Cindy Sheehan has returned, calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. Who the hell can blame her? If my son had died in their stupid, murderous war, I’d be clamoring for the same goddamned thing. As it is, I’m fine with impeaching the fuckers, not that it’s all that likely 
to get a lot of traction, what with spineless Democrats in charge of Congress, one eye focused (as always) on the next election. The Democratic leadership doesn’t like the sound of accountability for war crimes (so many having been complicit in those committed in Iraq and Afghanistan). Their solution is to elect one of their number president, so that they can take over the reins of the “unitary executive” Dubya has brought into being over the last seven years. The last thing they want to do is hobble the empire with accountability. So impeachment is “off the table,” as far as they’re concerned. Fine. As they say, impeachment is a political process, not a legal proceeding. If what we’re dealing with here is a duopoly with a strong commitment to maintaining imperial power, it would appear to be in the best interests of both parties to put a check on this growing public desire.
In light of this, perhaps Cindy Sheehan and the peace movement – such as it is – should focus it efforts on another remedy for the blatant illegality of this war: the international war crimes tribunal. Why not build a case against Dubya, the creepy veep, and other major players in the Iraq debacle in that venue? I should think waging an aggressive, unprovoked war resulting in massive loss of life (600,000 and counting) and the disintegration of an entire society would be sufficient grounds for prosecution. Hell – if they can put Milosevic on trial, they can certainly do the same for our little raft of tyrants. Seems to me the very principle behind having an international court of justice would require that the most powerful of nations cannot be considered immune. Wasn’t it Justice Jackson – an American jurist – who observed at Nuremberg that by passing judgment on convicted Nazis we were, in effect, placing the noose around our own necks as well? Not that I subscribe to the idea of executing war criminals, but isn’t it time, after 60 years, that we live up to this rudimentary moral principle?
This goes beyond any notion of justice. This is about deterrence. There is no way in hell we can rely upon the current American political culture to indict itself – it simply isn’t going to happen without massive pressure from below. By placing this case in the hands of a competent international body, there is a slim chance that some kind of prosecution might actually take place. Even if the effort ends up being merely symbolic, it would have the value of acknowledging the actions of our political leaders as crimes against humanity. If a guilty verdict were to be achieved, Bush and others would probably remain free, but I can’t think even so craven a leader as Dubya would relish the notion of being branded a war criminal before the entire world. Lord knows, in retirement he may end up with a kind of Pinochet/Kissinger problem – avoid certain foreign capitals for fear of being served (and I don’t mean by a dance troupe). That’s not a lot of satisfaction, but it might be the beginning of a means of discouraging presidents and congressional leaders from waltzing us off to war whenever the spirit moves them.
So, off to The Hague with the lot of them, that’s what I say. That way, perhaps Hillary or Fred Thompson or some other freak will think twice before blowing a big bloody hole in some country that can’t punch back.
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country. That leaves only one option – turn off the revenue tap. The Democratic congressional leadership and “front runner” presidential candidates make this out to be a complex affair, but it’s really much more as Rep. Dennis Kucinich describes it. To cut off the funding, congress doesn’t need to pass any legislation at all – quite the opposite. Simply block any further supplemental spending bills for the Iraq war. This will force the administration to implement an orderly withdrawal. If they don’t agree to approve specific funding for a withdrawal and reparations plan along the lines of what George McGovern and others have proposed, then withdrawal can be funded from other sources within the Pentagon system.
Bush isn’t the whole problem, of course. Very few Democrats are strongly opposed not merely to the conduct of the war but to the objectives it was founded on. Their refusal to bring it to an end is not due to cowardice so much as lack of wisdom and, somewhat less charitably, bad intentions. Many voted to authorize this war, even when they knew – as did you and I – that the rationale behind it was bogus. But even the more “liberal” or “progressive” voices are speaking from pragmatism. Obama criticizes Clinton for agreeing to the war without having an exit strategy. This implies that, had someone articulated a way out, it would have been okay to blow a big bloody hole in a country we’d already strangled, bombed, and starved for many years. Like John Kerry in 2004, most are presenting themselves as better managers of the war. The only ones who openly attack the Iraq project on a fundamental level are Gravel and Kucinich. But in the world of major party politics, being right is not an electoral asset.
That’s because it’s not being televised, just as the daily suffering of U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis (now suffering at our hands non-stop since 1990) seldom makes it to our national news programs. As during the later years of the Vietnam War, the use of massive firepower is becoming a kind of consolational therapy for our political leaders and senior military commanders, as well as a sign of their increasing frustration over so persistent a policy failure as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Planners know that the clock is ticking on the Iraq project, and that they need to show “progress”, “results”, etc., and fast. So… bombs away.
Why, then, does Colonel Cathcart keep raising the number of missions? Well, obviously the administration did not invade Iraq just to quit it 5 short years later. (Fact is, they didn’t invade Iraq at all; only their unfortunate charges.) It is an enormous geopolitical prize, if it can be tamed, and a long-term U.S. presence (invited by a compliant Iraqi regime, of course) is what U.S. decision makers want here, even if it costs another 700, 1,500, or 3,000 American lives. Now, they will always present it as a matter of completing the job that the fallen have started, but if that “job” (created by politicians, not soldiers) is illegitimate, immoral, and extremely ill-advised, then the sooner we quit, the better. By their logic, we will never leave Iraq… which is, of course, their intention. So the dying will continue, until we decide it’s time for them to stop. Perhaps that time will only come when they start digging a little deeper to find live bodies to fill all those empty boots. Sooner or later, they will have to.