving our democratic republic ahead
of any election. I think it's more important that future
presidents and vice presidents have to obey laws than who the
next president is. And I think there is an urgent need to
reestablish the rule of law as soon as possible.

Imagine if one of the Ojai City Council Members were
discovered to be accepting bribes, handing out public dollars
to his friends, and torturing children in the basement. Would
an appropriate response be "How awful, but you know he's
retiring in another nine months and those children are used to
being tortured by now anyway?" That response is not even
imaginable.

But when the crime becomes larger and less intimate, when we
begin discussing hundreds of thousands of murders and
countless cases of torture carried out at a distance by loyal
underlings, all of a sudden our conviction that accountability
is called for becomes less absolute. Why, though, should the
need for accountability shrink as the crime grows? This makes
no sense to me and would have made none to the authors of the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and our poor
battered Bill of Rights.

Our First Amendment has been locked up in a chain-link Free
Speech Zone. The Fourth Amendment is under warrantless
surveillance and scared for its life. The Fifth, Sixth, and
Seventh Amendments have been detained without charge. And the
Eighth Amendment is presently undergoing waterboarding.
Restoring our Bill of Rights would be a positive step, not
personal, not revengeful, not backward looking. Without these
protections we won't get very far.

While I consider impeaching Bush and Cheney more important
than an election, even if it is the fifth consecutive Most
Important Election in Our Lifetime, I am sick of hearing
misinformed nonsense about how impeachment would hurt the
Democrats in the election. That's what they said when they
refused to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra. Then they lost.
When they went after Nixon, they won. When the Republicans
went after Truman, they won.

When the Republicans impeached and tried Bill Clinton against
the will of a huge majority of the public, they held both
houses of Congress and took the White House, losing a few
seats in the Senate which had acquitted. Some of the
impeachment leaders won with bigger margins than they had
before, and Al Gore was put on the defensive to such an extent
that he chose impeachment-advocate Joe Lieberman as a running
mate and pretended he'd never met Bill Clinton.

After the Whigs attempted to impeach Tyler, they picked up
seven seats, and Tyler left politics. Weeks after he lobbied
for Johnson's impeachment, Grant was nominated for President.
After pushing toward impeachment for Polk, Lincoln was elected
president. Keith Ellison, who introduced a resolution to
impeach Bush and Cheney into the Minnesota state legislature
in 2006, was subsequently elected to Congress.

And this notion that impeachment would turn Cheney and Bush
into figures of sympathy? I don't have words to express how
insanely self-defeating and defensive that is. If Democrats
could imagine playing offense, it would take them about 10
minutes to realize that impeachment hearings on torture and
signing statements and refusal to comply with subpoenas and
the rest of it would be deadly for John McCain's campaign. Can
you imagine McCain defending crime after crime while promising
not to commit them and explaining his past flip-flops? You
wouldn't even have to take an impeachment vote. Just hold the
impeachment hearings.

John Conyers' latest excuse for not moving forward on
impeachment hearings is that it might hurt Obama's campaign.
Obama was asked recently in Philadelphia about impeachment,
indictment, and accountability for Bush and Cheney. He
suggested that he MIGHT investigate their crimes AFTER we
elect him president, and that he MIGHT prosecute them
"if" they were found to have committed crimes.
"If"? "If"? That word may become as famous
as Dick Cheney's "So?" At every stop Obama makes on
this endless campaign, people should hand him copies of John
Conyers' "The Constitution in Crisis," a book you
can buy in most bookstores which documents a long list of
criminal offenses committed by Bush and Cheney.

Yes, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is selling
books on Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses while refusing
to impeach them.

Does Obama disagree with the book's conclusions? Does he have
a response to Bush's public confession to violating the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Does he question the
two Government Accountability Office studies that have found
that in a significant percentage of cases, when Bush has
announced his right to violate laws through signing
statements, he has proceeded to violate those laws? Does Obama
now believe the invasion of Iraq and everything that came with
it was possibly legal? Was the February 7, 2002, order from
Bush allowing the torture of detainees a legal act?

If Obama were to quietly allow impeachment hearings on Cheney
or Bush to proceed, he could put McCain on the defensive.
Impeachment hearings could squeeze out all coverage of
nonsense pseudo issues. And if the American public understood
that voting for Obama would put Bush and Cheney behind bars,
and understood it while there's still time to register new
voters, you would see a landslide that could not be denied.

But isn't it too late for impeachment?

Why? The movements to impeach Truman and Hoover, and the
impeachment of Johnson, happened later than where we are now.
How can it ever be too late to establish that future
presidents and vice presidents will be required to obey laws
and the Constitution? Without impeachment, what is the best
possible scenario? Presidents with complete integrity for a
number of terms, and then a real dictator who chooses to seize
on the Bush-Cheney precedents.

Besides, there is nothing for Congress to do other than
impeachment. Ending the occupation requires NOT doing
something. All other issues, including addressing global
warming, are impossible. They can be engaged in for show, and
they have been for the past year and a half. But every good
bill is vetoed and every mixed bill is signing statemented.
And every non-impeachment investigation either displays
evidence of crimes and then doesn't act on it, or gets
stonewalled with denials of requests, subpoenas, and even
contempt citations.

Nixon's impeachment took three months. Clinton's impeachment
and trial combined took four months. Cheney's impeachment
could take 10 minutes if desired. Just pick an indisputable
offense such as refusal to comply with a subpoena, something
the Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment for
against Nixon. Or Cheney's impeachment could take weeks or
months if desired. Just beginning it would be a victory and
would make an attack on Iran less likely.

Using impeachment to put the White House on the defensive
might allow changes in other areas as well, including the
economy and housing. Millions of families are likely to lose
their homes in the United States in the next nine months,
thanks to Bush regulators' management of the banking industry,
and thanks to the growing Bush-Cheney recession, which appears
to be the result in part of the outrageous expense of
occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader perverse effect
on the economy of having made weapons our top export and
weapons making our biggest public investment.

The weapons industry is not competitive. With cost-plus
contracts, the longer it takes and the more it costs, the
bigger the profits. And once the stockpiles exist, the best
way to justify building more is to use up the weapons you've
got. Meanwhile, all other industry is allowed to whither away.
Technological spinoffs from our huge public investment in the
military generally have to be manufactured elsewhere. And even
public investments in things like mass transit have to create
jobs in other countries, because the only thing we know how
make anymore is weapons. Shifting our public investment from
weapons to green energy, infrastructure, and transportation
would benefit our economy as well as our environment.

According to a report from Oil Change International, projected
total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the
global investments in renewable power generation that are
needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming
trends. In 2006, the US spent more on the war in Iraq than the
whole world spent on investment in renewable energy. Obama has
committed to spending $150 billion over 10 years on green
energy. We'll spend that much on killing Iraqis in the next
nine months.

Right now nothing can be done in Washington because any good
bill would be vetoed. Only impeachment is possible. You can
imagine something else to be more realistic, more plausible,
more viable, but I would challenge you to explain what it is
and how it will not get vetoed.

We should join with the Congressional Progressive Caucus in
insisting that if any bill is brought up to fund the
occupation of Iraq it not also include domestic spending. We
don't need to give anyone excuses to vote for war.

We should demand No votes, and should all phone Pelosi and
Murtha urging them not to bring any more money for Iraq to a
vote at all. We should call the Obama campaign with the same
message.

We should thank Brad Sherman of California's 27th district for
his recent letter to Conyers urging an investigation of
torture, and we should challenge Sherman to join his
colleagues who are urging Conyers to open impeachment
hearings.

We should support the campaign of Mary Pallant in California's
24th district, a pro-impeachment Democrat challenging Elton
Gallegly.

We should thank Lois Capps for signing onto John Conyers' bill
for an impeachment investigation during the last Congress and
ask her why the addition of two more years' worth of crimes to
the record has led her to back off.

We should thank Henry Waxman for sending the White House so
many thousands of challenging letters and make sure he knows
that we know the White House has been laughing at him for a
year and a half. He can support impeachment or continue
spitting into the wind.

We should take our so-called economic stimulus tax refund
checks and sign them over to pro-peace and pro-impeachment
candidates with a note explaining why, and photocopy them and
send those photocopies to other candidates and leaders with a
note explaining why they aren't getting any.

We should join on May 1st in solidarity with the Longshore and
Warehouse workers and other unions, with immigrants rights
groups, with the peace and impeachment movements, and skip
work that day to protest. We should all go at high noon on May
1st to our congress member's nearest office and tell them that
our Constitution demands impeachment. And post that you plan
to do so at http://democrats.com/mayday

We should remember what Albert Camus said of a man who rolls a
rock endlessly up a hill: One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

[G_j]

1. thank you, K&R