Actually, there does seem to be a growing willingness in the body politic to impeach Cheney, but the timid Democratic leadership, for incomprehensible reasons, has chosen not to pursue the matter, and thus impeachment goes nowhere.
LESSONS TAKEN FROM IOWA
What the Iowa returns suggest, given the Obama-Edwards one-two finish -- and what is likely to happen in New Hampshire along similar lines, with Obama and Edwards amassing a majority of the vote totals -- is that more than half of the Democratic electoral base wants significant change in the way the party deals with the worst aspects of Republican policy. It wants an opposition party worthy of the name, not the go-along-to-get-along crew currently in charge.
True, the liberal-centrist orator Obama talks more about change than he probably would be willing to deliver (the more populist Edwards would appear to be the more effective change agent), but the point is that the electorate as a whole is eager for a significant alteration of the way things are done in Washington. Even Huckabee's defeat in Iowa of the establishment GOP candidate Romney may be saying much the same thing, though the theocrat Huckabee certainly is no liberal.
In short, 2008, assuming that the American public makes clear that it will never support CheneyBush attempting to cancel the election and ruling at the barrell of a gun, promises to be a most fascinating, watershed political year.
We progressives need to rev up our activism, realizing that the best that may come out of the November election is a slight shift of the center a bit to the left. But that move, given the extreme-conservative juggernaut that's been in power for the past seven years, would be momentous and could open the way for more progressive policies and candidates down the line. #
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers ( www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers comcast.net .
First published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 1/8/08. www.crisispapers.org/essays8w/roads.htm
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
If Bush isn't impeached for the illegal invasion of Iraq against international law and for torture, when it is clearly within the power of the citizens of the United States to impeach him through their Congressional representatives if they want to, how THEN could one STILL consider American civilians to be innocent?
Wouldn't they then, through their collective disregard for foreigners and of their nations treaties and solemn word to foreigners, not be better regarded as inidividually carrying a rebuttable presumption of moral guilt not innocence? Would not the facts require that?
And if they are morally guilty and complicit in allowing illegal and aggressive invasions and torture to go unchecked by their laws and the laws of the rest of humankind, isn't the rest of humankind morally and logically entitled to deal with them as such?
If democracies get they governments they deserve and American democracy inflicts its governments and Presidents and their lawlessness on foreigners, is terrorism against Americans then morally justified in order to reality check Americans back to an awareness of the reasons why there were international agreements (laws) against aggressive invasions and torture in the first place?
by
Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 1041 comments)
on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 7:06:51 PM
It is precisely because it is clear from your article that you are across so much of the political and legal processes. AND because you STILL wrote about "innocent" (American) civilians, in your negative scenario, that I put this question to you and others. Which of course you may treat as rhetorical or otherwise.
by
Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 1041 comments)
on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 7:11:33 PM
2 comments
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