[Peace-discuss] on Kucinich and Paul

[John W.]

At 08:54 AM 11/15/2007, Karen Medina wrote:

> >   The German Chancellor is "elected", right? Hitler,
> >   too.
>
>This is what bothers me. A democracy should provide ways to "sack" an 
>elected official when they turn out to be doing horrible things, like 
>breaking international laws for instance.
>
>Impeachment is a safety valve for just such a situation.
>
>But so many Americans don't want to use the safety valve. Along the same 
>lines, some people say that Bush is the Commander-in-chief of the military 
>and must be followed, yet there is nothing that qualifies him to do the 
>job, nor does he listen to the people who are qualified.
>
>So how has Bush established the untouchable status that no democratic 
>leader should ever achieve? Is it through poor education of the masses 
>(not necessarily of Bush as an individual) in the high school civics 
>classes? Are we learning that you can fool lots of people for a very long time?

My understanding is that, while impeachment is indeed a safety valve (and 
basically the ONLY safety valve) provided by the Constitution, it's such a 
cumbersome process, consuming so much time and resources and yielding such 
uncertain results, that the Congress is loath to use it.  As we see in the 
present situation, BOTH Bush and Cheney would have to be impeached or else 
impeaching Bush would leave us with Cheney as President, surely not an 
improvement.

Though I don't fully understand how the process works in Great Britain, I'm 
under the impression that it's much easier to get rid of a rogue Prime 
Minister over there than under our system.

And yes, lots of people can be fooled for a very long time in America due 
in large part to the secrecy of the executive branch.  Look at how Bush and 
Cheney have been able to withhold critical information from even Congress 
members.  It's ridiculous.  I've always been impressed, watching it on 
C-Span, by how the Prime Minister in England must so frequently appear 
before Parliament and explain himself, justify his/her actions.  And the 
BBC, which if I understand it correctly is OWNED by the Brit government, is 
MUCH more skeptical of its own government officials than are our 
privately-owned media.

That's not to say that the Brits don't get fooled, too.  Ultimately most of 
western civilization appears not to know what to do with these 
"Islamofascists".