COUNTERPUNCH; The Case for the Impeachment of Barack Obama
- From: bodhi <psychedelictourist@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 17:24:07 -0700 (PDT)
Same Crimes, Same Misdemeanors
The Case for the Impeachment of Barack Obama
By DAVE LINDORFF
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04022010.html
Back in 2005-06, I wrote a book, The Case for Impeachment, in which I
made the argument that President George W. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney, as well as other key figures in the Bush/Cheney
administration--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--should be
impeached for war crimes, as well as crimes against the Constitution
of the United States.
These days, when I mention the book’s title, people sometimes ask,
half in jest, whether I’m referring to the current president, Barack
Obama.
Sadly, it is time to say, just 14 months into the current term of this
new president, that yes, this president, and some of his subordinates,
are also guilty of impeachable crimes--including many of the same ones
committed by Bush and Cheney.
Let’s start with the war in Afghanistan, which Obama has taken full
ownership of with an escalation that will bring the number of US
troops in that country (not counting mercenaries hired by the Pentagon
and CIA) to 100,000 by this August.
The president has authorized the use of Predator drone aircraft for a
program of bombing conducted against Pakistan which has illegally
expanded the Afghan War into another country without any authorization
from Congress. These pilotless drones are known to kill far more
innocent bystanders than enemy targets, making them fundamentally
illegal on principle as weapons. Furthermore, this wave of attacks in
Pakistan is a war of aggression against another nation if the word
“war” is to have any meaning at all, and as such it is illegal under
the UN Charter. Indeed initiating a war of aggression against a
country which does not pose an immediate threat to the invader is
described in the Charter and in the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter as the
gravest of all war crimes.
The president, as commander in chief, has also, in collusion with
Attorney Eric Holder, blocked any prosecution of those who authorized
and perpetrated torture against captives in the War in Iraq, the War
in Afghanistan, and the so-called War on Terror--notably Federal
Appeals Court Judge Jay Baybee, and Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo,
who as Justice Department attorneys authored the legal briefs
justifying torture-- and has in fact continued to permit the
application of torture against captives. All of this is in clear
violation of the Geneva Conventions, which as a signed set of
treaties, are part of the law of the United States. Under those
treaties, failure on the part of those up the chain of command to halt
or to punish those who commit torture are themselves guilty of the
crime of torture.
As commander in chief, President Obama has also overseen a strategy in
Afghanistan of expanded attacks on civilians in Afghanistan. As in
Iraq under the Bush administration, this current phase of the war in
Afghanistan is seeing more civilians killed than enemy combatants,
because of the widespread use of weapons like helicopter gunships,
aerial bombardment, fragmentation bombs, etc., as well as a tactic of
night raids on housing compounds where insurgents are suspected of
hiding--raids that frequently lead to the deaths of many women and
children and innocent men. It is significant that even the recent
execution-style slaying of nine students, aged 11-18, by US-led
forces, has not led to an investigation or prosecution of a
individual. Rather, the incident is being covered up and ignored, with
the clear acquiescence of the White House and the leadership at the
Pentagon.
It is also widely believed that under the command of Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, who is known to have directed a large-scale death-squad
operation in Iraq before moving to his current position, a similar
death-squad campaign of assassination is being conducted now in
Afghanistan--a campaign that like the notorious Phoenix Program in the
1960s in Vietnam, is almost certainly resulting in the deaths of many
innocent Afghans.
Domestically, the president has continued to allow the policy of
detention without trial of hundreds of captives in Guantanamo Bay and
other prisons, including Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and his
director of national security has even stated that it is the policy of
this administration that American citizens deemed by the
administration to be enemy combatants or terrorists may be targeted
for summary execution. Such officially sanctioned state murder is a
blatant violation of the Constitution’s insistence that every American
has a right to a presumption of innocence and to a trial by a jury of
his or her peers.
The president has also continued and in some ways even expanded the
Bush/Cheney administration’s program of warrantless spying by the
National Security Agency on the electronic communications of millions
of Americans. A part of that program, the monitoring of communications
of a now defunct Islamic charity, was just declared illegal by a
federal judge in a case that was brought against the Bush/Cheney
administration, but which continued to be defended by the current
administration. There has not been a decision as yet by the Obama
administration about whether to appeal that decision. While the case
in question does not represent a crime by the Obama administration, it
is clear that it only represents the very tip of the huge iceberg of
domestic spying, and the administration’s vigorous efforts to shut
down this case or to win it are clear evidence that the NSA is
continuing to do the same thing on a vast scale. In fact, the only
reason this case even got to trial is because of a government error
that resulted in a memo describing the monitoring being mailed
inadvertently to the victims of the spying.
While we’re at it, I would also suggest that there is amble evidence
to call for the impeachment of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,
who appears, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, to have colluded
in an effort to cover up a massive fraud at Lehman Brothers, and who
has subsequently as Treasurer, participated in unprecedented giveaways
of taxpayer funds to several of the country’s largest banking
institutions.
The above enumeration of criminal and Constitutional transgressions
makes it clear that this president, like his predecessor, has, almost
since his first day in office, continued down a road of criminal and
unconstitutional behavior that threatens the survival of
Constitutional government in the United States.
Let me state it simply: President Barack Obama, as well as Attorney
General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Treasury
Secretary Geithner, should be impeached for war crimes and high crimes
against the Constitution.
Of course, having watched the Democratic Congress shamelessly duck its
solemn duty to initiate impeachment proceedings against President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their criminal subordinates for two
years, I have no illusions about that same Democratic Congress
allowing an impeachment bill to be filed against this president.
Having said that, I think it is important to at least make the point
publicly that this president, like the one before, deserves to be
impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). He can be reached at
dlindorff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
----------------
namaste;
bodhi
.
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