On the Necessity of Impeachment -- Part V

by Kagro X

Thanks to the fantastic reporting of Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, blog readers, Americans in general, and our representatives in Congress are now perhaps more aware of the scope and danger of the Bush administration's use of signing statements to nullify duly enacted legislation. As Savage informs us:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

But four of these 750 statements are of particular concern to me today.

Here's what I'm talking about:

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels. After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

I think we here in the blogosphere consider ourselves to be a fairly informed, politically aware group. But how many of us knew that Congress would have particular reason to prohibit -- not once, but four times -- US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia? And given that this specific prohibition has been issue four times and nullified unilaterally by the president four times, are we concerned when we read headlines like this?

March 27, 2006 U.S. Willing to Deploy Combat Troops to Colombia by Garry Leech While the U.S. mainstream media widely-reported the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent indictment of 50 rebel leaders belonging to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an announcement by the State Department the next day received surprisingly little coverage. On March 24, Assistant Secretary of State Anne Patterson told Colombia’s Radio Caracol that, while the United States would not initiate any unilateral military action to capture FARC leaders, it would intervene if invited by the Colombian government. Given that the U.S. government’s intervention in Colombia already involves everything but the deployment of U.S. combat troops, it is clear that Patterson’s comments were intended to illustrate the Bush administration’s willingness to deploy U.S. troops to Colombia to combat FARC guerrillas.

The U.S. is "willing" to deploy combat troops to Colombia? Which "U.S." is this? The one whose Congress rejected the idea four times? Or the one whose president unilaterally rejected the Congress' rejection?

Yes, there's an obvious separation of powers question here that leads the more daring (or perhaps the more pessimistic and/or cynical) among us to lean toward impeachment. But by now we're all aware that many of our good friends and fellow travelers still have valid concerns about the strategic impact of impeachment. It would require a demonstration of enormous, imminent and irreversible damage being threatened to the survival of the Constitution to change their minds, and outweigh their strategic concerns. I think this particular example of presidential aggression against the Constitutional order brings us still closer to that point.

Why do I say so? Consider that this problem is not new. Think back, and ask yourself whether this is not indeed very familiar to you: A Republican administration insists on its right to conduct a secret war in Latin America, despite specific Congressional prohibitions against such activity. Where else have we seen this before?

The Iran-Contra Affair is significant because it brought many questions into public view that continue to resonate today:    

* Does the President have unconditional authority to conduct foreign policy over the objection of Congress and the laws it passes    
* Can the President approve selling arms to a foreign nation without congressional approval    
* What information does the President have to provide to Congress and when should that information be supplied    
* What information does the President have to provide the American people    
* Can the President present factually incorrect information to the American people about key foreign policy initiatives if he believes his motives are just    
* What authority does the Congress have to oversee functions of the executive branch    
* Does funding for foreign policy initiatives have to be approved by the Congress    
* Who defines the entire spending budget and who regulates it    
* Is the provision of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act that creates the position of independent counsel answering to the Attorney General, constitutional    
* What role does the Supreme Court have in deciding conflicts between the legislative branch and executive branch    
* How much support is America entitled to provide to armed opposition forces seeking to replace governments with ones more sympathetic to the United States

Most, if not all, of the constitutional and ethical questions are still unresolved. On one view, it appears that if the legislative and executive branches do not wish to work together, there are no legal remedies.

These unresolved issues were again in the public eye during the Presidency of George W. Bush, who selected some individuals implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal for high-level posts. These include:    

* Elliott Abrams (under Bush the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs; in Iran Contra, found guilty on two counts of unlawfully withholding information)
* Otto Reich    
* John Negroponte (under Bush, the National Intelligence Director)    
* Admiral John Poindexter (under Bush Director of the Information Awareness Office; in Iran Contra found guilty of multiple felony counts for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and the alteration and destruction of evidence)

"Most, if not all, of the constitutional and ethical questions are still unresolved." In typically Wikipedian fashion, this understatement frames the issue perfectly.

What we are currently struggling with is our failure to close the books on this dangerously expansive view of presidential power following Watergate, then 15 years later following Iran-Contra, and now 15 years later during the Bush "administration."

In addition, I highlight the names above to remind us that impeachment also offers us a mechanism with which to bar recidivist violators of the Constitution from holding office in the future. Are Abrams, Poindexter, Negroponte and the like impeachable? The question is perhaps open to debate, but that impeachment may be used against executive officers other than the president is not. The critical nature of this particular housecleaning more than warrants experimentation with the tools we're given.

 

As much as I am normally inclined to align myself with political pragmatists -- and those who've discussed issues besides impeachment with me have no doubt found this to be true -- I fear that "pragmatic" surrender to this latest incarnation of habitual Republican affrontery to the Constitution is a larger mistake than many (though not all) of us may yet have grasped.

No, this is not because any of us are small-minded, short-sighted, or just unwilling to see. It's a tough thing to contemplate, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that it may just throw everything we think we know about politics and government out the window, and that's not an easy thing to consider, vested as we all are in our understandings -- and I dare say we have among us some fairly sophisticated understandings, spanning a broad spectrum on this and every other conceivable issue. But this one's a tough nut. No question.

Consider, though, the implications of just these four instances among the seven hundred and fifty (!) that Savage's article reports. Consider, too, the implications of fighting the "Commander in Chief" on this issue during "wartime." This is a battle we fought and thought we won in the 1980s, but apparently not. It seems quite plain that Republican administrations respect no law other than the physical. Clearly, they must be put out from power entirely in order to enforce the will of Congress just on the question of the conduct of combat operations in Latin America. Have we any reason to believe they are less intransigent on other issues? Have we really got any idea what laws they are and aren't obeying?

The fight to remove Richard Nixon from power was widely regarded as a success for our political system, though it was at first a mighty struggle to convince Republicans of its necessity.

Later, as the political mood of the country shifted rightward, the fight to reign in the abuses of the Reagan administration met with, by some accounts, less success. Many of the convictions obtained were overturned, and no one faced serious threat of impeachment, despite the fact that Iran-Contra posed challenges to the Constitution that were equal to or greater than those of Watergate.

Today, of course, while we hold out hope that the pendulum will swing leftward, even the political "center" resides far to the right of where it was during the 1980s, to say nothing of the years immediately following Watergate. Complicating matters further are the well-orchestrated campaigns of "terror management" executed by Republican political operatives, which have effectively painted Democrats into a corner from which vigorous opposition is practically impossible, no matter how obvious the necessity.

As if that weren't enough, the outcome of the Clinton impeachment, though viewed as a short-term disaster for Republicans, has yet become one of their most resounding successes, in that it may have effectively eliminated impeachment as a political option, again no matter how obvious the necessity.

As a result, our political pragmatists tell us that we cannot openly oppose the president on military matters, and cannot advocate his impeachment despite his obvious abrogation of separation of powers. That leaves us in the terribly awkward position of having to defend the dictates of the Constitution, even while disavowing the use of the one tool we have with which to do it.

Some have argued, however, that impeachment is not the sole mechanism by which the Constitution may be defended. Rather, they say, elections are just as effective. But clearly, this is not the case. In the case of secret, Latin American wars alone -- not to mention the myriad related issues -- it must be obvious to all by now that elections offer at best only a temporary reprieve. And considering how skillfully Republicans are able to dictate the terms and conduct of our elections -- such that we find ourselves time and again unable to advocate for the sorts of solutions truly demanded by the issues we face, whether they be the executive warfighting power or the question of universal health care -- the period of relief we may be able to grant ourselves with an election will doubtless be spent looking over our shoulders rather than toward the future.

This cycle of abuse of the Constitutional order by Republican administrations has now been thrice repeated, each time escalating in its egregiousness. And with each incarnation, the political barriers to the use of our ultimate weapon against it have grown. What exactly do we expect will be the results of turning away from our responsibility this time? That the next Republican administration could find no way to trump the abuses of its predecessors? That next time, the conditions for finally stamping out this mutating theory of executive power will somehow magically be improved?

Even as we now consider our limited options, we are keeping one eye on the possibility that the United States might any day launch the world's first unprovoked nuclear strike. (And here, I must intentionally turn away from a "pragmatic" discussion of the likely long-term consequences of engaging post-revolutionary Iran in direct combat.)

I advocate impeachment not because of who the president is, but because it is clear to me that elections are not robust enough a tool to finally and unequivocally reject a view of the Constitutional order that has obviously become a tenet of the Republican theory of governance. A theory of governance that is not only destructive to our common understanding of the Constitution, but is virtually guaranteed to return in ever more virulent form until it is forever eliminated, and its death at the hands of the people held up as a warning to those who would seek to reanimate it.

Comments

[Meteor Blades]

You would think that every single Republican in Congress worthy of her or his conservative credentials would be howling over these signing statements. Julius Caesar treated the Roman Senate with more respect than this president has done, although he is so far somewhat better than Caligula.

[DemFromCT]

I'd think that D subpoena power come November would make some congressional members salivate in anticipation.

[Kagro X]

No doubt some of them -- enough of them, probably -- are doing just that. The challenge is in getting them to think that they're better off facing their constituents while saying so, as opposed to clinging to him.

That's where "the numbers" come from.

A while back, someone -- and I think it was Ben Masel -- suggested that a backroom deal should be floated in which discontented Republicans agree to impeach Bush (and Cheney, if he's not just arrested outright), and Democrats agree to install Jim Leach as Speaker, leaving the White House (eventually) in Republican hands.

[John Forde]

Unless the Supreme court loses it's mind (and that is a possibility) signing statements do not have the force of law. They do however have legal relevance. Should Bush be convicted of a felony (and that is a stronger possibility) these signing statements will cut against leniency in sentencing. Then again, has there ever been anyone in the history of the republic less entitled to leniency in sentencing?

[Kagro X]

It's not their force at law that's a concern, as much as their force in practice.

In fact, their force in practice becomes an even greater concern given the fact that they have no force at law.

[emptypockets]

...but first one needs to see US combat troops deployed in Colombia, right?

What the assistant secretary of state said to a Colombian radio station sounded more like posturing than law-breaking to me, but you're dead-on that if they are following through then the impeachment case just got a lot easier.

Although one could find better rallying cries than "don't fight FARC." (There probably is one in the other 746 laws he intends to break.)

[shep]

"Should Bush be convicted of a felony (and that is a stronger possibility) these signing statements will cut against leniency in sentencing."

Now that's what I call putting the horse before the cart. Let's prosecute first and impeach later. Rinse. Repeat.

[Mimikatz]

Is there press in Colombia that would tell us if we deployed combat troops there? I mena, would we ever hear about it?

Pat Buchanan recently called on Congress to tell the Prez that waging war on Iran without a copngressional authorization is an impeachable offense:

"Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same contemptible and cowardly way.

It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war would be an impeachable offense. Or, if they so conclude, Congress should share full responsibility by granting him that authority after it has held hearings and told the people why we have no other choice than another Mideast war, with a nation four times as large as Iraq."

Too bad no Democrat has said that, to my knowledge. We need to be building the foundation for impeachment now, then get the Congress in the fall, and put it into effect next January. I don't think he'd listen to anything else.

[emptypockets]

Is there press in Colombia that would tell us if we deployed combat troops there? I mean, would we ever hear about it?

Mimikatz, as an American I don't think I have the prerogative to criticize the investigative press in other countries. But I think FARC themselves would probably be the first to find out, and raise the alarm.

But that's sort of where I was heading. Doesn't the asst. sec state's interview together with the signing statement sort of call out for a Congressional investigation to find out whether we ARE operating with combat troops in Colombia?

Whether Bush pulled the trigger, is planning to, or is just bluffing wouldn't matter. Congressional hearings on covert ops in Latin America would be enough to bring back not-so-old memories as Kagro suggests and help the impeachment ball keep rolling.

[Peter in St. Paul]

Is the real message to keep it simple

Congress passes the laws

The administration implements and inforces the laws, signed by the President.

The judicary decides what is and what is not outside the scope of the law.

Old high school lessons, but where in the picture does the president get to take over the responsibility of the other two branches of government and ignore his responsibilities?

[Brian Boru]

This president faithfully executes the laws in the same way he executed death row prisoners in Texas: bam, bam, bam, one after the other.

[Mimikatz]

I said "press in Colombia", thinking more of US press, or international stringers, not the Colombian Press. It is the US Press in Iraq that, for the most part, tells us what is happening there, not the Iraqi Press. Same with the rest of the world. CNN, AP stringers, that sort of thing.

[Mike G]

Very well put. These people need to be prosecuted and banned from government positions. It really seems to be the only option.