Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The movement to impeach President Bush and the denial of the war
The sincerity of the left's rage notwithstanding, the case against Bush is at least as lame as the case against Clinton. Politically, it may be even more dangerous, insofar as the Democrats seem to have latched on the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping as their "best" high crime. Far more Americans approve of listening in on the telephone calls of Americans who talk to the Middle East -- and, yes, I put that in the most favorable terms for the Democrats -- than approved of perjury and adultery in 1998. Impeachment could be so destructive to the Democrats, in fact, that one is almost tempted to hope that they go through with it. Only the war -- the fact that al Qaeda and its allies will be heartened by an impeachment campaign against their great nemesis -- prevents me from wishing that the Democrats would try this.
The most respectable publication today calling for impeachment is Harper's Magazine, edited by Lewis Lapham. The cover story of the March issue is a screed by Lapham (no link) in favor of impeachment, and the magazine actually sponsored a gathering of pro-impeachment public intellectuals in New York on March 2 to build publicity and momentum around the idea. Lapham details a familiar list of Bush's alleged crimes, most (if not all) of which were spelled out in a huge report published by John Conyers' staff in December. According to Lapham, the Conyers report (I have not read it) encompasses the analytical and evidentiary basis for the impeachment case.
I suggested a couple of weeks ago that pro-Bush bloggers would do well to divide up the Conyers report for fisking in anticipation of the impeachment campaign gaining steam.
The argument over impeachment may well turn into a fight over whether America is in fact "at war," other than the obvious brushfire wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the Conyers/Lapham attack assumes that we are not. That assumption appears necessary to the discovery of Bush's alleged true motive, which is to replace democracy with dictatorship. Lapham:
"We're at war," the President said on December 19, "we must protect America's secrets."
No, the country isn't at war, and it's not America's secrets that the President seeks to protect. The country is threatened by free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army; the secrets are those of the Bush administration, chief among them its determination to replace a democratic republic with something more safely totalitarian. The fiction of permanent war allows it to seize, in the name of national security, the instruments of tyranny.
This, gentle reader, reveals the lefty argument at its core: that the Bush administration has put us on the road to permanent dictatorship. My response:
Well, I certainly agree that if the country is not at war, the administration's actions are awfully suspicious. Lapham's definition of war, though, defies our normal understanding of history. For the thousand years between the fall of the Roman empire in the West and the emergence of France as the first genuine nation in Europe, violent conflict involved -- essentially -- "free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army." Was the incessant fighting of that millenium not war because no governments were involved? This idea that war is confined to nation-states is a fiction of the Left, intended to define away the all the possible explanations for the administration's actions that aren't nefarious.
The problem, of course, is that we are at war, as staunch Democratic critics of the Bush administration remind us every chance they get.
The fact that we are at war alters the legal, historical and political context of the Bush administration's actions. To impeach him, therefore, the left must deny the war. This will not work out well for the Democrats at the ballot box.
10 Comments:
By 
Charlottesvillain, at
Wed Mar 15, 02:19:00 PM:
It is hard to imagine a scenario in which an impeachment attempt would be beneficial to the Democrats as a party, or to any individual democratic presidential nominee. I could see the effort benefitting individual congressional candidates in liberal districts, or even a candidate for president in the primary run. It is simply a pander to the rabid base, which has become increasingly influential in Democratic politics as Democratic candidates lose influence in national politics.
But just suppose the Democrats win back control of the House and Senate and push ahead, impeach and convict President Bush. What then? How about Cheney assumes the presidency (the worst nightmare of the MoveOn crowd by the way). What should Cheney then do? Appoint a chosen VP who would be solid presidential candidate for the GOP in 2008, and then retire, probably saving the GOP an ugly primary fight.
It's not going to happen. There will be a lot of wailing and teeth gnashing from Conyers and Boxer and other geniuses, and maybe a long drawn out 'investigation'. But the fact that this is even being discussed now will make it an issue for the 2006 elections, and therefore unlikely to bear fruit, IMHO.
By cakreiz, at
Wed Mar 15, 02:48:00 PM:
Apart from the political concerns, the constitutional ones have become daunting. Thanks to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, "high crimes and misdemeanors" now means about anything Congress says it does. I don't doubt that impeachment grounds can be scrounged up easily. It's kind of sobering to think that a presidential election can be set aside by Congress on grounds substantially less than treason, for example.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Mar 15, 04:51:00 PM:
What do you do with fools and lunatics who see the same thing you do and call it something different? We all saw 9/11, right? Planes flying into buildings and all that? We all have heard about AQ declaring war on the US - a formal declaration no less. Over and over again. No disputes over the facts.
And still these geniuses are in denial. I think its why they are so in the grip of the Iraqi WMD issue. It's the one place where they can claim a dispute over "perceived" facts. I say perceived because of course the current and prior administrations never claimed to possess hard knowledge about Iraqi WMD. They merely said intelligence suggested it; that under any circumstances wmd programs could be restarted quickly, etc etc.
Isolationists and pacifists - head stuck in sand. We should just lump them together and call them "the ostriches".
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Mar 15, 05:31:00 PM:
"Thanks to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, "high crimes and misdemeanors" now means about anything Congress says it does."
That's always been the case. Ref: 1868, President Johnson.
Technicality - Nixon was never impeached.
By PeterBoston, at
Wed Mar 15, 05:33:00 PM:
The Democrats are trying as hard as they can to forever be known as the Party of Idiots. Wasn't Schumer the Mouth just on CNN blasting the President for letting feelthy Arabs own terminal facilities? Does he just hate Arabs or was there a national security play there?
Lincoln would have jailed them or shipped them off to Canada.
By Ymarsakar, at
Wed Mar 15, 07:51:00 PM:
The thing is, Bush could have gottenCongress to declare war and give him emergency powers after 9/11. But he didn't. All he wanted was something called the Patriot Act. All he had to do was get Congerss to declare war, and all the automatic and emergency powers Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman used would automatically be his. But because Bush believes in the Constitution, he didn't want to increase the power of the executive or leave the office with less prestige because the next guy is an ass who would abuse power.
So Bush ends up being called on both his not calling for a declaration of war and for his calling for emergency powers, both contradictory.
By Dan Kauffman, at
Wed Mar 15, 08:07:00 PM:
The First Land Military action by the United States after the Revolutionary War was against
" free-booting terrorists unaligned with a foreign government or an enemy army;"
Called the Barbarry Pirates,
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and the Congress of the Day debated the question whether or not a Formal Declaration of War was required.
Their decision was
Since our Sovereignty, our Shipping and our Citizens had been attacked a defacto State of War was in existence, so no formal Declaration was required.
Those who claim different in the identical scenerio we find ourselves in today, must also be holding claim to a greater knowledge of the Constitution than that of Jefferson, Hamilton and the Founders.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Mar 15, 08:12:00 PM:
Good point. The Barbary Pirates example was actually brought up back in September '01 when deciding whether or not a declaration of war would be made then, too.
By Mastiff, at
Wed Mar 15, 10:13:00 PM:
Here's the other thing. "War" is illegal, thanks to the UN Charter. That's why the United States has never declared war on anyone since 1941.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Mar 16, 02:49:00 PM:
illegal... Hahahaha.
There's no such thing as international law. Law implies the existence of a higher authority who is ready and able to enforce it. There is no such entity, hence no law. On a more technical note, a sovereign power can do whatever it wants and all it can be 'legally' accused of is breaking a treaty it may have signed.
It's also "illegal" for most countries to commit ethnic cleansing, conduct nuclear tests, or build chemical and biological weapons. Hm. Way to go UN for making the world a better place!
Remember Srebrenica.
