… Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn’t until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) —
and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country’s laws — that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law — and repeatedly violates the law — thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."
I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. 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.
I often wonder how I would feel were I a Conservative sort, or a Fundamentalist Christian – if I were a person who had rejoiced when a Conservative Republican was elected. I would’ve covered my car with patriotic stickers when we invaded Iraq. I would’ve argued with my Liberal neighbors about the War on Terror, or the N.S.A. Domestic Spying, rejoiced with the Supreme Court appointments. But somewhere along the line, I think it would occur to me that this Administration wasn’t "just" Conservative, that what they were doing was not "Christian." And then it would become apparent that they were, as McGovern says, worse than Nixon – way worse. What would I feel now? I’d still have my Conservative values, or my religious convictions. I think I’d feel both shame and that I’d been betrayed. But I don’t hear much about people feeling that. Many still listen of Rush, O’Reilly, Fox News. They read the Wall Street Journal. I don’t know if they think a lot about what their votes, particularly their votes in 2004, have done to our country.
I used to wonder the same thing about the Germans who thronged into the streets to cheer Adolph Hitler. What did they feel after it was over and they knew the whole story? I grew up in a Segregated South. It wasn’t something I thought about a lot as a kid. It’s just what was. My parents weren’t racist, and my mother, at least, was quite the opposite. So I don’t really know what it was like to be immersed in some very wrong thing and to gradually see how wrong it turned out to be. When the Civil Rights Movement got going, I was in it from early on. I can’t know if that was parental influence, or personal conviction. So it’s hard to empathize with right-thinking people who supported Bush and Cheney – to know what it would be like to see the painful truth unfold – and to encounter the wrongness that had resulted from their support.
The only personal analogy I can think of is from making the kind of medical mistakes along the way that haunt every physician. I remember every one of them in detail, and wince when they come to mind. When you’re wrong in Medicine, it’s right there in your face. The only thing you can do is learn from the error, and carry on. They are among my strongest life experiences. What most of us learn from them is something called humility – knowing that human thought has it’s limits. Even one’s best thinking can be as wrong as rain.
Well, supporting George Bush and Dick Cheney was as wrong as it can get – particularly in 2004. I hope that those who made that error will go through the kind of soul-searching that I’ve had to go through when I was wrong and it had disasterous consequences. It’s not fun, but it’s the only path to not making the same errors. And frankly, I think it’s incumbant on those of us on this side of the fence to make it very clear that this has nothing to do with Republican versus Democrat, or Liberal versus Conservative. We were just right about Bush and Cheney. That doesn’t allow us to claim being right about everything else. This has to do with basic American and human values. We need to Impeach these men not as a partisan act, but to reaffirm our Constitution, our commitment to the Truth, and to prove that our form of Democracy can repair its inevitable mistakes. McGovern says, "We must be a great nation because, from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered." I expect we’ll survive. We may recover somewhat. But we’ll never ever be the same…
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