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While I wouldn't oppose chimpeachment if it were to develop organically from a robust investigation into Bushco's activities, I don't support it as a goal. To impeach would be to let this crew off way too easily.
It would be a huge energy-suck with a negligible pay-off. Bush and Cheney might be indicted in the House, but as Tim Dickinson points out on the front-page, there is zero chance that Joe Lieberman and 16 other Republicans would vote a guilty verdict in the Senate.
But let's say they did. The process would drag on for more than a year, and then the only remedy that could come of it would be the Bushies' removal from office a few months before their terms end.
These guys stand accused of incredibly serious crimes, including the most serious crime according to the precedent established at Nuremberg: waging a war of aggression. I can't get behind any process that doesn't offer the possibility of prison or other real sanctions. It's a criminal prosecution for war crimes, implementing a policy of torture and violating the Constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Americans that's worth a hard fight.
An impeachment would only focus on process -- did the administration lie to Congress in order to go to war? It would leave unexamined and untouched the underlying questions about the legitimacy, morality and legality of American militarism. It might focus on whether the administration skirted the Geneva Conventions or U.S. laws banning torture, but it would never examine the legitimacy of declaring sweeping executive powers during a time of a pseudo-war on terror. Too many democrats support those things for it to be otherwise.
Consider the lesson of Iran-Contra -- a missed opportunity in very similar circumstances. Greg Grandin recently pointed out that because the fundamental questions about America's involvement in Reagan's "Dirty Wars" were glossed over, the Dems' investigation into the rogue operation was a "disaster":
At the heart of the Democrats' disaster was their unwillingness ever to question North's militarism or Reagan's support for the Contras, whose human-rights atrocities were well-documented. Rather than attacking Reagan's restoration of anticommunism as the guiding principle of U.S. policy, they focused on procedure - such as the White House's failure to oversee the National Security Council - or on proving that top officials had prior knowledge of the crimes.
… just a year after the hearings, Iran-Contra was a dead issue. When Congress released its final report on the matter in November 1988, Reagan breezily dismissed it. "They labored," he said, "and brought forth a mouse."
And criminal prosecution won't follow impeachment -- you can't have both. Polls show that right now Americans favor accountability -- a majority says they're for impeachment because that's the only option they're given. But the process will be a wrenching one, and there won't be the stomach to drag the country through it twice. If Congress were to impeach, that would be that; the conventional wisdom would be that justice was served, the rule of law re-established and the Bush administration brought to heel.
Consider who that would let off the hook: Rumsfeld and Feith and Yoo and Cambone and Gonzalez and Ashcroft and Wolfowitz and a half dozen others. Bush and Cheney would be booted out of office a few months early and all of the rest of the cabal that brought us to where we are today would end up rehabilitated, only to reemerge in some future administration like so many of the veterans of Iran-Contra have.
Now, the truth is that in all likelihood neither impeachment nor a criminal process will come to pass. The sad fact is there is very little chance this bunch will face any serious consequences for their actions. But who knows? Liz Holtzman, who was intimately involved in drawing up articles of impeachment against Nixon, said that in 1972, "nobody -- no Democrat was pushing for it. And, in fact, as the revelations came out, it still wasn't on the table." It was a groundswell of anger from the American people that forced Congress to finally take action, and a similar groundswell might -- might -- lead to a more rigorous judicial process.
I think building that groundswell of anger should be the goal of activists, and pressuring the Democratic Congress to do the hard work of investigating the specifics and developing a case that could later be turned over to prosecutors is the best way to get there. And while they're at it, they have to strip away the immunity for officials whose actions violated the Geneva Conventions that was built into the Torture Bill.
Tagged as: impeachment
Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.
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