By KARL FORSYTH, Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
http://www.adn.com
Twenty years ago, Neil Postman wrote in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" that meaningful political discourse had become impossible due to our ridiculously short attention spans, a phenomenon he attributed to the impact of television. Today, we continue to marinate in a flood of context-free entertainment/news fragments and sound bites, leaving us profoundly distracted and politically incoherent (but well-entertained). The bad news has only recently become apparent. Unprecedented abuses of political power are occurring on our watch. The abuses are getting more blatant by the day, yet we remain complacent. We're in danger of becoming the biggest banana republic in the world.
To reverse this decline, we must start by impeaching George W. Bush. Allow me to encapsulate some of the reasons from an essay by Elizabeth Holtzman (The Nation, Jan. 30).
1. Mr. Bush is authorizing thousands of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens, bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, which was created in 1978 in response to the abuses of Watergate. We know the FISA court is not an obstacle, because since the court was created, over 10,000 national security warrants have been approved, and only four have been turned down. Benjamin Franklin observed that the man who trades freedom for security deserves (and will get) neither. That is why, just as they were with Nixon, warrantless wiretaps are an impeachable offense.
2. There is no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to gain support for a military action or war. It was well-known before we pre-emptively invaded Iraq that we faced no imminent attack, there were probably no WMDs and there was no meaningful connection between Saddam and al-Qaida. We have since learned from the "Downing Street" memo and other sources that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Lying to us about matters of this magnitude is an impeachable offense.
3. The president cannot be impeached for incompetence, but Mr. Bush's actions over time have called into question whether he takes his oath seriously or is even capable of doing so. Consider his execution of the Iraq war. Aside from the question of whether the Iraq war was justified, once started, the execution of this invasion was (and still is) fraught with incompetence, corruption, cronyism and multiple failures to provide appropriate troop levels and equipment. The troops are performing heroically and deserve our deepest gratitude, but Mr. Bush (as commander in chief) showed a reckless disregard for what it takes to "win the peace" after the initial battles. This violates the requirements of the president's oath of office and is an impeachable offense.
4. Mr. Bush's assertion that "we do not torture" is ridiculous when viewed next to the stark images of Abu Ghraib, our continuing practice of "extraordinary rendition" and his failure to sign the McCain Amendment barring torture without adding a disclaimer that it doesn't apply to him. The U.S. has lost respect and credibility worldwide since the Iraq war, but our unprecedented tolerance for torture has destroyed it. The only official action taken in response to Abu Ghraib was to scapegoat a few low-level soldiers. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were clearly part of a larger pattern of abuse that crossed oceans and prisons, yet the architects and high-level perpetrators of this abuse (particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) were never disciplined. Torture is illegal, and authorizing it implicitly or explicitly is an impeachable offense.
We are at a crossroads. Can we turn off our televisions long enough to consider this situation deeply? Are we still capable of defending ourselves against an incompetent and "Imperial Presidency"? Is the only impeachable offense today that of a president lying about his sexual indiscretions? The single-party "pay-to-play" system now in power clearly lacks the integrity needed to act, but we must nevertheless demand action. If our representatives fail to start impeachment proceedings before the 2006 elections, it will be easy enough to replace them.
The evidence is overwhelming. The sooner we impeach, the sooner we can begin the long process of restoration, remediation and eventually a better life for all our citizens.
