by Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, et
al
Impeach the
President’s purpose is two-fold. First, it offers a passionate,
thoroughly argued and evidenced argument about why Bush and Cheney must
go and their policies repudiated. Second, the book is a political organizing
tool. People who read all or most of ITP report being convinced in their
bones that the Bush Regime must go and cannot be tolerated for one more
day.
Some Options for Your WCW Book Club
If there isn’t time to read the entire
book, here are three suggested reading lists:
I. The “long”
short course: 12 Reasons; Preface; Introduction; Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16.
II. The short course:
12 Reasons; Preface; Introduction; Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14,
16.
III. Really short course:
12 Reasons; Preface; Introduction; Chapters 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 16.
(This list assumes that readers are already familiar with Larry Everest’s
analysis of why the US invaded Iraq. If not, then include chapter 6.)
Thoughts and Discussion Questions
for Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney by
Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, et al
The 12 Reasons is a summary of
the main arguments for impeachment in the whole book.
The Preface does two major things.
It summarizes and sharply speaks to: 1) the magnitude of what
we face and 2) the different dimensions to the challenge we confront.
The Preface opens with this:
“The people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders . . . tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country
to danger.”
-Herman
Göring, Luftwaffe Commander and Nazi Leader (xiii)
The
Preface
(continued)
Is he right? Can the people always be
brought to the leaders” bidding?
What does the Milgram Experiment tell
us? Loo describes the situation in America today as the Milgram Experiment
writ large. What if into the Milgram Experiment setting someone else
breaks into the room wearing an orange coat and calls upon the person
administering the shocks: “Rebel! You don’t have to obey!” How
can this potentially change the dynamics of the situation?
Is the central problem that people do
not know what’s going on in their name? “The central problem here
is that truth and facts have been barricaded off from reaching most
of the American people.” (xv)
Or do they know and are not responding
because they just don’t care enough, or because the Bush regime’s
fear tactics – “9/11, 9/11, 9/11” – just work too well and will
continue to work? The Democratic Party thinks so. What is the relationship
between ignorance (e.g., people not knowing that waterboarding is going
on and/or not knowing what waterboarding is really like) and complacency?
What do you think?
“More shocking, however,
than finding our government now openly endorsing and practicing
torture is how easily they have accomplished this-and so many other
egregious things-and how paltry and ineffectual the opposition has
been to these crimes by our political institutions and media. ” (xiv)
This is one of the most important passages
in the book.
Let’s focus on two aspects of this
paragraph. 1) How radical the situation is and how much of a rupture
we”re seeing going on. What Bush and Cheney are doing – illegal and
immoral invasions, mass murder, illegally spying on people or that they
are engaging in torture – other presidents have also done, although
not to the same extent. But what distinguishes Bush and Cheney is that
they are the first in history to do these things openly, to legalize
them, and to attempt to make them the new normality. No nation has ever
declared to the world that it will invade other countries without any
provocation. No nation has ever, not even the Nazis, legalized torture.
The Democrats aren’t challenging them on this, nor is the media, because
they are fundamentally on board with them. This means there’s no going
back to “better” times where the Constitution was sacrosanct. The
Democrats have not and do not intend to substantially alter the Bush
legacy if they get into the White House.
Bush and Cheney could not get away with
any of this if they weren’t being allowed to do it. They are the leading
edge of the new America. The media and Democratic Party aren’t refusing
to hold Bush and Cheney accountable because they lack backbone. They
are actually showing remarkable fortitude in resisting what the majority
of people here and in the world want.
The Preface
(continued)
Why do the Democrats and the media continue
to protect the war criminals in the White House when if they did hold
them accountable, they”d have the gratitude of the nation? Part of
it has to do with the clout of the right wing media – see xvi. But
the NY Times could rally the majority against the right if they chose
to. They have chosen not to, just as they chose to build the case for
the invasion of Iraq and are co-operating with the rerun of that lie
in relation to Iran now. Why?
The US is the richest and most powerful
military and imperialist empire the world has ever known and since 1989
has had no real national rivals. Why should we expect the two major
political parties and the major media in the greatest imperialist empire
ever to be anything but fundamentally representatives of the rich and
powerful? If you were one of the CEOs of the behemoth transnational
corporations that are larger than most countries – of the 100 largest
economic entities in the world today, more than half are not countries,
they”re corporations – would you allow “one person, one vote”
to decide the fate of your corporate empire? Wouldn’t you make sure
that the electoral process worked to your advantage and that if it didn’t,
you would rig the results and make sure those who do ascend to political
office know in no uncertain terms who is their real boss? The cold hard
fact is that elections don’t decide policy.
Here’s our situation. On the one side
we”ve got virtually the entire political leadership and mass media
– insisting that the mass murder in Iraq will continue and a massive
military assault will be launched against Iran and probably in conjunction
with that a police state, perhaps a “soft” kind of fascism, will
be instituted, one where people like Andrew Meyers can be hauled off
and tortured for speaking out. On the other side we”ve got the majority
of the American people. There is a social base for the fascists –
witness the people who posted notes saying that Andrew got what he deserved
and Rev. Yearwood got what he deserved – but they are pretty small,
puny and cowardly. Can we arouse ourselves and the people in the millions?
What is standing in our way? What is the way forward?
“It is up to the rest of
us to rouse ourselves and rouse others, to bring forth from the grassroots
new social movement leaders to constitute an alternative and powerful
counter-force that fundamentally alters the overall political atmosphere,
providing a competing legitimate authority to the bankrupt and illegitimate
authority now leading this country. The existing establishment has left
us no other choice. ” (xxii)
Loo has written since this book’s release
about the need for this competing, legitimate authority to emerge and
the Declare It Now, Spread the Resistance, Wear Orange Daily campaign
is a crucial component of this (see the DIN page of writings and his
blog: http://dennisloo.blogspot.com). A discussion of the need and possibility
for a competing leadership, the matter of the moral high ground, the
role of the anti-military recruitment and anti-torture campaigns, and
the relationship between orange daily and a national alternative leadership
emerging would be suitable here. What is the relationship, for example,
between people stepping forward to wear and spread orange daily and
more traditional protest actions?
The Preface
(continued)
The Preface ends with this:
“It’s a two-party system;
you have to vote for one of us!” There is a pause and
then someone from the crowd says: “He’s right!”
Is
he?” (xxiii)
The Introduction by Howard Zinn
focuses on two major points. First, there is the question of the relationship
between economic inequality and political processes, especially voting.
See the second and third paragraphs on p. 1. What is Zinn saying here?
Second, Zinn argues that mass movements are absolutely key and decisive
and that this impeachment movement has the potential of uncovering the
real class basis of politics in the US. He points out that the so-called
“checks and balances” have what level of validity in understanding
the workings of our government?
Chapter Two – Loo: Never Elected,
Not Once”
Were the 2000 and 2004 elections stolen?
Some people reading this chapter have come away from it thinking, “perhaps.
” It’s important that people take seriously the evidence offered,
especially the first 19 “impossibles and improbables.” If you take
it seriously there is no doubt that the election was stolen.
If so, then what does this mean for future elections since the electronic
voting machines that are so easily hacked haven’t been fixed?
Discuss why the Democrats and the mass
media did not challenge the 2000 and 2004 election results, despite
the overwhelming evidence of fraud.
Discuss “Our Hope: the Popular Forces”
and the different views of the middle class and the working class to
elections and the rule of the leadership classes.
Discuss the analysis herein of the dismantling
of the New Deal and the building of the neoliberal/security state.
Chapter Three – Dahr Jamail’s
chapter is worth talking about especially because of the grim and ugly
realities that he exposes about the systematic commission of war crimes
and the innocents being tortured. These are not mistakes. This is policy.
Chapter Five – Loo: Why
is torture being used? When did it start under Bush and Cheney? What
are the two reasons for this offered by Loo in this chapter? What does
this chapter tell us about the threat posed by the theocratic fascists?
Chapter Five
(continued)
Discuss this passage: “Moreover, even
if, for the sake of argument, the Democrats were to be alone in power
and the GOP and their theocratic fascist minions were to disappear overnight
in rapture, consider what has been happening internationally over the
last thirty years or so. Social democrats worldwide, who are far
more left wing than our Democratic Party, have been moving to the right
as they “adjust” to globalization’s dictates. Neoliberalism is
ascendant worldwide and public order policies are the rule. In other
words, the welfare state worldwide has been under fire and steadily
being dismantled. Social democracy accepts the fundamental “rightness”
of capitalism and seeks merely to ameliorate its worst effects. The
solution to the issues of our day thus involves breaking decisively
with things as they are and taking things in an entirely different direction.”
(p. 170)
Chapter Six – Everest: Why did
the US invade Iraq? What is its true agenda? Why is this not only about
oil?
Chapter Eight – Snow: How is
the mass media cooperating and why?
Chapter Nine – Bowley: What
does her chapter tell us about the surveillance and public order policies
given that they were instituted before 9/11? Why is the executive branch
concentrated power for itself and openly flouting the sacred principle
of “separation of powers?”
Discuss this section:
[T]he aggressive, behind-the-scenes
strategy to concentrate nearly all power in the Executive Branch and
make it unaccountable to any vestiges of democratic monitoring is more
than the product of the efforts of a power-hungry administration. The
general trend towards stripping Congress of most of its power (including
especially its constitutional right to declare war) predates Bush and
Cheney and reflects the exigencies of an imperialist superpower bent
on having its way in the world, irrespective of what “the people”
want. What we see in the Bush/Cheney regime is a great heightening of
this general trend and open defiance of any Congressional attempts to
monitor and investigate. Like the proverbial frog in the pot story where
if you were to drop a frog into a pot of boiling water it would immediately
jump out but if you put a frog into a pot of cold water and slowly warm
it up the frog will be cooked before it knows what hit it, the American
people and “rule of law” have been getting the heat turned up on
them. (pp. 266-7)
Chapter Ten – Miller: Discuss
the anti-rationalist project of the Bush-Cheney regime and the apocalyptic
religious fundamentalists who have penetrated into the military and
other governmental branches, promoting a truly radical, extremist agenda.
Why are they getting away with this? What is their agenda?
Chapter Eleven – Wehr: Link
the Bush regime’s indifference to global warming’s emergency to
their indifference to Katrina and the victims of the storm. Why did
they gut FEMA before Katrina? Why are they suppressing science? Is this
just profit-making on their part, or is there more to this? What does
their response to Katrina and global warming tell us about their ability
to and desire to prevent another 9/11?
Chapter Twelve – Heinberg: What
is peak oil? What is the danger posed by it?
Chapter Fourteen – Phillips,
et al: This is a power elite analysis approach to the interlocking relationships
between the ruling circles in the US. What did the Bush White House
know before 9/11? Why did they do nothing?
Chapter Sixteen – Loo and Phillips:
A short but concentrated essay on what needs to be done.
“A social movement is,
in its earliest stages, one or two people with a vision, an unflinching
determination and a sense of the moment pregnant with possibility and
necessity. We are in such a time, and if we who wrote this book have
done our job, you-and many, many more-want, as they used
to say in the 1960s, to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Millions of people seeking a very different world than the one that
Bush and Cheney have in mind are ready to support and, in varying ways,
join with those who are willing to stand up.
“The powers we must overcome
have mountains of money and their hands on the levers of institutional
power, including most of the mass media. But we have three things they
don’t and can’t have: justice, truth and the majority of people
on our side. You can douse a rotting pile of manure with as much perfume
as you want, but it’s still going to smell. The gap between what the
government and their apologists say they”re doing and what they are
actually doing grows wider by the day. They can say that Homeland Security
and FEMA are on the job, but New Orleans proves them wrong. They can
claim that they”re winning the war on terror and the war in Iraq,
but everyday the facts belie their claims. They can assure us that they”re
protecting our civil liberties and doing everything by the book, but
nearly every week brings fresh revelations of their lawbreaking.”
Is there enough perfume to cover the
smell of a mountain of manure? What basis exists objectively to take
on and perhaps win against this regime?
FINAL ANALYSIS:
1) Why the Bush White House is
doing what it is doing;
2) Why they are getting away with
it;
3) Why it is going to take
nothing less than a mass movement to repudiate them and their policies.