George McGovern, sharp as a tack at age 85, isn’t naive and he knows the chances of an impeachment of Bush and Cheney are slim to none. But he makes a damn good case.
I was immersed in the politics of the 1972 elections as a graduate student leader of the Social Work Department’s anti-war movement at Michigan State University. Like many others of the time we considered Senator McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy and former Attorney General and Senator Robert Kennedy to be our heroes, the hopes for change and the end to the Vietnam War.
Of the three, only McGovern is still with us and at 85 we should take his utterances as words of wisdom from a true patriot.
I don’t have much to add to what McGovern says in his Washington Post OpEd but I want to be sure readers don’t miss it. Hence this column and the link here:
The Democratic controlled House has no stomach for beginning impeachment proceedings. I believe most of the Democrats, even the much maligned Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, believe both Bush and Cheney have committed the high crimes and misdemeanors the framers of the Constitution had in mind, and some they couldn’t have conceived of, when writing the impeachment clause.
I think a number of congressional Republicans also believe Bush and Cheney deserve to be impeached.
But the Democrats who could initiate impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives, and the Democratic Senators who would eventually try them, have their eyes on the prize for 2009.
They don’t want to distract the nation from the coming election, and certainly don’t want to give Republicans a reason to rally around Bush and Cheney or to claim that the Democrats are putting petty vengeance above the good of the nation.
In truth, as McGovern knows, an impeachment would serve to lance a pestilent boil and begin to heal our nation.
An impeachment would serve the good of the nation, but unfortunately too many voters wouldn’t see it that way.
Despite the fact that it isn’t going to happen, I trust you, dear readers, will read McGovern’s words.
Who could not be moved by McGovern’s statement here?
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At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.
There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.
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This great American isn’t going to be around forever, and every column or OpEd is, I am sure, written with the knowledge that it could be his last.
Update:
The day after the Washington Post published McGovern’s OpEd, they reported that his essay received more comments than any other since they began to count seven months ago. Read some of them here.
Here’s the BBC article on McGovern’s OpEd call for impeachment.
16 thoughts on “George McGovern’s case for impeachment of Bush and Cheney”
George McGovern was correct in all he wrote. But why did he wait all this time to say it ? He has had several years when it might have had an impact on all the horrible things that Bush has done….maybe even prevented some of them if he had spoken out. He just might have made a difference. But now…why bother ? Too little Too Late.
There are too many others in this Administration and in Congress that will surely wish that they had cared more about the Country that gave them so much, and which they rewarded by turning their backs and consciences off.
This is not a case of ‘ better late than never’…it seems to me that it is a case of trying to make retribution before meeting His Maker. My opinion is that he best keep it between his Maker and himself at this late date.
This topic may serve to fill space for columnists in search of a topic, or old senators in search of publicity, or bloggers seeking to vent their spleens, but the reality is that with less than a year left in Bush’s term, impeachment ain’t gonna happen.
Congress has wasted enough time trying to ram amnesty for illegal immigrants down our throats, and they’ve paid the price for it with their dismal approval ratings. The last thing they’re going to do, especially in an election year, is to tilt at this particular windmill.
So enjoy the fantasy if you please, but I’ll bet all or part of my wallet’s contents that no serious impeachment proceeding is going to get under way by the end of Bush’s term.
AS one of many who once worked on the Senator’s presidential campaign and continues to admire him, his suggestion didn’t go quite far enough.
It is not sufficient that Bush and Cheney be impeached, but that Congress and the electorate must begin to actively dismantle the authoritarian police state they’ve assembled.
That means amending, if not outright repeal of the Patriot Act. It means cutting the DoD budget and mandating a troop withdrawal date from Iraq. It means closing our gulags and concentration camps immediately! It means fully reinstating habeas corpus for ANYBODY who’s accused of breaking our laws It means prohibiting the FBI, et al from assembling federal bio-databases that integrate everything that is known about each of us, for use against some future threat. It means no amnesty to multinational corporations that freely provided the government with privacy data and telephone intercepts, and now claim they’re only being “good American citizens!” It means that we must positively re-establish diplomatic relations with the rest of the planet, and that we make every one of these issues part and parcel of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns.
I’ve made it a personal thing, but I won’t vote for ANY candidate who has voted for the Patriot Act and/or its reauthorization.
ADB
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