The Middle East road to
impeachment By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
Four years ago, the US Congress
marred its record by giving a blank check to
President George W Bush to unleash an unnecessary
and, it turns out, catastrophic war on Iraq,
allowing itself to be duped by the WMD (weapons of
mass destruction) shenanigans put forth first and
foremost by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Today, Congress has a unique opportunity
to redeem itself - by supporting an impeachment
bill introduced by Democratic
Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Consisting of three articles of impeachment, the
proposed bill faults Cheney for (a) his
distortions of facts about Iraq's possession of
WMD and triggering an unprovoked war on Iraq based
on those lies, (b) Cheney's lies about Saddam
Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda, and (c) Cheney's quest
to take the United States into another war against
Iran through similar lies.
Kucinich's
heroics in introducing this bill have already
reverberated throughout the US and world media,
and he defended his stance admirably in a CNN
interview with (the pro-administration) Wolf
Blitzer, who claimed that he has spoken with other
Democrats, none of whom support the bill, the
argument being that "we are at war".
It is
"precisely because we are at war, [one] that was
instigated by lies, that the impeachment is called
for", Kucinich aptly replied, adding that the
Vietnam War did not prevent moves to impeach
president Richard Nixon in 1974. "We have to ask,
what kind of a nation are we that we can tolerate
this kind of behavior?" Kucinich asked
rhetorically, pointing out that millions of
Americans support his initiative - even though few
in the US Congress, including the Democratic
leadership, do.
Yet irrespective of how it
fares on the floor of the House of
Representatives, it would be premature to discount
the various ramifications of Kucinich's move.
Although brushed aside by the White House and the
Vice President's Office, the proposed impeachment
bill has cast new light on Cheney's singular role
in causing the war on Iraq, recalling his alarmist
"mushroom clouds" over US cities in 2002-03. Even
a minimalist interpretation of the US constitution
would give credence to Kucinich's initiative that
accuses Cheney of abuse of authority.
Cheney was not alone, and Bush and the
neo-conservative circle around him are equally
guilty of gross abuse of public trust in the Iraq
fiasco. The impeachment of Cheney would be
tantamount to impeachment of the whole Bush
administration, instead of letting the
warmongering gang, which includes the
now-embattled World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz,
off the hook.
Another war in the Middle
East now being cooked up in the Vice President'S
Office may be triggered accidentally, particularly
in light of the disputed territorial waters in the
Persian Gulf, scene of a heavy US naval presence.
Kucinich and other anti-war leaders in the US have
warned of a "Gulf of Tonkin incident" in the
Persian Gulf, recalling how the administration of
president Lyndon B Johnson extracted a war-power
authority from Congress based on false reports
about alleged North Vietnamese assaults on US
warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.
Unfortunately, one of the net results of
the recent incident over British sailors and
marines being taken into Iran's custody is
potentially to give the US and other foreign
forces operating in the Persian Gulf a new
justification to trespass in the ill-defined
maritime borders between Iran and Iraq. Should
US-Iran relations worsen over Iraq and the
stalemate over Tehran's nuclear program, such
provocative actions are anything but precluded.
For the US Congress currently grappling on
how to limit the financial damage incurred by the
ongoing Iraq war, it is vitally important to
increase its oversight functions over the
executive branch's conduct of this war. The
current White House-Congress tug-of-war over the
Iraq war budget, combined with growing voices in
Congress in support of a timetable for troop
withdrawal, reflect a new congressional
assertiveness in the area of foreign policy.
Kucinich's bill gives a new depth to this growing
momentum, particularly if it gets past the
committee level and comes up for vote before the
whole House.
So far, Nancy Pelosi, the
Speaker of the House, has not made any statement
for or against this initiative, yet she would be
remiss to overlook the protean value of Kucinich's
move for the sake of "health of the republic", as
Kucinich has put it. In the absence of a similar
initiative in the Senate, the proposed impeachment
bill is unlikely to be adopted, all the more
reason for Pelosi and other Democratic leaders to
give it breathing space in the House, particularly
since initial feedback from the US public shows a
great deal of support for it.
Kucinich is
also running for the presidency and his latest
move is bound to ingratiate him further with the
anti-war movement and the liberal-left spectrum of
US politics. According to the legendary Howard
Zinn, a famed historian and anti-war activist,
Kucinich is "the best man in Congress". In a
crowded field of Democratic hopefuls that includes
(establishment) candidates Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton, Kucinich brings a fresh
perspective that increasingly makes him a serious
contender.
On Iraq, Kucinich has put forth
a number of ideas, including a security role for
the United Nations, putting him ahead of the other
candidates, who are better at criticizing Bush's
"surge" recipe than at proposing constructive
alternatives. He has also called more vocally than
the other candidates for engaging Iran in
diplomatic dialogue.
Theoretically, then,
Kucinich has the potential to create a
non-partisan broad alliance that goes beyond the
anti-war movement, by virtue of his major pluses
in the realm of foreign policy. But first he has
to show his acumen in forming an alliance in favor
of his bill within Congress.
To do so, he
may have to reconsider the third article of
impeachment, with respect to Cheney's warmongering
against Iran, since the vice president's rather
incendiary pronouncements do not, in fact, amount
to impeachment standards. A certain delinking of
the Iran and Iraq issues is called for,
particularly since the House of Representatives is
dominated by pro-Israel voices who have managed to
pass an anti-Iran bill - the Iran Freedom Support
Act calls for, in effect, regime change in Iran.
Also, they have succeeded in nipping in the bud a
feeble congressional move that would have
constrained Bush's war-making on Iran by imposing
prior congressional approval (as called for by the
War Powers Act).
Had Kucinich limited
himself to the first two articles of impeachment,
then a number of liberal congressmen, such as
Barney Frank of Massachusetts, might have thrown
their weight behind him. Instead, Kucinich now
runs the risk of appearing as a lone wolf in
Congress, which he can quickly redeem by seeking a
compromise bill that targets Cheney where it hurts
most - his proven record of mischief on Iraq.
No matter, the lightning bolt of
Kucinich's courageous initiative in the dark sky
of US politics - where debate on who has raised
the most money on campaign trails has become a
poor substitute for a genuine discourse on
substantive issues - is bound to register in
history books, and the sooner his respected
colleagues come to this realization and endorse
the impeachment bill, the better.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
He taught American politics for six years.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
