From correspondence:
Jim: Realistically speaking do you honestly think we're going to get a Congress that can't even agree on a non-binding resolution to end the war in Iraq, something 70% of the country supports, to come together on impeachment? Even with Bush and Cheney on the ropes, the Democrats can't find the courage to do much beyond complaining about the abuses of the administration, bringing criminal charges against either Bush or Cheney seems completely out of the realm of possibility.
This question was received in response to my judgement that those opposed to Bush, and to his war policy in Iraq, should support the Murtha-Pelosi approach in the House, rather than the call for withdrawal by the end of 2007, and that we should focus on impeachment rather than withdrawal from Iraq in dealing with Bush.
I believe that the "withdraw by the end of 2007" proposal, supported by about 70 Democrats from very strongly anti-war districts which are not broadly representative of either the Democratic Party or the general public's position in opposing Bush's war policy, plays into the Rove-Bush political stragegy.
This proposal would permit the Rove operation to paint the Congress, and the Democrats as
* Doing the bidding of a "radical" minority in the Democratic "base"
* Accepting responsibility for the conduct and outcome of the Bush War on Iraq by "micromanaging" it.
* Snatching "defeat from the jaws of victory" by interrupting a "successful" new policy designed to reduce religious conflict and restore effective governance there.
It does not matter how ill founded these accusations are, or how duplicitous the Bush administration is in making them and designing their policies so that they have the opportunity to make them. These accusations, courtesy of the Faux News and Certainly Not News organizations, the Washington Post, and the rest of the MSM, will be touted by fawning talking heads and accepted by US media consumers.
But the (excellent) point of the question is
not that Congress should pass a non-binding resolution , but that they didn't have the will to even pass something as innocuous as a non-binding resolution. Since we started this dispicable war in Iraq literally millions of people have taken to the streets, signed petitions, written to their congressional and senate representatives, passed local resolutions, written letters to the editors and blogged the Internet demanding our withdrawal from Iraq. Call me crazy, but we're still in Iraq and the Democrats are arguing among themselves how they can best react to Bush's failed policy without engendering any criticism whatsoever from any quarter.
My response is that the Congress, because of its past failures (going back to Korea, when it was Truman's intervention in Korea that was at issue) to properly exercise its Constitutional assigned war powers, has handed those powers to the Executive. With Bush Constitutionally empowered as CiC of the armed forces, and Congress having turned over the war powers, nothing short of impeachment can control him.
There is no point in non-binding resolutions other than to tell us how many votes we have for an action that has no effect. Some of us will vote against things that have no effect, in favor of holding our fire until we have something besides blanks in our weapons, and some possibility of hitting the right target. Even binding action, on appropriations where Congress has clear authority, has these problems:
* The action, to be effective has to pass both houses. That means 60 votes in the Senate, where we do not yet have them.
* The action, if passed, has to be veto proof. That, I believe requires a 2/3 vote in both houses. Those votes are not yet available.
* Tha action, if passed, and veto proof, would in all likelihood be ignored by the President. This would be a cause of legal action, first, and then - if the votes were available - of hearings on an impeachment resolution.
We end up at impeachment.
My belief is that we must focus our intention on securing popular support for impeachment from the beginning. Resolutions are meaningless. Calls for withdrawal, when there is no way to enforce the action, are both meaningless and draining - they divide those who oppose the Bush war by creating dispute over how soon, and how completely, and make the Congress responsible for the wars prosecution and consequences instead of Bush.
I say let him hang on his war policy, however he conducts it. Democrats should focus on two things - preventing his planned war on Iran, and securing support for impeachment based on his actions in starting the war on Iraq.
The House will not move toward impeachment without public support. Support for impeachment, while not as obviously widespread today as the wish that we had better leadership and policy in Iraq, may be more achievable than agreement on a policy of direct and relatively immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
It may be, and this can only be tested by focused and intensive organizing and information activities, that it is easier to come to agreement that the people responsible for getting us into the War on Iraq should be removed than it is to agree about how and when we should leave Iraq. Some, including myself, believe that the Democrats should take responsibility for removing the source of the problem, and not for solving it. Others believe that now that we have destroyed the nation of Iraq and created chaos and religious strife and warfare there, we should not leave until we have contributed to a resolution of that problem - but that the US administration that is responsible for the problem must still be held accountable for it.
Add to this the fact that Bush and his cabal are now engaged in an effort to involve us in an even more disastrous War on Iran. That effort itself, and the lies and dissimulation involved in it, warrant a move to impeachment. Many who oppose direct and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq would support impeachment as an alternative to letting Bush begin a War on Iran.
Congress knows that the public wants a change in the current situation in Iran. Congress knows that the public is divided about the nature of that change, but is largely in agreement that the Bush regime has created the current disaster.
Congress should focus on bringing the Bush regime to justice, and preventing a wider war. It should not be seen as attempting to manage the timing and details of a withdrawal from Iraq.
A withdrawal would abandon that nation to the fate designed for it by the Neo Cons and Christo Cons, whose will has been done by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush, without holding the perpetrators of that crime to any accounting for their crimes.
Focusing our organizing and informational activities toward preventing the attack on Iran, and preparing for impeachment of Bush and the worst of his support cast is a better approach than pretending that the Congress can, or should, direct withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
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