Friday, May 18, 2007

The fall of the Roman Empire

Told in modern times is about the United States. Have we totally lost our ethics, our Constitution, our Republic, and our way?: (my bold)

If these people actually believe a presidential election a year and a half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, [1] puts it: "None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances ... The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them."

Republican President George W Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution", and the opposition Democratic Party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the president and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the CIA knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify a US war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the US constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition", in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in such countries as Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-September 11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on US citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the US constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface. And yet, on the eve of the national elections last November, then House minority leader, now Speaker, Nancy Pelosi pledged on the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) News program 60 Minutes that "impeachment is off the table". She called it "a waste of time". And six months after the Democratic Party took control of both houses of Congress, the prison at Guantanamo Bay was still open and conducting drumhead courts-martial of the prisoners held there; the CIA was still using "enhanced interrogation techniques" on prisoners in foreign jails; illegal intrusions into the privacy of US citizens continued unabated; and, more than 50 years after the CIA was founded, it continues to operate under, at best, the most perfunctory congressional oversight.

Will the next president be strong enough to give up what Bush and Cheney have taken from us? Can the next administration step back from Iraq and the possession of such a prize as the immense oil fields of Iraq, even though they are the resources of another sovereign country? Can they let go of such power over the citizens and voters of this country by letting go the Patriot Act and Gitmo? Will they be strong enough to restore to us Habeas Corpus? The Geneva Convention? The Kyoto Protocol?

Or are we unable now to stop the slide into the abyss no matter who is in the White House?

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