Congressional Responsibility for War Crimes

The Congressional Democrats stubborn insistence that Bush and Cheney leave the White House through the front door, like honorable men who served their nation with distinction, is baffling.
The Democrat’s elaborately concocted explanations (laying a finger aside the nose and winking) that this is smart political strategy have done little to dissuade a healthy majority of Americans that the nation is not being well served. Their transparent and morally reprehensible excuses have convinced few.

Even stalwarts like John Conyers, who during the days of the Democratic minority held hearings in the basement of the Capitol so the crimes of Bush and Cheney would be part of the public record, has collapsed. Conyers is refusing to budge even with three prominent members of the Judiciary Committee breathing down his neck and publicly demanding impeachment hearings.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi has gone Bush one better on the hubris scale by sidestepping the need for ratification by 50 states to amend the Constitution. She has given us a "unitary" congress as a bookend to the“unitary” president. When she says, “impeachment is off the table” what she really means is that she has decided all by her little self to remove impeachment from our Constitution.

When angry constituents confront Congressional Democrats, they resort to the parental line of last resort, “it’s not going to happen”. Did they think we wouldn’t notice that the reason it isn’t happening is that they are not doing their jobs? Do they think we won’t mind that they are misrepresenting us?

State Legislatures have the power to compel to Congress to take up impeachment. The Democrats have worked overtime to suppress bills in a number of states. Here in the Washington State, they have done it twice. Last year Patty Murray and Jay Inslee put the fear of God into the state legislature who like the lapdogs they are ignored a public outcry and walked the Party line. This year only Patty came out to put the squeeze on House Chairman Frank Chopp who is refusing to even hold hearings on a separate House Joint Memorial filed by Rep. Maralyn Chase.

Why are Democrats so belligerent about impeachment? Their collective whine that it will hurt their chances in the next election has no precedent. Nine out of nine times impeachment has benefited "them that does the impeaching", whether or not it is successful.
Just ask Georgie. How else could a fifty-some-year-old troubled teenager garner enough votes to cheat his way into the White House? Bush would be clearing brush full time at his ranch without the humiliating and inappropriate impeachment of Bill Clinton. Hell, he campaigned on "returning decency" to the White House.

The Democrat's dodge that they are too busy turning the ship of state around hasn't born any fruit. Allowing alleged criminals to have veto power certainly has cramped their style. They've huffed and they've puffed and accomplished little.

Despite their protestations, impeachment is very much in the interests of the Democratic Party. Yet there can be no doubt that the Democrats as well as the Republicans do NOT want to have this conversation.

My first hunch was that a serious investigation might implicate the Democrats. Perhaps they had their hands in the cookie jar, profiting from the dead bodies of a million Iraqis as well as our own sons and daughters. Perhaps they were in on the plan to snatch our civil rights. But if the Democrats would assert their power to question the legality of the debacle in Iraq and move to restore the Constitution, they would certainly be granted popular immunity if indeed they have sinned.

When the Democrats say impeachment would threaten the election of a Democrat to the Wbite House they might be referring to the hundreds of millions of dollars they are raking in from the industrial war machine and coddled corporate bad actors. But if they honored the voter’s mandate for accountability and ending the war, they wouldn’t need to outspend the GOP to prove to us they are competent to lead. It would be self-evident.

My second hunch is that it’s all about the war crimes. It' s a long and winding road, but there are some serious implications for congress if an investigation is launched. The illegality of the Iraq invasion is going to be front and center.
The head of the UN declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. Waging illegal war is the most serious war crime there is. It’s a capital crime. This isn't just international law, it's domestic law as well.
The way the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been conducted is rife with additional war crimes; the use of illegal weapons, human right’s violations, torture, destruction of civilian infrastructure, seizing resources, collective punishment (Fallujah), failure to protect civilian life are all war crimes. Even the failure to count “enemy” dead is a war crime.

But it isn’t just the perpetrators who take the fall in the case of war crimes. Failure to prevent a war crime when you have knowledge of them is in itself a war crime.
The German Minister of Information was hung for just such crimes. He didn’t send anyone to concentration camps or invade any nation. His activities made those things possible. He was fully aware of what was going on.
Every member of Congress that has voted for the war (there is no preemptive war that isn’t a war crime) and to continue the military occupation of Iraq is implicated. They are the ones making the war crimes possible by funding them and they are fully aware of their illegality.

The Geneva Conventions are not “quaint” they are US law. It appears that not only have the president and vice president violated domestic statutes, so have congress. An investigation is certain to highlight these uncomfortable truths. Isn’t it just possible that members of Congress, many of whom are lawyers, are very aware that they bear responsibility for Iraq.
The conflict of interest in asking a Congress who overwhelmingly voted to launch this war and have continued to support it in the face of incontroveritble evidence of its illegality is a staggering conflict of interest.

You might be able to kick crimes like abuse of power, graft, gross negligence, pervasive corruption and fraud under the carpet and still have sort of a country.
But war crimes are not something you can shrug off and still claim legitimacy. The door is wide open for other nations to follow in our footsteps. The perceived injustice of not prosecuting such horrific crimes will fuel terrorists for generations.
Any future leader that is serious about curbing terrorism must make certain that justice is served. Restoring the nation’s credibility demands it.

I believe congress hopes to wind the war down quietly, preferably without upsetting any of their donors and go on their way hoping no one notices. Members may console themselves with the self serving lie that domestic order is preserved.
But what kind of domestic order do you have when the worst kind of crimes, mass murder of the innocent, have no consequences?

War crimes may be a problem that even in the best of circumstances may be too big, too close to the bone and too far-reaching for Congress alone to handle. The DOJ has been so politicized that it refuses to honor congressional subpoenas.
What may be needed is a separate body that is immune from political pressure and that has absolute authority to see that justice is done.
If we don’t provide an effective check on something as hideous and the destruction of an entire nation, then we are back to barbarism, this time on steroids. Mutual assured destruction becomes not only probable but inevitable.

Carol DW