By GARY
LEUPP, 6/21/06
The
just-published The
Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President
George W. Bush from Office by CounterPuncher Dave Lindorff
and Barbara Olshansky is more than a manual for the members of Congress—those
who under the constitution are empowered to impeach high officials—who
might consider Bush’s impeachment after the November elections.
It’s a compact (275 pages, including 60 pages of appendices
and footnotes) catalogue of administration deceit and criminality
that should encourage any honest still-unconvinced person to join
the movement to drive out the Bush regime. As the authors observe,
it will require a growing movement to force the politicians, who’ve
been characterized so far by abject cowardice, to move forward on
the procedure. If they do, we’ll be able to thank the authors
for helping them make the right choice. If they don’t, the
work will stand as an implicit indictment of them while continuing
to inform those serious about real ‘regime change’ in
this country.
In
their preface the authors declare optimistically, ‘If a Democratic
majority is elected to the House in November 2006, we are confident
that a bill of impeachment will be introduced early in the next
Congress) ‘ (p. xi).
But
one shouldn’t be too optimistic. House minority leader Nancy
Pelosi of California said the other day, ‘We [Democrats] don’t
even have a party position on the war. We don’t ask members
to do one thing or another.’ She’s also said ‘Impeachment’s
off the table.’ One should read the book with such statements
in mind.
Six
of the eleven chapters begin with proposed articles of impeachment
and then elaborate the charges: (1) criminally invading Iraq, (2)
criminal negligence in ignoring warnings of the 9-11 attacks, (3)
violating the constitutional rights of citizens, (4) violating the
law in disclosing the name of a CIA undercover operative to punish
her whistle-blowing husband, (5) violating international law by
the illegal invasion of Iraq and by torturing captives, and (6)
criminal negligence in failing to protect the lives of Americans’
lives and property. The latter includes cases ranging from the shortages
of body armor for U.S. troops in Iraq to the bungling of the Katrina
hurricane episode.
These
actions, of course, involve many people. Bill Clinton was impeached
for the very individual act of lying to investigators about a very
private matter of little consequence to the world. Al Gore, Madeleine
Albright, William Cohen, and Sandy Berger weren’t in on his
Oval Office indiscretion. But Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald
Rumsfeld and Condi Rice have been deeply involved in Bush’s
crimes. Then there’s the Office of Special Plans and its connections
to the monolithic pro-regime disinformation-dispensing corporate
press, and the compliant Congress and judiciary. This widespread
diffusion of the rot is one of the problems with the impeachment
case.
Lindorff
and Olshansky succinctly present such a compelling picture of system-wide
‘evil’ (to appropriate one of Bush’s favorite
religiously-colored terms) in recent history that it may be hard
for the reader to imagine how a mere impeachment procedure could
really produce the changes required to prevent recrudescence of
the evil.
Bush
should of course personally pay the price for deeds during his presidency
that have led to tens of thousands of deaths, the ruin of a country,
the considerable magnification of hatred for the U.S. throughout
the world, the dramatic rise in fascist trends in the U.S., etc.
This can be done through impeachment, the authors argue throughout,
especially in Chapters 3 and 4 that provide useful historical background
to the process. But they note too that the impeachable actions stem
from Bush’s pre-presidential personal career (p. 18f); the
farcical 2000 election that arguably discredits the whole political
system, Supreme Court and Congress included (p. 16); and the neocons’
well-articulated pre-election agenda for world conquest (p. 30).
They note (pp. 27, 55-6) the involvement of key players in the administration
in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. They note (p. 24) that
Cheney was primarily responsible for appointing the Bush cabinet
after the election. (I think they might have more emphasized the
role of the neocon cabal in handling the planning for the wars on
Afghanistan and Iraq, managing the slick disinformation connecting
the two, and deftly diverting attention from itself to the CIA—and
supposed ‘intelligence failures’—after its lies about
Iraq were revealed from mid-2003.) They show, in other words, that
long before a vicious man launched an illegal war in Southwest Asia,
there was certain widespread viciousness in the American polity
itself.
But
in building the ‘legal argument’ for removing Bush from
office Lindorff and Olshansky don’t indict the whole system.
This
makes sense given the limited objective of their work: to get people
to ‘stand up in November’ and vote in a Democratic-led
House, which—but only if pushed by a well-mobilized mass movement—will
bring in a ‘next president’ who ‘will be much
more respectful to the Constitution) and to all of us’
(p. xii). That would likely mean a president who would retain much
of the new repressive legal apparatus consecrated by both parties
since 9-11 and serviceable to any future administration—including
one led by Hillary Clinton, who could be as vicious as any predecessor.
If the objective is to get back to the eighteenth century Constitution
(which face it, has its own limitations) that, it seems to me, is
just not likely. Impeachment could however rock the political boat
and make the future interesting, maybe producing some hopeful, dramatic
results. (Recent history is filled with unexpected collapses and
reversals.)
In
Chapter 5, elaborating charge (1), the authors make clear what so
many others have: the fact that the administration wanted to attack
Iraq, immediately after 9-11 if not earlier, and proceeded to build
a case saleable to the gullible, frightened American populace. There
is only brief mention of the Office of Special Plans, although many
commentators have emphasized its function as the Chalabi-connected,
neocon-directed ‘Lie Factory’ that sold the war. It
remains unclear whether it and its cousin, the White House Iraq
Group (assigned broader PR and news ‘spin’ functions),
generated disinformation to persuade an ignorant president—or
produced the bogus reports at the president’s own request
to fool the people. (‘If I have a chance to invade [Iraq]—if
I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it,’
Bush told a biographer in 1999. ‘I’m going to get everything
passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful
presidency.’) But in noting that the war was ‘based
on lies’ the authors, who fault correctly both the ‘President
and his agents’ (p. 59) in making ‘false statements’
about Iraq, might have more emphasized this Lie Factory and its
existence independent of the Commander-in-Chief.
In
Chapter 6 (‘Dark Questions About a Dark Day’) the authors
note the dozens of warnings about a 9-11 style attack to which the
administration was, or should have been, aware in the months before
the attacks. I feel dubious about the suggestion that the Bush administration
is somehow protecting the Saudi royals and the hugely wealthy bin
Laden clan ‘to prevent any public awareness of the links’
to itself (p. 90). (It should be noted that the Saudis have requested
that the blacked-out 28 pages in the Senate Intelligence Report
on 9-11 that pertain to Saudi Arabia be made public.)
But
this chapter does what it sets out to do(raise questions,
without sensationalism. Indeed, by avoiding the questions raised
by some physicists about the very physical plausibility of the administration’s
explanation for the Twin Towers’ collapse it errs on the side
of caution.
Chapter
7 is a devastating critique of the illegal surveillance of Americans
that has occurred since 9-11 and the passage of the Orwellianly-named
PATRIOT Act. But in raising the matter of the administration’s
‘Taking Liberties’ it notes the complicity of the entire
Congress in letting this happen, and it maintains that the surveillance
has been more for ‘political’ reasons than for purposes
of attacking and silencing the antiwar movement (pp. 109-110). I
don’t think we can draw a firm line between the two, and it’s
a line in any case that’s moving over time. There are some
points, here and elsewhere in the book, that could be better documented
in making a âlegal argument.’ On p. 115, for example,
the the authors that that the number of those rounded up immediately
after 9-11 ‘could easily exceed five thousand.’ But
there’s no footnote.
On
the other hand the logic of the analysis seems accurate, and chilling.
Among the most memorable passages in the book occurs on pp. 118-19,
where the authors note the very real prospect that anyone in this
country linked by email to a ‘terrorist organization’
(as defined by the State Department, a flawed human institution)
could be ‘packed off, without your family’s knowledge,
to a military base in a remote state, or perhaps to Guantanamo.’
Of
course, the American people don’t decide who gets targeted
as a ‘terrorist organization.’ The State Department
decides, and the Congress rubber-stamps the list, and if you disagree
and have ties with a blacklisted group, say goodbye to any supposition
you have rights!
Article
IV, as outlined at the opening of Chapter 8, takes the administration
to task for its vindictive ‘outing’ of Valerie Plame.
It states that the president ‘lied to the American people’
about his own ‘role in the disclosure,’ although elsewhere
in the book (pp. 134, 184) the authors admit that Bush might not
in fact have known what Cheney, Libby and others were doing in connection
with the Plame Affair.
Without
wanting to leave Bush off the hook, I’d just suggest that
he may be stupider than many of us suspect. This could be an important
point; recall how the ‘Teflon President’ Ronald Reagan
used his own claim of a hands-off ‘managerial style’
excuse to distance himself from the activities of such subordinates
as Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte during the Iran-Contra scandal.
Chapter
9 begins with a proposed fifth article of impeachment, noting the
president’s violations of international law, including the
Nuremburg Tribunal Charter and the Geneva Conventions.
It
effectively documents the role of Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft
and Michael Chertoff in legitimating torture and is especially useful
in revisiting the mostly forgotten John Walker Lindh episode. Lindorff
and Olshansky describe (pp. 148-51) how an idealistic 19-year old
California youth and convert to Islam, in Afghanistan in 2001 with
Taliban forces still friendly towards the U.S., fighting against
Northern Alliance forces backed by Russia and India, got unexpectedly
dragged into a confrontation between his Afghan hosts and the invading
U.S. military. The kid was forked over to U.S. forces by a fascist
Northern Alliance warlord, brutalized and then forced under a plea
bargain to admit guilt to crimes he hadn’t committed—to
protect the U.S. from charges of torture. Now he’s in prison
for 20 years. This is important exposure and the authors deserve
much credit for it.
Finally,
Article VI, leading into Chapter 10. The president hasn’t
protected the people; quite the contrary. My first thought in reading
this accusation was that it pertains to U.S. presidents generally,
and that from a purely legal point of view (not that, as the authors
reiterate, normal legal standards are required in impeachment hearings)
this would be hard to demonstrate. On page 159 they state that ‘even
after he had been informed the New Orleans levees had broken [Bush]
went golfing, resulting in needless death) ‘ Seems to
me that Bush on his cell phone from the golf course could have issued
orders, so the connection here’s not really clear. Again,
it’s an issue of a whole system of indifference and incompetence.
The
authors note, very importantly, the unprecedented degree to which
Bush, encouraged by Sam Alito, has issued ‘signing documents’
after appending his signature to laws passed by Congress. These
indicate his assumption that he can lawfully ignore the legislature.
But they note too that others before him have done the same, and
when they aver (p. 161) that ‘The sheer scale of the Bush
use of such documents represents a qualitative difference,’
I can just hear the rightist counter-argument, ‘Why’s
it qualitative, not just quantitative—and appropriate in a special
time of war’?
In
Chapter 11 the authors discuss the issue of ‘Impeaching Other
Bush Administration Officials.’ But how could one impeach
Bush without impeaching the whole damned batch? Saturday Night Live
had it right from the start, depicting Dubya sitting on Cheney’s
knee. How could we possibly imagine Bush impeached and succeeded
by his unpopular VP?
It
was the latter who more than anyone orchestrated the Iraq War, is
planning the Iran and Syria attacks, and wants to create an empire
from Afghanistan to Syria to encircle China. But while there are
references to Cheney throughout the book, and to his connections
to the neocon detail-men in the Terror War, the section on him occupies
only five pages and focuses on torture and Halliburton. I’d
put the focus on his involvement in deliberate disinformation, the
psy-ops directed at the American people to get them to back imperialist
war.
Rumsfeld
gets twice as much space as Cheney, mostly devoted to the torture
issue. But Rumsfeld also ought to be impeached for nurturing the
Office for Special Plans’ disinformation campaign to justify
the criminal Iraq War. The authors indict Condi Rice for lies, appropriately,
and Gonzales for his sick nazi-like reinterpretations of American
law.
But
how do you accomplish the necessary goal—of impeaching the whole
lot of these monsters—in a climate of not-quite-yet but encroaching
fascism everywhere you look in America? The mainstream media will
naturally ignore this book. News anchors have their marching orders
and they know what topics are off limits and even what wording should
surround controversial issues. Academia becomes increasingly cowardly,
hounded by well-funded fascist operatives who can call up and mobilize
wealthy donors demanding censorship with great efficiency. Driving
out the Bush regime will be a very difficult undertaking. Not a
surgical operation on U.S. imperialism to be conducted by some politically
transformed, enlightened Congress but a mass movement with bigger
goals in mind than finding a president who will ‘help us take
back our country’ (p. xi).
Have
we—most of us—ever really had a country to ‘take back,’
though? Could we maybe, learning from the past, make a new one?
While raising these questions, I recommend this book as a searing
exposé of an administration that deserves whatever opposition
and resistance it may encounter.