I'm currently reading Glenn Greenwald's "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Versus Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency" and it's become even more apparent to me that President Bush must go sooner rather than later. Greenwald's main premise is that the Bush Presidency views all things in a good and evil mentality, and that all decisions are based on this binary system. You are either Good or you are Evil. There is no middle ground and there are no other motivations for actions other than these two simple choices. It's difficult to disagree with the premise as you hear these very words in nearly every speech the president delivers where he puts himself and America squarely on the side of Good in the eternal battle against Evil.
What is beyond frightening is that the leader of the most militarily powerful nation in the world is so much of a simpleton that he believes that Good and Evil are the only forces at work in the world, and hence bases all of his decisions on this black and white criteria. And by placing himself on the side of Good, he is justified in taking any action, including violation of long established laws and usurping powers never intended for the Executive Branch, in his crusade against Evil. By doing so, Mr. Bush has created the paradox of protecting our way of life by systematically destroying it. According to his actions, freedoms and protections afforded to the American people by the Constitution are now luxuries we can no longer afford in the battle against Evil. To an educated person, this makes absolutely no sense at all. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is not an educated man and he is incapable of any serious reflection on the impact of his decisions on America and the world at large. He simply continues along in his mission against Evil, and believing that we, the American people, do not understand his place in history.
In the midst of all of this, the Democratic leadership in the US Congress has been making some effort to end the war in Iraq with lackluster results. An obstructionist Republican minority and several Democrats of the Republican-lite variety have made this legislative body an unfortunate bystander in the course of history that Mr. Bush has selected for America. Still, the Democratic leadership can't see the forest for the trees. They treat the Iraq war as the only issue on the table, and while it is very important, they are missing the bigger picture. Mr. Bush's vision for a new world order goes beyond Iraq. It goes beyond Iran. It is a global struggle of Good versus Evil and America's place in that struggle. Congress must wake up and deal with this. And the only way to do that is to deal with Mr. Bush himself. He must be removed from office as soon as humanly possible. Every day that he remains in office, his decisions continually damage the world and America's place in it.
While there has been more of a groundswell of public support for the impeachment of the president, there is little to no momentum for this in Congress. Why is that? Well, I received two answers to that question from my own Congressional representative - one explicit answer and one implied. The explicit answer was that "Congress should focus on putting an end to the war." I agree that that is a focus that Congress should have, but as stated above, it's only part of the problem. It also suggests to me that Congress can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Why can't impeachment and efforts to stop the Iraq war go on simultaneously? In fact, impeaching the president would probably greatly assist in ending the war in Iraq as well as his stopping his Good versus Evil approach to world affairs. Seems like a win-win situation to me.
However, the real reason we aren't seeing any movement on impeachment by lawmakers is starkly revealed by this quote from my representative - "Unlike my Republican counterparts, I do not take the act of impeachment lightly." And there it is as plain as day for anyone to see. The Democrats are so afraid that the Conservative spin machine will say that they are politicizing the impeachment process because that is exactly what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton in 1998. If the shoe were on the other foot, do you think the Republicans would hesitate to impeach a Democratic president under these same circumstances? Of course not - we'd be knee deep in impeachment procedures right now. Yet the Democrats are more concerned with how they will be perceived rather than the fate of the nation. That's sad because now they have a perception problem among those people who should be their base, like me. It's simple cowardice, and our nation will pay for it through the continuation of Mr. Bush's legacy. He will continue to apply his simplistic world view on all his decisions. He will continue to break the law in the name of Good versus Evil. He will continue to bleed this country dry of able young men and financial resources. And finally, he will continue to destroy America's legacy and its place in the world. To impeach or not to impeach? That is the question, and the answer is rather obvious to me.
