REPUBLICANS MUST TAKE LEAD TO IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY

By Paul F. deLespinasse

Impeachment should never be undertaken lightly, but it may be the only
way to put an early end to American involvement in Iraq.

The United States has lost the Iraq war. Another 40,000 troops, or
even 100,000, will not change this fact. But there are worse things
than losing a war. Germany and Japan lost World War II and are doing
well. Their people are prosperous, and Americans are more likely to
be driving cars produced in those countries than their citizens are to
be driving cars made by GM, Ford, or Chrysler.

It is crazy to lose a war, then keep on fighting and spending and
(most importantly) losing lives.

But recent trial balloons suggest that President Bush has decided to
escalate the war rather than abandon it. If so, it is understandable
that he did not want to announce this right before the upcoming
holidays.

If Bush is unwilling to accept defeat, we need to replace him without
waiting for January 20, 2009. A recall election, like the one which
recently unseated the California governor, would be an excellent
solution. But there is no recall at the federal level. It will
therefore be necessary to impeach Bush and Dick Cheney as a team,
convict and remove them from office. Nancy Pelosi, who will be
Speaker of the House as of January 4, will then become President by
virtue of the Presidential Succession Act. .

If we construe the Constitution's words about impeachment literally,
it is doubtful that Bush and Cheney have committed "high crimes and
misdemeanors." But the precise meaning of these terms is subject to
interpretation. It would be reasonable to decide that gross
incompetence costing a trillion dollars and thousands of lives is an
impeachable offense. Gross negligence is considered to be a crime in
many areas of the law.

The impeachment should be handled without animosity to Bush and
Cheney. It should be assumed that they are decent and honorable and
that they have sincerely been doing what they thought the welfare of
Americans required.

Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will not initiate impeachment, as
some of her Democratic colleagues would like. From my perspective as
a life-long Republican who supports impeachment, she has done the
right thing.

Conviction takes two thirds of the Senate and will require support
from both parties. Since Bush and Cheney are Republicans, a
bipartisan impeachment process must be started by Republicans in the
House of Representatives, not by Democrats, and least of all by
Pelosi, whose legitimacy as President after Bush and Cheney are
removed must be protected at all costs.

Ideally, this impeachment would never come to trial. If there are
enough votes to impeach in the House and to convict in the Senate,
Republican leaders could visit Bush and Cheney and invite them to
resign, as Richard Nixon had the decency to do under similar
circumstances. Resignations would minimize disruption of public
affairs and would also protect the federal pensions that Bush and
Cheney would lose if removed by impeachment.

Oregon's Republican Senator Gordon Smith, previously a strong Bush
loyalist, recently announced that he now opposes the Administration's
policy in Iraq. Smith might therefore be in a good position to assume
a leadership role here. If he were to announce that he will lead a
Republican caucus advocating impeachment, other senators and
representatives might start to rally around him. It would not take too
many of them, combined presumably with most congressional Democrats,
to get things moving.

Gordon Smith: You have recently taken steps in the right direction.
Are you ready for the next step?

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Paul F. deLespinasse is professor emeritus of political science at
Adrian College in Michigan. He can be reached at pdeles@proaxis.com.