http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0709/S00053.htm

World War III: Impeach or die.

Tuesday, 4 September 2007, 11:36 am

Column: David Swanson

World War III

http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26406

By David Swanson

The administration of George W. Bush and ***** Cheney is set on a
course that leads directly to a third world war. And a third world war
leads almost inevitably to most of us dying horrible deaths. And we're
not talking about it.

The White House has made clear it is seriously considering attacking
Iran with massive bombing aimed at destroying the nation's military
and changing its government. Iran will certainly retaliate. If
attacked, and possibly even if not attacked, Israel will join in the
fighting. The resistance in Iraq will intensify dramatically.
Controlling the oil of Iran and Iraq will be out of the question short
of thorough genocide. Anti-American furor will sweep the Muslim world.
The nuclear nation of Pakistan will be a prime target for an Islamic
revolution.


If we don't have a world war on our hands immediately, one will be
very hard to avoid. We will have taught every nation, again, that the
only path to safety is acquisition of nuclear weapons. We will have
isolated the United States from most of the world, including many of
our traditional allies. Terrorist attacks against American targets
will come, and the United States will retaliate, again, not with law
enforcement but with additional aggressive warfare.

If the United States attacks Iran, we will be openly at war with the
world in a nuclear age. If the thought isn't terrifying, something's
wrong with our ability to fear. Our politics is almost always driven
in the wrong direction by fear of the wrong things. I'd love for once
to see fear knock some sense into us.

The founders of the United States feared these moments for us. To
protect us, they gave Congress the sole power to declare war. The
current Congress, building on the misdeeds of others in recent
decades, has given up its power. In fact, we've reached the point
where Congress cannot easily take it back. Were Congress to declare
with a veto-proof majority that Bush must not bomb Iran, is anyone
sure Bush would listen?

Back at the start of this Congress, eight months ago, some of the new
committee chairs from the progressive caucus spoke on a panel
organized by the Institute for Policy Studies. Congressman John
Conyers, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on
this occasion that he would take up the impeachment of Bush and Cheney
if they attacked Iran. Congressman Dennis Kucinich at the time was
saying the same thing. He has since introduced articles of impeachment
against Cheney (H Res 333) that include the charge of threatening
aggressive war against Iran (which happens to be a crime). Currently
20 Congress Members support H Res 333, but none of them with any sense
of urgency. None of them are lobbying their colleagues to sign on or
to introduce their own articles of impeachment. Nobody in Congress,
and certainly not the leadership, is pushing hard for impeachment as
the means to prevent an attack on Iran.

But impeachment is the only leverage the Congress has over an outlaw
executive branch. Conyers recently said that he opposes impeachment
because he carries the Constitution in one hand and a calculator in
the other, and he uses the calculator to tell himself he doesn't "have
the votes" to pass impeachment. Of course, by that argument, he should
take his name off his bill for single-payer health care, his bill for
slavery reparations, etc. But, more importantly, an impeachment effort
can serve a purpose short of successfully impeaching anyone. A serious
movement to impeach Gonzales helped show him the door. A serious
movement to impeach Bush and Cheney is the only way Congress can deter
an attack on Iran or end the prolonged attack on Iraq. If articles of
impeachment had 100 cosponsors, Bush and Cheney would understand that
attacking Iran would move that number to 218.

Has Bush even told the Congressional leadership of his plans to attack
Iran? If he has not, will they have the decency to feel indignation?
And will they do so BEFORE the bombing? If he has told them, then
Congressional leaders have a duty to the citizens of this nation to
immediately expose and oppose such plans. Congress exists to determine
our nation's course of action, not to be informed of it. Any member of
Congress who has been informed of new plans for illegal war and not
spoken out should be tried as an accomplice in war crimes.

As the White House continues to leak news of its likely attack on
Iran, our demand must be for impeachment now, not after the slaughter
when we have all been made less safe than ever. And we must not get
caught up in the nonsense questions in the media over exactly who lied
about exactly how many nuclear facilities in Iran. If possessing some
particular number of nuclear reactors, or for that matter nuclear
bombs, justified other nations in launching aggressive war, then any
nation would be justified in attacking the United States. Nothing, in
fact, can justify a war of aggression, legally or morally, because
such a war is certain to be worse than whatever might be found to try
to justify it.

We cannot, of course, be certain at this point that Bush and Cheney
will attack Iran. Whether they do or not, the task of Congress remains
the same: impeach these dictators and end the occupation of Iraq. But
if our nation continues on this path of unchecked executive power and
military aggression, the path of Afghanistan and Guantanamo and Iraq,
then expanded war is inevitable, and that means war that eventually
hits the United States. The clearest I can possibly frame our
situation is as a choice between one word and another. We are unlikely
to get neither or both. We are likely to get one or the other. Impeach
or die.


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