Pre-empt Bush

President Bush evidently feels that the resolution Congress passed in 2002 allowing him to wage “pre-emptive” war in Iraq gives him the authority to do the same with any other country he believes could be a threat to the U.S. Currently, that country seems to be Iran. Next year, it could be Canada. Or England. How about North Korea? Russia? Venezuela? Brazil? Cuba? China?

Here’s what I’d like to know. Rather than pussyfoot around, trying to come up with non-binding symbolic resolutions to bring troops out of Iraq and, hopefully, keep him from ordering a pre-emptive attack on Iran, why can’t Congress pass a binding resolution to pre-empt Bush?

Don’t laugh. I know that’s why the Founders added impeachment as a way to stop criminal, rogue action on the part of the Executive branch.

But so far, the Democratic Congress is dragging its feet regarding the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, though with the stakes so high for America and her constitutional democracy, I’m not sure why. Seems to me that the time to do this has come. If they wait even a few weeks more, it could be too late.

No doubt someone better versed than I in politics and the Constitution could explain it to me.

And yet ... we’re facing a disaster of huge proportions, should Bush finagle a way to attack Iran. The pieces are slowly falling into place, just as they did with Iraq. In February 2003, Powell addressed the U.N. with his speech full of falsehoods and fantasies, and Bush said that he hadn’t decided whether to go to war, that he’d pursue all diplomatic options available. Of course, along with the lies he and his Republican enablers made up to convince us to go to war, he also lied about that. We were in Baghdad in early March.

Sadly, some of us never believed those lies. Our voices were ignored, or worse, we were called unpatriotic. Or traitors. Just like ... now.

Bush is saying the same thing. We’re moving into the middle of February. In March, the weather is better in the Middle East – not too hot yet, not too cold – just right for another nasty little war. Bush tells us he’s not really thinking about war with Iran. Why should we wait for him to prove that he’s lying again?

Faced with a leader who spouts whoppers with stunning regularity to the people who trust him to lead, and who leads them into disastrous, criminal wars of aggression, isn’t it time for the other branches of our government to simply step in and say, “no more”? Can’t Congress, at the very least, swiftly pass a binding, emergency resolution that reduces this particular presidency and vice presidency to the status of figureheads, there in name but without the power to do anything more than dress up in flight suits and purple robes and strut around in a padded room? Then the adults could put out this three-alarm fire of a war in Iraq and, sharing leadership powers equally, get to the long, grim work of mopping up the mess. In the meantime, both parties could work on bringing good candidates to the 2008 presidential election.

If the CEO of a corporation behaved the way Bush has, a competent board of directors would fire him -- and they wouldn’t wait until he’d bled the company dry and started torching the buildings. But we aren’t talking about companies that make widgets. Bush, Cheney and their enablers are frittering away Iraqi and American lives as if they’re nothing but playing pieces on a board while we, the ones who could stop them, do nothing, hoping against all hope that they aren’t insane after all.