A Democratic Congress Fails America
and Shares Responsibility for the War
July 20 David Dienstag
At this point, It is impossible to avoid the constitutional
responsibility of the Congress to impeach this administration in the White
House. They have lied to the American people repeatedly beginning
with a false casus belli as a justification for the invasion of
Iraq. They have asserted preposterous claims of
executive privilege to ward off congressional investigations into
domestic misdeeds. (That privilege was designed to be used for
grave national security threats.) They have arbitrarily defined
the office of the Vice President as NOT a part of the executive
branch to bury correspondence from the VP's office from
archivists and investigators. They have decided that they can spy
on American citizens, set up an extralegal international system
of kidnapping, torture and dungeons at a whim. They have pardoned
Scooter Libby for a conviction for a crime that leads right up to
the Vice President's office. They continually overreach for powers they do not have. Worse, they plan to continue this
pattern indefinitely.
Central to Jezail's argument is the urgency of the
issue of impeachment and the Congress' wrong path in historic and contemporary perspective. If
one only looks at events today in Pakistan, where a
captive civilian government summoned up the courage
to reinstate a judge, directly challenging a dictator,
one can easily see a stark contrast in character with the U.S. Congress. On
the one hand, a captive civilian government, in the face
of routine extralegal arrests and imprisonment, defies
a dictator. On the other, a free Congress deliberately chooses a path that they know will fail in the face of an executive branch that is continually grasping at more power than any previous administration. In fact, this
administration has reached beyond the transgressions of
the Nixon administration which had the good sense to
back down and resign before the legal hammer dropped.
Key players in the Bush White House are retreads from the Nixon
White House and have evidently decided to embark on the
same dark journey. If a previous Congress saw fit to
impeach a criminal Executive for lesser transgressions,
why can't this Congress do so today?
The White House resists timelines and waypoints on an obviously failed
war policy. The state of war is the trigger to unleash
extraordinary powers to the executive branch. The longer the war
lasts, the longer they can claim these powers. White House behavior has done nothing to dispell and everything to reinforce the notion that it wants to prolong and expand a state of war for the purpose of expanding its power in Washington. They cannot even abide by the FISA laws which are widely regarded as being too permissive a path to domestic wiretapping approval. The Bush administration has advised White House council Harriet Miers to refuse to answer questions from a Congressional hearing by preposterously citing Presidential privilege. Nixon didn't even attempt this and that's how White House Council John Dean found himself answering questions in a hearing room. All of this centers around very real questions of White House attempts to purge the entire Justice Department of appointees who were deemed not loyal enough to the White House. As the war rages, this White House busies itself with grabbing and consolididating power by extralegal and undemocratic means. It is no longer
time to debate policies and nuances. It is time to impeach the
whole "GANG". This is not a right of Congress; this is a
responsibility. That is how the framers intended it.
The framers had intended that the office of the President not
become a monarchy. They had a rather bad experience with a
monarchy in their own time. It led to protracted bloodshed, the
American Revolution. War, to them, was not a good thing. It was
to be avoided. This administration deliberately steered right
into one and continue to use this state of war as a reason to reach for ever more power. The framers set up the system of checks and balances to
keep one or the other branch of government from becoming too
powerful but they were more concerned about the executive branch
and wrote extensively about it.
Benjamin Franklin was particularly clear. He identified the act
of a President leading the nation to war on a false casus belli
as a prime reason for Congress to step up to their constitutional
responsibility and impeach the president or the whole "gang". This
is important. Franklin foresaw a situation where an executive
would use the state of war as a cover for reaching to grasp more
power, in particular, police power, and stripping rights from
citizens, as a means to create a monarchy. (Dictators had not
been created by then.)
Yet impeachment is the "I word" on the hill. Instead, Congress
argues endlessly over whether we should or should not get out of
Iraq, have a schedule to get out or give it more time. They talk
in sweeping military generalities that they have little understanding of
themselves. They have become armchair generals while missing vital and obvious diplomatic issues. No one has asked, "What about the neighbors? Don't they
have a stake in this?" Kay Bailey Hutchison has resorted to good
old Republican talking points calling Democratic strategy "cut
and run". If only it were that simple! The Democrats offer a
strategy of a timeline and float the idea of cutting funding. The Congress is looking foolish because they are trying to cut policy which is not what they were designed to do. They have a role, advice and consent, not cutting foreign policy. If
they were serious about changing direction, they would impeach
the gang in the White House. The crimes of this White House are
well established and the evidence is all there. But the entire Congressional conversation is a cover story, a
noise storm deliberately calculated to avoid seeing the more important
issue to Congress - politics.
The coming presidential election is already ramping up.
Presidential elections are getting like Christmas. They are
beginning earlier and earlier. Both Democrats and Republicans are
terrified of the prospect of having an impeachment suck the wind
out of their long election show. It's no longer a show; it's a
mini-series. They have bobbled the war issue and deliberately allowed
this very incompetent administration to continue to do what it
does best, stink out loud. That's why Speaker Pelosi took the "I
word" off the table. It was not an act of kindness or wisdom. It
was pure politics, just like Bush claiming the invasion was not about
oil. Remember how many in Congress agreed with that?
Jezail takes notice that this White House has been changing generals frantically for some
time now. As each new general comes in, and apparently fails to live up to
administration expectations, a new one is selected. Others have
retired rather than serve this administration or implement its
policies. The White House has been very unambiguous about how they
want things to be handled. If you don't get what you want from a
general, get rid of him. If only the American people could do the
same kind of thing!
It's a puppet show and everybody knows it. It's not an accident
that Congress' approval rating is wallowing with the White House
numbers. They deserve it. American kids are dying in ever greater
numbers. Many more are going down a post trauma stress hallway that
will devastate them for the rest of their lives. 10 billion
dollars, we are told, goes down the drain every month. For its part, the White
House has crouched inside a bubble and gone crackers, especially
the Vice President's office—where foreign policy is generated in
this administration. Let's call it Strangelove Syndrome. At the
same time, the planet is spinning toward pretty serious climate
consequences which are being ignored by this White House. One may wonder if, in the near term, Pakistan will display a more vital democracy than Washington. It's time for action, not theater. The Congress needs to do its
constitutional duty and impeach this gang now.