[Peace-discuss] "...impeachment as a moral necessity"

[C. G. Estabrook]

    A Feast of Death
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Thursday 04 August 2005

    Now thou art come unto a feast of death.
    - William Shakespeare, Henry VI

    On Tuesday, some took solemn note of the fact that the
total number of "Coalition" fatalities from the invasion and
occupation of Iraq had reached 2,000. On Wednesday afternoon,
that number blurred upwards again to 2,015 dead soldiers.
1,821 of those served under the American flag. Fourteen US
Marines died on Wednesday when their vehicle was shattered by
a large bomb. Six other Marines were killed together on
Monday, and a seventh is reportedly being held hostage. Two
more Marines also died Monday, both from car bombings in
separate locations.

    We are only three days into the month of August, and 22 US
soldiers are dead. 54 died in July, 78 died in June, and 80
died in May. The occupation has lasted 868 days. More than two
thousand soldiers, almost all of them young American boys and
girls, have had the life blasted out of them because they were
sent by their commander in chief to find weapons of mass
destruction that did not exist. Those soldiers who remain,
those soldiers who have been redeployed into the war zone two
or three times already, wait with grim resolve to be brought
home to their families whole and sane and safe.

    Acclaimed novelist E.L. Doctorow has penned some words
about George W. Bush and his understanding of death and this
war. "This president," wrote Doctorow, "does not know what
death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with
the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem
to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in
shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd,
smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He
doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during
the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a
moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the
ultimate sacrifice for their country."

    "But you study him," continued Doctorow, "you look into
his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not
feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for
it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the
thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they
could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers
and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end
of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships
and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life. They come to
his desk as a political liability which is why the press is
not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from
Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and
he regrets nothing."

    The occupation of Iraq is almost a thousand days old now,
and as the self-serving justifications for invasion wither in
the desert sun, as the neo-conservative "Bush Doctrine"
collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as
more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as
those who stand in opposition wonder what they can do to
thwart a corrupt and crazed administration that exists
entirely without checks and balances, there remains one act of
defiance and strength and solidarity that cannot be ignored.

    On Saturday, September 24th, there will be a protest in
Washington DC. This gathering could possibly dwarf all
previous demonstrations against this administration. That
weekend will see far more than a protest. On the 25th,
Progressive Democrats of America will host a wide-ranging
strategy session at the David A. Clarke School of Law on
Connecticut Avenue. The purpose of this gathering will be to
prepare progressive legislative and electoral strategies for
the 2006 midterm elections. That Monday the 26th, activists
will be walking up and down the halls of the House of
Representatives to lobby congresspeople to demand a withdrawal
of troops from Iraq.

    That is for September. This very weekend will see another
gathering in Dallas, Texas. The Veterans for Peace are holding
their national convention from the 4th through the 7th, and
will be celebrating their 20th year as an organization of
military veterans committed to ending war, and specifically to
ending the occupation of Iraq.

    Among those who will be speaking in Dallas will be Dahr
Jamail, the courageous journalist who spent months in the most
dangerous places in Iraq so he could tell the world what is
really happening there. Michael Hoffman, a lance corporal in
the Marines who participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and
returned to form Iraq Veterans Against the War, will also be
speaking. Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq,
will be speaking as a member of Gold Star Families for Peace.

    Those who would defend Mr. Bush and his deranged war
policies are fond of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic,
un-American cowards. In Dallas this weekend, there will be a
journalist who risked his life over and over to report the
truth of Iraq from within. There will be a Marine who fought
in Iraq and returned to organize against the war. There will
be a mother whose sacrifice and sorrow is beyond description.
There will be hundreds of veterans who have served in World
War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, who stand now for
peace and the end of the occupation.

    It has been a hot summer so far, and this feast of death
continues in Iraq with no end in sight. The Veterans for
Peace, the Gold Star mothers, the Iraq veterans, the
journalists who have seen the reality of Iraq, and the
hundreds of thousands coming to Washington in September appear
to have every intention of making this summer hotter still.

    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest
Sedition Is Silence.