Letters to the Editor
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Impeaching Boy George
The calls for impeachment of George Bush are unlikely to produce any substance for one very good, practical reason. Removal of the sitting President gives ultimate authority over to Dick Cheney, a much more dogmatic and authoritarian figure whose recent pecadillo in secrecy and ducking responsibility for his poor judgment should give the electorate more pause than it has. In the grand game of court politics, Karl Rove's internal fiefdom has eclipsed the neo-con cabal around the Vice President's office as the poll numbers for Boy George tanked in light of a skyrocketing public debt and the failed effort to democratize Iraq. While some might decry Rove's influence on an administration lead by an amiable nonetity, Rove effectively acted as a brake on the parallel administration operating out of Cheney's fief with little to no oversight. Given the media's unprincipled tendency to accept executive spin without challenge, we have little assurance that Cheney's moving into the lead position following an impeachment process would result in any more visibility from a man who makes no bones about his contempt for the people who elected him and how they think. In a curious fashion, Boy George's admissions of illegality noted by former White House Counsel John Dean present an awareness of his invulnerability to removal; who in their right mind would willingly trade Howdy Doody for Dr. Strangelove?
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Bush's foolish and poorly executed decisions have led to the deaths of thousands
Bush should be impeached for no other reason than the trail of carnage he has left in his wake. The majority of the deaths Bush caused have been innocent ones.
What is it now? 2,600 U.S. servicemen dead? How many have been seriously wounded, with lost limbs, paralysis, brain damage, exposure to depleted uranium, or otherwise? The low estimates are 16,000, but the real toll is probably much higher.
How many Iraqis have died at Bush's behest? The ones killed directly by U.S. soldiers are said to be in the 100,000 range. But if you count the insurgency, and the mafia-like executions conducted by the Iraqi police and military that we are training, it could be much, much higher.
What about torture? Bush and his administration put the culture of torture into motion. They devalue human life and human rights. They don't have any core principles that would prevent them from setting up policies that lead to degradation of prisoners. They have ruined America's reputation for decades to come. The U.S. can no longer claim the high moral ground with even a shred of legitimacy. Thanks, Bush.
What about the economy? All of Bush's tax cuts favor the rich. They have very little benefit or impact for the lower and middle classes. They have directly led to unfathomable deficits. The war, too, has led to a decimation of the U.S. economy. We've had to take out foreign loans to pay for the Iraq war, a war in which Cheney's pet companies were given lucrative, uncompetitive no-bid contracts, which those companies then used to fleece taxpayers by ridiculously overcharging the U.S. There is no oversight and tens of billions of dollars have gone missing or unaccounted for. Meanwhile the Iraq war goes on and on, gobbling up money that we will eventually be obliged to pay back with massive interest.
The Iraq war has benefited no one. There was no imminent danger. There were no WMD. Maybe there were a decade ago (which Iraq then had with Bush Sr.'s and Donald Rumsfeld's blessing), but there weren't in 2003. There was no "slam dunk" case. Paul Wolfowitz admitted in a Vanity Fair interview that WMD was trumped up to garner support for the war. When people started realizing the WMD claims were B.S., Bush ramped up his P.R. spin machine and he and Condoleezza Rice started calling it "revisionist history" whenever people tried to hold them accountable. Bush claimed in a Polish interview that "we found the weapons of mass destruction" even though the mobile labs turned out to be harmless. Then Bush started to claim that we invaded Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East. Bush, Rove and co. are just making things up as they go along. They have Fox News and other propaganda tools to support them, and sadly, the U.S. public has been too sleepy and malleable to see through it. I would like to think we are finally waking up. It is time to take action.
Bush has wronged the United States in so many other ways. The illegal wiretaps are un-Constitutional and his cover-up of this is pathetic. Bush's Iraq misadventure led to underfunding of infrastructure causes which led to the New Orleans levees being neglected. Then he turned around and mishandled the disaster, playing guitar at a pro-war rally in San Diego a day after New Orleans was under water. Bush has direct connections to Jack Abramoff but when Jack was caught Bush scrubbed evidence of their link. There is a widespread political culture of corruption and Bush's friends are the leaders in this department.
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Bush has not shown any wisdom, foresight, or leadership about issues that really matter to people. When Terry Shiavo was about to have her water tube removed, Bush came out of his vacation to fight for the "Schiavo is not a vegetable" cause. But Bush has completely ignored important matters like energy conservation (until now, when there's practically no choice), or the genocide in Sudan. Bush is disengaged from real American life. He will waste precious State of the Union Address time to argue against steroids in baseball, but hardly say a word about corporate accounting fraud. He will fight against stem cell research because he's in the pocket of anti-abortion groups, but he barely even has a grasp about basic human-rights issues and blocks the United Nations' Human Rights Coalition.
Bush can barely put a sentence together and yet people give him a pass because he seems like a good, old-fashioned Christian family man and he talks tough about terrorism. United States citizens voted him in a second time partially in response to push polls that made it seem John Kerry favored gay marriage. Bush helped set up the multi-colored terror alert system and he has used it to keep Americans scared. People are much easier to control when they're full of fear, and Bush and company (Rove, etc.) have shrewdly taken advantage of this. Unfortunately they didn't really care about the consequences of their manipulations.
Bush has blood on his hands. Think of all the people whose lives are lost because this man won the presidency. Think of all the money and opportunity that has been wasted by his horrible decisions. (Remember Bush landing on an air-craft carrier with a sign on it that read, "Mission Accomplished?" Clearly he had no idea what war would bring in Iraq.) The United States was a great nation, but are we still? We can be, but we have got to get rid of the cancer in the White House first. I think we have all lost something while this man and his administration have been in power. It has been demoralizing to all of us to endure his many ruinous efforts. We bear some responsibility for letting this man trash our country -- we owe it to ourselves to get him the hell out of here.