Bring Bush to Trial

Over the past half decade, the President of the United States has committed a number of crimes that, when taken together, provide the necessary grounds for congressional impeachment. His reckless pursuit of war in Iraq came without approval from Congress, and after he misled the American people as to the existence of weapons of mass destruction within the borders of that nation. Even before the conflict, President Bush ignored top intelligence reports that, again and again, contradicted his supposition of an imminent Iraqi threat to the United States. Today, after three years in Iraq, Bush has made a mockery of America’s once prominent position on the world stage, unilaterally ignoring and disregarding—with his infamous arrogance and tawdry smirk—any decisions or advice from the United Nations. Tens of thousands of Iraqis, who have no ties to terrorism, Saddam Hussein, or nuclear arms, have lost their lives, caught up in a war of hatred and misunderstanding. Over two thousand American troops have also died fighting for a cause that, from the very beginning, was grounded in a web of lies and deception.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution states that:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
It is unlikely that Bush will be impeached on the grounds of treason or bribery, despite the conviction of many Americans that he is guilty of both. It is much more plausible that Bush could be convicted of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” though the interpretation of this language is, of course, rather subjective. Some constitutional scholars have argued that only criminal offenses meet the latter standard for impeachment, while others have maintained that a simple breach of the public trust is sufficient. What we must remember is the greatest concern of the Founding Fathers when they wrote the impeachment clauses into the Constitution; namely, that there never be an imperial presidency disregarding law and usurping powers of the government and the people. And that is just what Bush has been doing ever since 9/11.
In the history of the United States, two presidents have been impeached. The first was Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat who became president after Lincoln's assassination in 1865. During his term, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, which prohibited the president from dismissing office holders without the Senate's approval. Johnson, in turn, tested the constitutionality of the Act by attempting to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from office. His violation of the Act became the basis for impeachment in 1868. But the Senate was one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict, and Johnson was acquitted.
President Bush has committed a far more serious transgression in his attempts to pacify Iraq, a region long known to harbor widespread anti-American sentiments. Rather than learning from history and avoiding a conflict with clear correlations to the Vietnam War, President Bush has thrust America into a conflict that cannot be won by superior force of arms. We all watched on television as American tanks and troops zipped across the Iraqi desert towards Baghdad, quickly and efficiently overrunning the few Iraqi forces that stood in their way. But whether we succeeded in Iraq or not was never the issue. Bush should have foreseen the extensive effort and resources that the United States would have eventually had to pour into Iraq in order to democratize its people, a task that has proven much more impossible to complete now that we have occupied the region.
The only other president to be impeached was Bill Clinton, but he too was eventually acquitted. One of the possible grounds for impeachment was “abuse of power,” laid out in the infamous Starr Report. But Clinton’s abuse of power stemmed from his sexual escapades with a young intern, not from his reckless pursuit of war and disregard for human life in the Middle East. It was also held that Clinton lied under oath, a notion that would surely sustain a congressional call for impeachment, under the precedent of “a simple breach of the public trust.”
President Bush, for his part, has been very careful never to swear an oath of honesty, except of course for the oath of office that he was forced to swear upon becoming president. It has become evident, however, that Bush has even broken that oath, which states that he “will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of [his] ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." When American troops first went into Iraq, Bush exuded confidence and control, ensuring our nation that he knew the facts and would not lead the American people astray. Three years later, Bush’s only excuse for not finding WMD’s where he said they would be found is that he didn’t have all of the facts straight; he didn’t know that certain important information was missing. We must not let this man continue such a mean streak of ineptitude regarding his foreign policy aims, telling the American people one thing but doing another just to satisfy goals that are not synonymous with those of the majority.
What Bush has done in Afghanistan and Iraq has only exacerbated the ongoing tension between Arab nations and the West. His sanctimonious, Christian flag-waving has only encouraged terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, who would like nothing more than to portray America and its self-proclaimed “leader of the free world” as imperialist destroyers of the Muslim way of life, thereby furthering the cause for a “holy war” between the Christian West and Muslim countries. The way things are going right now, Bush is handling that well enough on his own. Even before we invaded Iraq, he had it all worked out. Make our intelligence agencies enlarge the fear of Saddam Hussein, represent President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who would never lead the country into an unjust war, and provide a platform of star-spangled jingoism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections. He succeeded in doing all three, effectively fooling the American people in the process and leading us into a war without any credible means of winning.
By October of 2002, it became evident that Bush planned to invade Iraq. As such, the US Army War College’s strategic studies institute undertook a study examining the possible effects of an Iraqi occupation by US forces. The team consisted of several top scholars, diplomats, and military academics, and the conclusions they came to, released in February of 2003, reveal some telling signs of the president’s ill-advised foreign policy. The group predicted that, though US troops would initially be viewed as liberators, their presence would rapidly become associated with that of an invading force. And the potential for the establishment of a democratic society in Iraq was viewed as “a staggering challenge.”
Indeed, the Central Intelligence Agency found no evidence that Iraq had engaged in terrorist operations against America for at least a decade, since the attempted assassination of the elder Bush in 1993 during a visit to Kuwait. The CIA sent two memos to the White House discrediting any speculation that Iraq was attempting to buy nuclear materials in Africa, an assertion that was further backed by the UN Security Council’s numerous progress reports from Iraq, which all claimed that no weapons of mass destruction had been found. More time was needed to inspect potential WMD sites, but Bush had already decided to move in on Iraq.
The Downing Street Memo(s), which originated during a July 2002 conference of US and UK higher-ups, indicate that Bush had made up his mind to take military action in Iraq, even if the timing was not yet decided. But Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran. The administration then worked up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow the UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, which would provide the necessary legal justification for the use of force. As a result, the Pentagon team ended up selectively “picking the intelligence stream” in an attempt to falsely portray Iraq as an imminent threat. More and more, CIA members and officials from other top government intelligence agencies have been accusing the hard-liners in the Defense Department and Vice President Cheney’s office of pressuring them to paint as dire a picture of Hussein and his abilities as possible to provide necessary support for invading Iraq.
Bush’s conduct has prompted Democrats and Republicans alike to second-guess his policies. And typically unbiased intellectuals, like renowned Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis Lapham, are sounding the alarm as well. In his article entitled “The Case for Impeachment: Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush,” Lapham offers a fitting rationale for impeachment:
“We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.”
It is time to hold the president accountable for his actions, both abroad and at home. We must not believe that it is legal or right for any person to authorize military action that kills innocent civilians. It is not, nor has it ever been, the right of the president to unilaterally remove and replace the government of any nation—as our leaders have become accustomed to doing for the past half century—without sufficient evidence that that nation is a threat to the homeland. We must not support a president who thinks that he is never wrong, and foolishly alienates the United States from its most traditional allies. We must not trust a man who authorizes and condones bribery and coercion to meet his war aims. And, most importantly, we must not forget what is still happening in Iraq. Our soldiers are still dying, running suicide missions through a land filled with hatred for the one man who will never have to face the danger they see each and every day.
The time has come for Americans to ask themselves, when is enough enough? Does the law no longer govern each and every American, especially the man most directly responsible for the safety and well-being of our nation’s citizens? It is up to all of us in this country, through a collective call for justice, to urge our state representatives and senators to support the motion for impeachment, and get Bush out of the White House for the betterment of humankind.