Getting
Impeachment Wrong
By David Swanson
26 July, 2007
Afterdowningstreet.org
Joel Wendland has written an
article opposing impeachment. His claims, and all claims
of impeachment opponents, have long since been answered here.
But here's some redundancy:
Wendland objects to calling
Conyers "no Martin Luther King". Most of us are no Martin
Luther King, but the point of that comment from Ray McGovern was that
Conyers is backing away from a controversial and urgent life-or-death
demand for justice. He is backing away in a manner that Dr. King almost
certainly would not have. Wendland opposes attempting impeachment because
it is "not likely to pass in the House". That's nonsense.
The Democrats could vote as a block and pass it, and some Republicans
might join them. Whether it would pass the Senate is harder to predict
but far from impossible, and an impeachment with an acquittal would
be far better than no accountability whatsoever. It would send a signal
to future administrations that breaking the law at least MIGHT be punished.
Wendland also claims impeachment
would help Republicans. How? What's the evidence? Republicans are ALREADY
edging away from Cheney and Bush. You think impeaching Cheney would
help them? Did trying to impeach Nixon help them? Or wasn't it rather
the refusal to pursue Reagan that helped them?
Wendland objects that Conyers
represents Detroit. But Detroit City council unanimously passed a resolution
demanding that Cheney and Bush be impeached and removed from office.
The resolution was introduced by Conyers' own wife. I realize that doesn't
qualify her to speak on this issue, so let me hasten to add: she's black.
In fact African Americans support impeachment and oppose the occupation
of Iraq in far greater numbers than whites. Rev. Lennox Yearwood's Hip
Hop Caucus is leading the impeachment movement. Black radio produces
the most consistent news on impeachment and advocacy for it. The Black
Agenda Report and the Black Commentator generate the most strongly worded
impeachment editorials. And Maxine Waters is a leading voice on Capitol
Hill. She and Keith Ellison and Hank Johnson are the three members of
the House Judiciary Committee pushing for impeachment. They're all black.
Wendland admits that 54%
of Americans want Cheney impeached, but he claims that's a statistical
tie. Had he looked more closely, he would have noticed that only 40%
of Americans oppose impeaching Cheney. The gap of 14% is far outside
the margin of error. And the same poll found that 76% of Democrats (read:
Detroiters) favor impeachment. Wendland also claims that even among
the 54% of Americans who want Congress to start impeaching Cheney, they
don't all "favor undertaking a politically futile effort that would
likely hurt other more significant aims such as ending the war and advancing
a progressive agenda in Congress now and after the Bush administration
leaves office." Well, I certainly wouldn't favor such a thing,
and if I believed impeachment meant such a thing, and had I been surveyed,
I would have answered No. The poll did not ask whether Cheney had committed
impeachable offenses. It asked whether Congress should begin impeaching
him. Wendland thinks people would have answered differently had he gotten
to talk to them first and explain things, but he has no way to prove
that, and I am just as convinced that he's wrong.
Impeachment helped end the
Vietnam War. The past 7 months have proved that avoiding impeachment
leaves us incapable of ending the Occupation of Iraq. We've also found
that no progressive agenda is going to get through the Senate or across
Bush's desk. In fact, Wendland goes on himself to note the claim that
"Bush will veto any bill or policy proposal we approve of,"
and fail to address it in any way. Wendland also writes:
"Punishment of the Bush
administration for lying about the war and for undermining our civil
liberties is something we should support. But our constitutional system
was arranged so as to ensure it would only very rarely happen in the
halls of Congress. Punishment could be more effectively leveled against
Bush's party in the 2008 elections."
But this is creative rewriting
of the US Constitution, which says not one word about impeachment being
rare. A number of the authors of the Constitution are on record predicting
it would be needed frequently. In fact, the Constitution, the same document
that lays out the schedule of elections, devotes more attention to impeachment,
the tool for holding elected officials to the rule of law in between
elections.
Then comes the real meat
of Wendland's reaction:
"I won't dwell on the
fact that Rep. Conyers' long career and personal contributions to the
cause of peace, social justice, and civil rights far outstrips those
of the relative newcomers to the movement who now within the last few
months have tried to make impeachment the political litmus test of true
progressiveness. For some, impeachment has become the sole obsession
and the only means of attaining justice or moving forward on any political
front. Rep. Conyers was in the thick of the peace and civil rights movements
before many of us were even born."
But it is not citizens who
have created this litmus test. It is Bush and Cheney. They've eliminated
FOIA, subpoenas, court convictions following special prosecutions, and
contempt citations, not to mention any possibility of honest elections.
They have left Congress only one tool. If they are permitted to rewrite
laws with signing statements, violate laws at will, kidnap, torture,
murder, and lie, and Congress does not act, the fate of this nation
is bleak, as will be Democratic electoral prospects.
Wendland then claims that
"pundits on the right are begging for impeachment to become the
main and only topic of congressional debate over the next year or so."
The RNC put out that statement a year and a half ago, in reference to
Bush, as a bluff. And it worked. Within a week, Pelosi ordered the Democrats
off impeachment. But have you seen the newspapers flooded with right
wing pleas to impeach Cheney in recent months? I've only heard that
from such right-wingers as Bruce Fein and Larry Wilkerson, but they
actually want Cheney impeached for the good of the nation and the world.
And, when, except in scared
Democratic fantasies, has an impeachment proceeding ever taken a year?
Clinton took 2 months. Nixon took 3 months. Cheney, given the evidence
already before us, could take one day. We've wasted 7 months avoiding
it. Wendland's theory has already been tested and failed. Congress has
accomplished virtually nothing for 7 months. A slight partial correction
to a plummeting minimum wage, at the cost of funding months of war and
occupation, does not begin to compare with what Congress accomplished
while impeaching Nixon. Wendland's prediction that impeachment would
benefit the Republicans has no known basis in history and appears to
be based only in RNC talking points.
None of this takes away from
my respect for John Conyers or Joel Wendland's past work. But it is
for Conyers' own good that people have begun advising him that failing
to impeach will wreck his legacy.
"What," Wendland
asks, "are some alternatives to demanding impeachment now? First,
lay off Rep. Conyers. Divisive attacks on Democratic leaders hopefully
won't convince them to change their minds." Hopefully it won't?
What outcome are you hoping for, Joel? We have 76% of Democrats wanting
Cheney impeached. In a democracy, our representatives would consider
opposing that mandate to be the "divisive" position. Wendland
is making the mistake of assuming that in a democracy the people should
fall in line and represent the views of their "representatives"
in order to avoid division. This is backwards and highly dangerous.
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