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Impeachment Won’t Stop Bush Policies, By William Finucane George W. Bush is bigger than America. Well naturally if he is to declare he is the only one who can save the nation, he must be larger than the Constitution. You, George, are saying that you alone have power to order spies and investigators to pick up whatever information you find useful and you do not even have to go through even the super secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get permission. That is what you are saying. So then it is clear, unmistakable, that you are bigger than the country. You are, by definition, a dictator. Once you close the loop and write all your own reviews, presto, you have become a dictator. Sort of like Saddam Hussein; same game, different countries. Sure you talk about actions in Congress that gave you broad powers to battle terrorists and warn us of our terrible peril that these terrorist may some day try to take our freedoms away, plus the unusual nature of the terrorists who will never, ever in anybody’s lifetime disappear, so naturally your unchecked spying power will have to last at least as long as time endures. It is unavoidable. Such neat reasoning; the people are threatened, so you shall save them; you will order spies everywhere and tell nobody; eventually you will tap or spy on everyone; the people will be kept safe by the president and only the president because anybody else just might be a terrorist, or have terrorist leanings, or have read Marx or Lenin, or be able to spell it. Naturally the other public officers have to be excluded because they might be terrorists, or be terrorist dupes. No judges, no members of Congress. All that division of responsibility is fine and good during peace, but America is at war. It will be at war for as long as the president decides it will be. And terrorists can be anyone. If needed, almost any group with political views could become terrorists, even if it is just a small fringe of crackpots. So this thing could go one forever – literally. Bush believes this. In his heart of hearts he seems to actually believe he is the savior of American freedom. No amount of rhetoric or logic can shake him. He has his church and his presidential oath and the convenient tenet that the United States is mortally threatened. Thus he can effectively strip all Americans of their freedom, because that is the only way to ensure it is preserved. Double-think! And of course the tactics have been well honed by the GOP over the past century, with their Red Scare witch-hunts and Cold War justifications. The end justifies the means so long as Communism is curtailed, only now that the great Red Menace is no more, they have latched onto terrorism, an even more convenient boogeyman since it is amorphous. Can’t people see that? No, they cannot. But they can have great fear of Osama bin Laden, terrorist groups, other nations, spies and agents in their midst and still want their freedom. That’s the one thing free people absolutely need – their freedom. How hard is that to understand? But whenever one man declares his will is law, freedom dies. There is no middle ground here. Either the citizens are free or they are not. It might be too soon to see it clearly now, but tyranny will grow. It will be slow at first, but in a few years it will be the only law in the land. The Bush Administration’s tactics are illegal, immoral, un-American and must be stopped now. Right now it stops or it will eat this nation’s heart away. Already it has started. U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. resigning his position. He did not say why, but those close to him said it was the fact Bush shunned the secret court after it was created just to accommodate this radical president. This is the top judge on a court that meets in secret to determine whether or not to give the executive branch the warrants it wants and claims to need to conduct spying activities. It is an easy court, giving out warrants in almost every case. If the executive branch is pressed for time, it can take an action and wait 72 hours before coming to the court. How easy is that? It is possible for the president to order an action and seek permission for it after the fact. But this court, which is the only balance against this president since the creation of the Patriot Act, is apparently too much of a bother for Mr. Bush and his radical administration. The court was created to give at least a semblance of a check and balance system to a president whose Republican dominated Congress essentially gave him a blank check, but Mr. Bush just shrugged his shoulders and ignored it. Apparently, an Imperial Presidency needs no checks and balances. But checks and balances are the very soul of the Constitution. Yet Bush can’t be bothered using that court, because there is a slim chance his course of action might be questioned. Sorry, we cannot trust that court any more. Bush has instead signed special orders giving himself extraordinary powers. He can proffer various reasons for doing this, but in the end the effect is that the Courts are out of the loop completely. Bush does not trust them to do his bidding. It was just weeks ago, in December 2005, that the New York Times published its story on this years-long practice of presidential sleight of hand, but the great newspaper had the information long before. Times editors were convinced by the administration that it would be safer for everybody if people didn’t know. Bush, in other words, sold the Times on his practice of secrecy. They inhaled it whole and kept the story quiet for a year. A year, that is unthinkable. Journalism 101: publish news as it is uncovered and let the people decide. If newspapers do not give the people all the nasty, uncertain, many sided facts in a story and let them decide what is to be done, the papers become propaganda. Americans have respect for newspapers only if newspapers get their stories out there for every citizen, every single one, to make a rational decision after slogging through all the controversy and, yes, even facing some danger. If Americans stop doing that, they become slaves. So, what should we do? Impeachment, that’s the solution. Well, it might take more than that. Say the nation rose up as one and decided to toss Bush from office. What then? Name Richard B. Cheney president? That is the way succession works. There would be no election until 2008. All the possible presidents for the next couple of years would be appointed, not elected. Who would they be? Here is the list in order of succession. Obviously, Cheney is going to take the reigns from Bush if he is impeached. Those of us who want to resist this challenge to American freedom, this one-man-rules-all theory that Bush has instituted, are more interested in getting rid of the dictator’s laws than getting rid of the individual. The dictatorial concepts that Mr. Bush has been developing can pass from president to president, and it is certain Mr. Cheney would take up the mantle of absolute power and perhaps wield it even more thoroughly. Impeach Bush and the whole world will watch the drama of an American president being correctly brought into conformity with the Constitution, but while he is brought to heel his policies would be still in place and clearly Dick Cheney would employ them, and probably many of his own. In the meantime, the hot wars that Mr. Bush initiated in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – such as Pakistan’s border areas – will go on apace. If Bush falls and Cheney succeeds and still holds the sole power to authorize spying activity, along with holding Americans and other prisoners without due process of law, everyone still loses freedom. Congress or the courts must tear this issue from the president’s hand and at the same time force the courts back in the loop if democracy is to be saved. The GOP dominated Congress must overcome its rapacious desire to create a one-party rule and a permanent lock on power. That is the Bush Administration’s trump card! The GOP majority in Congress has written a blank check and denigrated Congressional authority in a foolish hope to achieve power sharing after one-party rule is established. It won’t happen. Mr. Bush will not share power, no dictatorial executive in history ever has done so. Bush will not be any different, and that has been made clear in the contempt he has shown for the very court created for his convenience. He will ultimately want to tell Congress what to do without even the facade of trying to work within the long-standing system. Congress must disassemble the open-ended laws they have rubber stamped for Mr. Bush. Nothing else will work. This is the Constitutional crux America faces. 1/18/2006 |
