IMPEACHMENT & BEYOND

Alan Barnett (Marin Peace and Justice Coalition)

Impeachment must be pursued with all energy not only to remove from office those responsible for some of the greatest wrongs in American history but also to sensitize all citizens to the guilt of our nation for having permitted them. The upcoming election, which may rid us of those who have misled us, will not, because of its partisanship and hoopla, compel us to confront the enormous crimes into which the American people have allowed themselves to be led. At most the campaigning will result in the mutual recrimination of the candidates and parties. But the responsibility of the nation as a whole and the lessons that must be learned will be missed.

Thousands of our own soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, civilians and military, have been murdered and maimed in a war perpetrated by the deceptions of the Bush administration and tolerated by all of us. Even those of us who protested the war bear some responsibility for having allowed it to occur without having done more, such as a general strike that could have brought the war machine to a halt.

We can mitigate some of our responsibility by pressing for impeachment. But impeachment should provide the occasion for Americans to acknowledge that it is not only our leaders but our country that has committed grievous wrongs so that we can learn from them. These wrongs continue with the military occupation of Iraq, which is likely to go on for years along with the mayhem it provokes. We have incited an insurgency against our occupation and civil war among nationalists and those who collaborate with us. Meanwhile the oil of Iraq, which until now has been at least nominally the possession of the nation, will be privatized and plundered by US corporations, no matter how our elections go.

My fear is that the ballyhoo of electioneering will bury in the black hole of collective denial the responsibility of all Americans for what has occurred. It is comparable to the guilt that Germany had to face after World War II, although not resulting in as much mayhem, but still wiping out countless single infinitely precious lives. Numbers numb us to the reality of each. For us to have taken one innocent life as a result of a self-righteous national policy is a heinous crime; to have taken so many and to persist at it is unfathomable.

Impeachment only carries with it dismissal of the convicted from public office and their exclusion from any position of public trust for the rest of their life. Our leaders must further be tried as war criminals unless impunity is permitted to prevail.

Of course there must be compensation to the families of the victims along with our reconstructing Iraq, which has been the target not only of massive bombing in two wars but also twelve years of economic sanctions. These sanctions embargoed the equipment necessary to repair the damage of the first Gulf War, including water purification and sanitation materiel, and prevented the importing of medicine and food, the scarcity of which has caused the death of over a million Iraqis, most of them children under the age of five. Compensation must not be taken from the oil profits that properly belong to the Iraqi people who cannot be held responsible for their authoritarian leaders, but be paid by the perpetrators of the two wars and sanctions.

But further, Americans must acknowledge what our country has done. Among the wrongs that have been committed are those against our institutions and system of justice, including our commitments to the collective security of the world through the United Nations and international law. Of highest priority must be the disowning of the National Security Strategy, promulgated by Bush Jr. in 2002, which calls for American empire by military and economic supremacy. This document was intended to provide the rationale for the attack on Iraq.

Although the NSS is the most blatant official proclamation of US aggression in our history, it arises from a tradition of conquest that began with the European colonization of the Americas and the accompanying genocide of the indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans. This aggrandizement was continued by the War against Mexico that seized half of that nation, the Spanish-American War that extended our empire to the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba, then the annexation of Hawaii. During the 20th century much of Latin America fell victim to US economic and political penetration. As Simón Bolívar, one of the true liberators of our hemisphere, said as early as 1829, "The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Now it is the world that is the prey of our country.

The most recent exercise of US conquest provides the occasion once and for all of rejecting the aggrandizement that contradicts our other tradition—that of peace and the self-determination of peoples. But this can only occur by a nationwide acknowledging that we have waged aggressive war under the pretense of liberating the oppressed, now repeated in Haiti. The people of our country take pride in their optimism, which too often has meant blotting out the truth of our past so that we can continue to grab what we want. We must learn from the new atrocities or we are bound to repeat them.

I don't believe that people can make amends and be forgiven for the willful or negligent taking of others’ lives. There can be no wiping away of the stain, no cleansing of conscience. How can the murdered forgive? It is not for the survivors to absolve the guilty and complicit. There are things for which I cannot forgive myself. All I can do is to try not to forget my responsibility for the past so as to remember my obligation to the living. That keeps me intent on trying to change my life and to join with those who feel similarly to change our society. In that is the only solace.