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The Battle Over Impeachement |
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by Susan Zannos
The battles being waged over the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney – the questions about who knew what when, or who lied to whom on what occasion, or which official leaked which story to which reporter, and so forth – conceal a central and frightening ideological war that is tearing the country apart. Simply put, this conflict is over whether the United States will be a democratic nation ruled by laws based on the U.S. Constitution. Or not.
The impeachment process itself is authorized by the Constitution, which requires that the House of Representatives presents the charges, with a two-thirds vote, and the Senate conducts the impeachment trial, with a two-thirds vote to convict. The House of Representatives has only moved to impeach two presidents, Andrew Johnson, who was not convicted by the Senate, and Richard Nixon, who resigned before being tried by the Senate. So no president has actually been impeached in the 200-plus years since the Constitution was ratified.
Those calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney include members of Republican, Democratic, and independent parties. What they have in common is a belief in democracy and the rule of law. What they are struggling to oppose was expressed by President Bush when he dismissed the Constitution as being “only a piece of paper,” and which has been demonstrated by him as he repeatedly has ignored existing laws.
Cindy Peister, founder of Citizens for Impeachment, Ventura County, is a Democrat. When asked why she is devoting her time and energy to the impeachment effort, she said, “Because it’s the only way we have of holding these officials accountable. They lied to the American people while we were all in shock over the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. They convinced us that Sadam Hussein and the Iraqis were to blame and had weapons of mass destruction. They lied to the American people to start an unjust war that has killed nearly 4,000 young American service men and women and over one million Iraqi civilians.”
Woody Holmes, another active member of the Ventura County impeachment group, is a registered Republican and the local coordinator of the Ron Paul Meet-Up, an organization devoted to securing the Republican nomination for Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Holmes gives the following reasons for his efforts for impeachment: “In addition to misleading Congress and the public to justify the occupation of Iraq, on which we are spending $2 billion per week that is going into the pockets of financiers, weapons producers, and contractors, Bush and Cheney authorized the torture of prisoners in violation of the ‘Federal Torture Act,’ the UN Torture Convention, and the Geneva Convention. They stripped American citizens of their constitutional rights by ordering indefinite detention without access to legal counsel and without being charged, all in subversion of law. George Bush has admitted to ordering the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American citizens without warrants.”
All across the country, bi-partisan groups are calling for impeachment. At their national convention in Washington D.C. on November 2, 2007, the National Lawyers Guild voted unanimously for a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney, listing more than a dozen high crimes and misdemeanors and calling upon the U.S. House of Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings.
Those who are demanding impeachment have a champion in Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who in April 2007 presented the House of Representatives with a resolution to impeach Dick Cheney. On November 6, Kucinich attempted to force consideration of his impeachment resolution with a privileged motion. The resolution was placed in the House Judiciary Committee for further study. Speaking in New Hampshire last week, Kucinich said, “It’s all on the line today. Our democracy is in danger.”
In an interview published on December 5, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, repeated the official reasons why elected representatives, who know full well of the crimes committed by the administration, are refusing to act: “There aren’t the votes there, period,” said Conyers. “You need 218 in the House to impeach and 67 in the Senate to convict, and 218 and 67 just aren’t there… We’d be discredited, and it might help elect one of his [Cheney’s] cronies. Nothing is more important than stopping that from happening.”
Presidential Candidate Kucinich and the majority of Americans believe that there is something much more important than playing partisan politics: the struggle that has continued for over 200 years to make the following words into a living reality: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more Perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Susan Zannos has lived in the Middle East--Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt; taught at the American University of Cairo. She has lived and taught in Eastern Europe and travelled often in Russia, the Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. She taught in Italy, Greece and Turkey for the University of Maryland on U.S. Military bases. She is teaching at Oxnard College. She can be reacehd at zannoss@yahoo.com .
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