We can have accountability WITHOUT impeachment

[HamdenRice]

I share the concern that many pro-impeachment DUers have expressed today in favor of impeachment. The reason the members of the Bush administration's various criminal enterprises and conspiracies must be punished was best explained by Latin American human rights activists after the age of Pinochet: If society doesn't punish wrongdoers in high office, then society implicitly condones their behavior, says that one can commit crimes in high office, disappear people, torture, and it won't be punished. This means that the next dictator down the line will reason that he too can get away with lawless criminality.

The post-Pinochet Latin Americans and post-apartheid South Africans called this the "culture of impunity," and believed it was very important to root that aspect of their political culture out of their legal and political systems. The potential development of a culture of impunity, especially within the Republican Party, is why I fear allowing Bush and his criminal co-conspirators to get away with their crimes.

But I think we are confusing two things: impeachment on the one hand, and punishment and accountability on the other. Impeachment is not the only means of punishing the members of the Bush criminal enterprise. It happens to be the most nationally paralyzing, time-consuming, uncertain of outcome, politically costly means of punishment, and the means with the greatest threat of backlash from Republicans and independents.

But it is not the only means of punishment. Impeachment takes an incredibly long time, if past experience is any indication. It is highly unlikely that impeachment could be accomplished in the two years remaining in Bush's term. I think that Madame Speaker Pelosi was simply recognizing the unpleasant likelihood that Bush may manage to let the clock run out on his presidency without being impeached, and if that is so, why invest so much political capital in such a losing and risky proposition. (Could you imagine starting impeachment proceedings and Bush and Cheney being acquitted in the Senate??!) But that doesn't mean Bush and Cheney won't be punished.

We are creating a false equation, in other words: no impeachment = no punishment or accountability. That's just not so.

I hope that the Democratic Congress investigates the hell out of the administration, while moving forward with its legislative plans for 2008. By 2008, there will be so much evidence of massive corruption, criminally negligent homicide in New Orleans, treason, murder, torture, false imprisonment, war crimes, and above all, intentional failure to prevent 9/11, obstruction of the investigation into 9/11 including facilitating the escape of members of the bin Laden family ordered directly from the White House, and aid to Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora, that the Republicans will be dead in the water for a decade. In 2008, with lots of hard work, the Democrats will have hundreds of statutes and programs ready to be enacted immediately after the swearing in of the Democratic president in January 2008.

Even if the clock runs out on impeachment, the professional staff of the Justice Department will still be able to prosecute Bush's crimes, treating Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzoles, and others not as high officials needing to be removed with all the dignity and majesty of the impeachment process, but treating them as former officials and mere citizens who happen to be the common thugs and criminals that they have provent themselves to be.

[HamdenRice]

1. shameless self promotion kick? nt