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Impeachment
is not off the table
by Peter Phillips
House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi declared on national television, “impeachment is off the
table.” Impeachment, it seems, is too divisive for a 2008-oriented
Democratic Party leadership and will interfere with the business of
Congress over the next two years.
The Democrats seem to be giving a pardon to Bush and Cheney without
even having a trial. Impeachment is the people’s option to end
corrupt government. According to the Lancet Medical Journal,
650,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the start of the US invasion.
US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods have caused over a third
of these deaths including whole families — children, grandparents,
moms and dads.
We now know that Bush and Cheney lied about the weapons of mass destruction.
According to the Downing Street Memos from July 2002: “Military
action was [in order to justify the invasion of Iraq] seen as inevitable...justified
by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD...the intelligence facts were...fixed
around the policy.” Bush and Cheney misled the American people,
frauded Congress, violated their constitutional oaths of office. Impeachment
has never been more warranted. Yet the Democrats say it is off the table,
and can only muster a mild non-binding rebuke in the House as the surge
goes on. How many more thousands of people must die before Americans
say, “enough”?
We have seen the gross profit engorgement of oil companies and private
military contractors as of result of the 9/11 wars. Pro-war interests
exert significant influence on members of Congress with money and lobbying,
while the public relations machines of private industry and government
work full time through the corporate media to keep us fearful of terrorists.
Yet, the values and moral core of the American people are based in love,
hard work, family and justice. With all our faults, we are basically
a good people being led astray by a neo-conservative cabal seeking nothing
less than total military domination of the world. We recognize the awfulness
of war, decry torture and understand the connection between of military
spending and infrastructure depletion including: housing, education,
health care, and employment.
The American people voted against the war in November. Opinion polls
show two-thirds oppose the war, and over half support impeachment. We
have the individual choice of being “Good Germans” and hiding
our heads in the sand, or taking united action to dethrone the imperial
powers through the people’s option of impeachment.
New avenues of resistance are emerging to challenge the illegal occupants
in the White House. On Feb. 17-18 some twenty-five organizations met
in New York for an emergency impeachment conference. The result of the
weekend planning was the formation of a new coalition of activists to
pursue the impeachment of Bush and Cheney through an increase in public
pressure, lobbying, media activism, advertising, creative actions and
civil disobedience over the next few months. (go to www.worldcantwait.org)
Plans to push impeachment include massive marches in major cities on
March 17-18, a national Hip-Hop Not War Tour, a global US corporate
and chain store shopping boycott April 15 (tax day) to April 22 (Earth
Day) (www.wearenotbuyingit.org),
and the declaration of National Impeachment Day April 28 (www.a28.org).
To allow this administration to ride out the next two years without
impeachment is to sanction a lying treasonous presidency and set precedence
for future presidents to ignore Congress and the will of the people.
A democracy cannot tolerate an imperial power centered in the White
House. If we choose to defend our Constitution, we must pressure Congress
to go beyond political partisanship and serve the best interests of
America.
Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University
and co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: the Case
Against Bush and Cheney.
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