Statement read outside the Capitol Steps April 25 at press conference of prominent voices demanding the Bush administration be impeached:
George Bush has shredded, violated or absented America from
its obligations under international law. He has refused to sign the
Kyoto Protocol, backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, tried
to kill the International Criminal Court, walked out on negotiations on
chemical and biological weapons and defied the Geneva Convention and
human rights law in the treatment of detainees. Most egregiously, he
launched an illegal war in Iraq based on fabricated evidence we now
know had been discredited even before it was made public.
This president is guilty, in short, of what in legal
circles is known as the “crime of aggression.” And if we as citizens do
not hold him accountable for these crimes, if we do not begin the
process of impeachment, we will be complicit in the codification of a
new world order, one that will have terrifying consequences. For a
world without treaties, statutes and laws is a world where any nation,
from a rogue nuclear state to a great imperial power, will be able to
invoke its domestic laws to annul its obligations to others. This new
order will undo five decades of international cooperation – largely put
in place by the United States — and thrust us into a Hobbsian
nightmare”
A rule-based world matters. The creation of these
international bodies and rules, as well as the use of our influence
over the last half century to see they were followed, have allowed us
to stand preeminent as a nation – one that respects and defends the
rule of law. If we demolish the fragile and delicate international
order, if we permit George Bush to create a world where diplomacy,
broad cooperation and the law are worthless, if we allow these
international legal systems to unravel, we will see our moral and
political authority plummet. We will erode the possibility of
cooperation between nation states, including our closest allies and see
visited upon us the evils we visit on others.