January 9, 2007
by James Rothenberg

It's nice to know that the Democrats are about to embark on their first 100 legislative hours, signaling as it does the end of single wing dominance in the Congress. For this, there is hope in "Mudville", but much remains to be played out. Even more has been left out.

Ending oil subsidies and investing in renewable energy, cutting interest rates on student loans, allowing negotiation over the price of prescription drugs, expanding stem cell research, increasing the federal minimum wage, and implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations are all a step in a better direction, albeit a careful one.

For instance, Big Oil's subsidies can easily be segued to their sudden "enlightened self interest" in renewables, you wouldn't need a student loan if higher education was as free as lower education, lowering the cost of drugs will have a miniscule effect on total health care costs, increasing the federal minimum wage without tying it to the cost of living index is a joke, and implementing recommendations of the whitewash 9/11 commission is pure political advantage.

Prior to the elections, Republicans attempted to take trump out of the Democrat's hands by warning the public of Democratic designs to launch bitter partisan investigations of the Bush administration, possibly including impeachment hearings. Horrors! Democrats duly took notice. They consider today's atmosphere inconducive to impeachment talk, although there are ripplings of investigative talk around - contractor fraud, response to Katrina, political interference with EPA and FDA, allegations of war profiteering - all of great importance but relatively minor (even if you throw in torture, rendition, detention, and wiretapping) compared to what could be investigated - waging a war of aggression, the "supreme international crime" (Nuremberg Charter).

It was of interest to hear Republican party spokespeople laying so heavy on the "corruption" issue as the reason their party fared so poorly in the recent election. Why corruption? Certainly it is not the type of thing you reach for in defense, but it is so much easier to admit to, so much tidier, and so sooner forgotten than almighty war. The party sages knew how inexpedient it would have been for them to have characterized the election mainly as a repudiation of the war. That they had to avoid at all costs.

But a repudiation it was. By the same American people that the Bush/Cheney administration (and so many other administrations before them) exploit as the "American people" in sentences like this: "I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people" (with thanks to Harold Pinter in his December 2005 Nobel Lecture). Sometimes the American people get it and choose to resist authority, pushing back against the establishment where and when they can, from large jury awards to a vote against the war.

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(An aside to Democratic Party chieftains: If the public could easily be sold on the war - as it was - how much easier would it be to sell them on the investigation of the war?)       

The dominant war talk in establishment circles goes along the following lines: Forget how or why we got into Iraq - we're past that - we've got a bad situation on our hands and the question is, what do we do now? That's sophisticated thinking. Let's make it simpler.

When someone commits a criminal act leading to mayhem, it is irresponsible not to deal with the mayhem. It is also irresponsible to allow the criminal who caused the mayhem to be the one dealing with it. Most irresponsible is the failure to hold the criminal accountable.

Excerpting from Cynthia McKinney's extended remarks on her lame duck impeachment resolution:

Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848, "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you will allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you will allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us,' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'"

The president and vice president violated Articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, a treaty ratified by the US Senate in 1945 and therefore becoming the supreme law of the land in accordance with Article VI of the Constitution. Without first engaging in collective measures with other member states of the UN or gaining the prior assent of the UN Security Council, they launched the US into a war of aggression against the sovereign nation of Iraq, resulting in 655,000 excess Iraqi deaths, according to the latest Lancet study. If we were to lose the same percentage of our population, the death toll would be in excess of 8 million.

Investigations must widen to include the vice president and other high officers and collaborators, to numerous to mention. The impeachment resolution on the books, though symbolic, is a way of saying to our progeny that we did know. It is a symbol of what could happen if we truly were a "nation of laws", and a call to those who could make it so.

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James Rothenberg [send him email] is a writer and activist.