Incompetence Is Not A Crime

Impeach President Bush?  On what grounds?  Must I remind everyone that in order for articles of impeachment to be drafted against a sitting president, there must be evidence of that president committing 'treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors'?  I will grant that the phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors' leaves a tremendous amount of room for interpretation in determining what threshhold of severity must be breached in order to proceed with impeachment.  What I will not grant, however, is the idea that a president ought to be impeached because people don't like him or the result of policies he has implemented.  In other words, if you support the impeachment of a president or any other civil official, you had better be prepared to convince me that that president or official did, in fact, break the law and that that partcular violation of civic trust is so egregious that it merits removal from office.

Based on this standard, then, the popular arguments for the impeachment of President Bush face serious challenges.  One of the more common pro-impeachment arguments put forward is that President Bush lied to the American public in delineating reasons for the US's unilateral invasion of Iraq.  Okay.  But there are two problems with arguing that the manner in which President Bush sold the Iraq invasion merits impeachment.  The first problem is that, using the legal definition of lying, President Bush never lied to the American public.  Lying, at least how the legal system defines it, means deliberately providing information that you know to be incorrect and conveying it as the truth.  Period.  Remember that in late 2002, every major intelligence agency in the world (CIA, MI6, Mossad) thought that Saddam Hussein did have at least some weapons of mass destruction.  Accept the logical assumption that President Bush believed and therefore based his decision to begin combat operations in Iraq on this information.  So when he told the American public that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, he wasn't lying; he was only conveying information that he believed to be true at the time.  The fact that the intelligence has since been proved incorrect is irrelevant.  The legal standard for lying requires that the alleged liar know that his information is false at the time of the alleged lie.  In other words, the definition is not, and cannot be, applied retroactively.

The second problem with the lying argument is that, even if you have convinced yourself that President Bush lied to the American public, you would find it very difficult to argue that lying to the American public is illegal.  Immoral?  Yes.  Despicable?  Certainly.  Damaging to civic trust and government?  Without a doubt.  But illegal?  No.  The last time I checked, the President is not under a legal oath when he delivers a speech to the public.  Nor is he constitutionally obligated to always tell the truth to the American public.  So you cannot accuse President Bush of perjury.  President Clinton was impeached for perjury not because he lied to the American public in the infamous press conference, but rather because he lied to a grand jury after taking an oath.  The latter is a crime for which anyone can go to jail, the former is not.  Scooter Libby, who I shall get to later, is guilty of the same crime: perjury in front of a grand jury.  So unless you can come up with evidence that President Bush made intentionally misleading statements which he knew to be so after taking an oath, the argument for impeachment based on the incorrect claims of weapons possession hold no water.

The rest of the arguments face similar problems.  The imprisonment and possible torture of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and other sites around the world?  It's atrocious and not in the spirit of the United States of America.  But you cannot convince me that it's illegal.  I understand that the Geneva Convention is the law of the land since the Senate ratified it, but President Bush and his administration found a legal loophole by declaring the suspected terrorists 'enemy combatants' and conducting their interrogations outside of the United States.  They outsmarted the legal system; that's what lawyers do.  They manipulate the system and bend the laws to suit their particular goals.  And we can, and should, thank them for revealing these particular flaws.  And never forget that when Congress was given the chance to fix the loophole and prohibit torture, in any form, against anyone, Congress balked and gave President Bush exactly what he wanted.  In this case, the individual senators who committed this deplorable breach of consicience are the ones who should be removed from office for their lack of courage and defense of the ideals of the union.

The commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence?  Well, yes, it wreaks of politics and political favoritism, but guess what?  It's not illegal since the president has the constitutional power to pardon criminals and commute their sentences.  And furthermore, every president uses the office to shower favors on their friends.  Yes, it pays to be rich and well-connected in modern America.  It always has.

The pitiful response to Hurricane Katrina?  Pitiful, yes, but one needs to look only at the title of this post to decide whether it merits impeachment.

The only pro-impeachment argument in which I can find evidence of a crime is the wiretapping program revealed by the NY Times in December 2005.  To me, allowing federal agencies to wiretap international calls without warrants is a violation of the FISA law enacted in 1978 and therefore illegal.  Here, President Bush and his administration clearly broke a law that was passed and enacted by Congress.  And for this, I certainly want him held accountable.  But more than that, I want anyone who would argue for the impeachment of the 43rd President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, to sit down and actually analyze their arguments.  Impeachment is not a trivial matter.  It is not a word or an idea that can be tossed around on a whim whenever a president or civil official does something that you don't like.  It is the most serious charge that we can level at an official in our government and we should treat it as such.