[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Jensen / Impeachment, all down the line / Apr 25

[Morton K. Brussel]

Robert Jensen's take on the impeachment issue. Question: Is he for or  
against impeaching Bush (or Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, …)?


>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-04/21jensen.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> Impeachment, all down the line April 25, 2007
> By Robert Jensen
>
> [A speech delivered to the "Impeachment: Our Right, Our Duty" rally  
> in Houston, TX, April 9, 2007.]
>
>
> Whether one believes the impeachment of George W. Bush is a  
> realistic possibility or is simply a vehicle for expressing outrage  
> and educating the public about the crimes of the powerful, any such  
> talk starts with the U.S. Constitution and Article II, Section 4,  
> which speaks of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and  
> misdemeanors."
>
>
>
> Few suggest that Bush is guilty of treason, nor is there evidence  
> of bribery -- unless we're speaking of the routine way in which  
> campaign contributions are a kind of bribery, but that's hardly  
> unique to Bush. That leaves us to ponder the phrase "high crimes  
> and misdemeanors," which somehow seems inadequate to describe this  
> administration. "High crimes," yes, but these are not  
> "misdemeanors." We're talking about repeat felony offenders.
>
>
>
> Scholars debate what the category of "high crimes" might include,  
> but it certainly must include the violation of one of the central  
> tenets of international law -- that no nation-state can attack  
> another unless in self-defense or with authorization from the U.N.  
> Security Council. Bush is guilty of this -- a "crime against peace"  
> in the language of the Nuremberg Principles -- not once but twice,  
> first in Afghanistan and next in Iraq.
>
>
>
> That seems simple enough, but it also seems a bit unfair to pick on  
> Bush alone. After all, no single person -- not even the president  
> of the United States -- can undertake such massive crimes alone.  
> Remember that the constitution also includes in the category of  
> impeachable persons the "Vice President and all civil officers of  
> the United States." How deep into the bench of the Bush  
> administration might we go? Cheney and Rice seem like obvious  
> choices; Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Armitage would have been  
> on the list before they left their posts. You all may have specific  
> favorites you would want to add.
>
>
>
> But I suggest we not stop with Bush and his cronies. If we want to  
> truly change the direction of this country, we should widen the  
> discussion. Who else might deserve to be impeached?
>
>
>
> Let's start with the elected leadership of the Democratic Party,  
> which aided and abetted the high crimes of Bush by jumping on the  
> "war on terror" bandwagon and authorizing those illegal invasions  
> of Afghanistan and Iraq. That makes the Democratic Party leadership  
> complicit not only in the clear violations of international law but  
> also morally responsible for the death and destruction that has  
> followed. Now, even with a congressional majority, the Democratic  
> Party leadership refuses to take responsibility for its part in  
> this debacle and is timid in proposing meaningful solutions.
>
>
>
> The complicity of the so-called opposition party brings to mind the  
> last Democratic administration; it's hard to talk about impeachment  
> without mentioning Bill Clinton, who was impeached by the House of  
> Representatives on two charges -- grand jury perjury and  
> obstruction of justice -- but acquitted by the Senate. Whether  
> Clinton's abuse of power and invocation of male privilege in  
> exploiting a younger female employee, along with his subsequent  
> attempt to cover it up, warrant impeachment is a judgment call.
>
>
>
> But there is no doubt that Clinton's missile strikes on Afghanistan  
> and the Sudan in August 1998, allegedly in retaliation for the  
> bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, were unlawful.  
> There is no doubt that Clinton's air strikes on Iraq in December  
> 1998, allegedly in reaction to Iraqi defiance of UN resolutions on  
> weapons, were unlawful. There is no doubt that Clinton's bombing of  
> Serbia in the spring of 1999, allegedly to prevent ethnic cleansing  
> of Kosovars, was unlawful.
>
>
>
> Finally, let us not forget that for the eight long years of our  
> last Democratic administration, Clinton insisted on the imposition  
> of the harshest economic embargo in modern history, again allegedly  
> to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions. The 5,000  
> Iraqi children who died each month due to a lack of adequate  
> nutrition, medical care, and clean water could have testified to  
> the high crimes of Clinton -- if they had survived. The deaths of  
> hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, sacrificed by Bill  
> Clinton to deepen and extend U.S. dominance of the Middle East,  
> will have to provide silent testimony.
>
>
>
> "High crimes" seems like the appropriate phrase here. Could there  
> be some kind of retroactive impeachment?
>
>
>
> It appears that if we were to get serious about this impeachment  
> thing, there could be a whole lot of impeaching going on.
>
>
>
> As along as we have moved outside the strict constitutional  
> framework, let's imagine who else we might put on the list. Perhaps  
> we shouldn't stop with government officials. I'm a former  
> journalist and a journalism professor, and it seems to me that  
> maybe it's time that we started impeachment proceedings against the  
> corporate commercial news media. We may recall that journalists  
> were an integral part of the creation of public support for the  
> unlawful invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. These weren't  
> idiosyncratic failures of a few rogue journalists, but rather  
> reflections of a systemic subordination to power.
>
>
>
> Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter who served as a  
> willing conduit for some of the most fraudulent claims the Bush  
> administration used to build support for the Iraq war, offered this  
> pathetic defense of her failures: "My job was not to collect  
> information and analyze it independently as an intelligence agency.  
> My job was to tell readers of the New York Times as best as I could  
> figure out, what people inside the governments who had very high  
> security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me, were  
> saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not  
> have in the area of weapons of mass destruction."
>
>
>
> Karen DeYoung, senior diplomatic correspondent and associate editor  
> of the Washington Post, and also author of Soldier: The Life of  
> Colin Powell, was unusually honest in describing this process: "We  
> are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in  
> power. If the president stands up and says something, we report  
> what the president said." She explained that if contrary arguments  
> are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front  
> page, a lot of people don't read that far."
>
>
>
> When reporters from two of the most authoritative newspapers in the  
> United States concede that in the course of doing their jobs --  
> playing by the commonly understood rules of the game -- they will  
> be little more than delivery systems for the propaganda of the  
> powerful, it seems that contemporary corporate commercial  
> journalism should be impeached for its failure to fulfill its role  
> as a check on concentrated power.
>
>
>
> From corporate journalism we might look at the corporate sector  
> more broadly -- the corporations that profit from building the  
> weapons of war, the corporations that profit from the contracts to  
> rebuild after a war, those that provide private security, and those  
> that win the right to exploit the resources of the subordinated  
> societies. Lockheed Martin, Haliburton, Blackwater, ExxonMobil.  
> Perhaps there should be corporate impeachment hearings proceedings.
>
>
>
> Follow the logic and it's clear that no matter how much this  
> president might deserve impeachment, he is only one person in a  
> system that is fundamentally indefensible and unsustainable. People  
> at many levels are culpable and complicit; there is plenty of  
> responsibility to go around, assessed with an eye toward people's  
> power and place in the decision-making structure, of course.
>
>
>
> But we all have some role in this. That extends not only to the  
> powerful but to all of us who are citizens of the United States,  
> citizens of the empire. Many of us work hard in progressive  
> political groups to try to make the world a more just place. But  
> the reality is that those of us living in the empire do -- at least  
> in the short term -- get some material benefits from that empire,  
> from that system that gives to the First World (especially the  
> United States) a disproportionate share of the world's resources.  
> No matter how much we struggle, the fact is that the vast majority  
> of people in the United States live at a level of consumption that  
> is unsustainable. We indulge too often in our lust for the cheap  
> toys of empire.
>
>
>
> Have we done enough, as citizens who live in a relatively open  
> democratic system, to change that? Have we struggled enough? Have  
> we been self-critical enough?
>
>
>
> I won't make a judgment about that for anyone else. But I know  
> that, for myself, the answer is no. I have not done enough.
>
>
>
> So, should I be impeached as a citizen of the United States who is  
> not living up to the moral and political responsibilities that come  
> with the unearned privilege I have by virtue of living in this  
> society?
>
>
>
> It's easy to target the most manifestly evil among us, those whose  
> moral and political judgments cannot be justified by any  
> theological or philosophical system. We should critique those  
> people in power and hold them accountable. We should use the  
> political tools available to us to try to create a better world.
>
>
>
> But we also might pause and hold ourselves to the rigorous  
> standards that are going to be necessary if we are to create a  
> world that is consistent with our principles of justice, a world  
> consistent with nature's demands for sustainability, a world beyond  
> empire.
>
>
>
>
>
> Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas  
> at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource  
> Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org . His latest book is Getting  
> Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press,  
> 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race,  
> Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The  
> Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and  
> Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the  
> Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at  
> rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at  
> http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.
>
>