'The Destroyer and His Helpers' ...by Cindy Sheehan

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
'The Destroyer and His Helpers' ...by Cindy Sheehan

When I first started on my long, arduous and relentless journey towards peace shortly after my son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, I met with many Democratic House Members and two Republicans, Walter Jones (R-NC) and Ron Paul (R-Tx). I received sympathy and sometimes tea from each elected official, but the consensus was that the anti-war group was in the minority in the Democratic Party and but the barest of minorities in the Republican Party so nothing could be accomplished in stopping Bloody George the Destroyer's war of terror.

The news from Iraq is already devastating this month. In the first five days of February, as things are escalating, compounding and stacking up The Destroyer's blunders in Iraq, 17 of our soldiers have been killed. So far, over hundreds of hungry civilians have been killed at crowded marketplaces in Baghdad. These calamities have occurred while The Destroyer and his helpers, Congressional Democrats, were rubbing elbows and sharing a good chuckle over George's linguistic contortions. Is it just me, or should it be a requirement that the president of an English speaking country be able to speak English?

Recently, Sen. Hillary Clinton said during a speech that she knows there are people in the country who wish that Congress could "do more" then offer pathetic non-binding resolutions and even weaker bills that don't have a chance in Bush-Hell to get out of committee, or if by a miracle a bill reaches The Destroyer's desk, he would just veto it, or add one of his tyrannical and dictatorial signing statements.

Excuse me, Ms. Clinton, Congress can do more. Congress has it in its power to stop The Destroyer and the depraved occupation of Iraq. Congress can quit enabling The Destroyer's addiction to destruction.

Congress can vote "Nay" on the next 250 billion dollar request for more madness in the Middle East.

Congress can start investigating the myriad of high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Crime Regime. Congress can remove BushCo from office and see that they are tried in criminal court for war crimes and crimes against our own Constitution.

Congress can belatedly regain its constitutional powers to declare war and rescind its resolution giving George the authority to invade countries willy-nilly as he sees fit, because was all know that he is not fit to see anything.

Congress, in a bi-partisan effort must lasso in this faux-cowboy-run-amok who said he was sending 21,000 more troops to Baghdad to throw more fuel onto the dead body fire but will now send 50,000 more troops because he wants more fodder in the region when he invades Iran.

It is not enough for our employees to say that they are against a war that they voted for and continue to fund. It is not enough to expediently and conveniently say that if you were president in 2003, (Hillary Clinton) that you wouldn't have invaded Iraq. It is absolutely stunning to begin political campaigns for 2008 when our troops and the Iraqi people are being butchered in an absolutely obscene war of choice when many of the candidates mouth the words that it is "wrong."

Seventeen families here in the US and hundreds of families in Iraq are going to find out what it is like to live lives of unqualified hell while no one does anything to help them. We are in a disgraceful and apparently hopeless situation.

What do we do?

First of all, we never give up hope. The grass roots anti-war community has brought this country a long way since even before The Destroyer's "shocking and awful" invasion of an already compromised country. However, we can also never give up our commitment to our brothers and sisters in Iraq and to our children whom BushCo have put in danger's way still without the proper tools to stay alive.

Peace is within our grasp if we don't give into the despair and darkness that has been showered upon our country by the Bush Regime.

Peace is just around the corner if we will move confidently and courageously out of our circles of comfort and concern to realize that being comfortable in such a violent world is not the correct moral choice and someone should be concerned about the innocents being slaughtered by US imperialistic fervor.

Peace is not an issue it is the issue.

Cindy is writing from Paris, France, where her book "Peace Mom" is debuting in France this week.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan who was killed in Bush's war of terror on 04/04/04.

She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and the Camp Casey Peace Institute.

She is the author of three books, the most recent is Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism.

'IMPEACHMENT FOR THE PEOPLE' ...by Howard Zinn

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
'IMPEACHMENT FOR THE PEOPLE' ...by Howard Zinn

Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation’s capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about “unity” and “bipartisanship,” in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.

These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.

The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.”

The “ends” referred to in the Declaration are the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” True, no government in the history of the nation has been faithful to those ends. Favors for the rich, neglect of the poor, massive violence in the interest of continental and world expansion—that is the persistent record of our government.

Still, there seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world. We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end. No government has so casually ignored the will of the people, affirmed the right of the President to ignore the Constitution, even to set aside laws passed by Congress.

The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Representative John Conyers, who held extensive hearings and introduced an impeachment resolution when the Republicans controlled Congress, is now head of the House Judiciary Committee and in a position to fight for such a resolution. He has apparently been silenced by his Democratic colleagues who throw out as nuggets of wisdom the usual political palaver about “realism” (while ignoring the realities staring them in the face) and politics being “the art of the possible” (while setting limits on what is possible).

I know I’m not the first to talk about impeachment. Indeed, judging by the public opinion polls, there are millions of Americans, indeed a majority of those polled, who declare themselves in favor if it is shown that the President lied us into war (a fact that is not debatable). There are at least a half-dozen books out on impeachment, and it’s been argued for eloquently by some of our finest journalists, John Nichols and Lewis Lapham among them. Indeed, an actual “indictment” has been drawn up by a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, in a new book called United States v. George W. Bush et al, making a case, in devastating detail, to a fictional grand jury.

There is a logical next step in this development of an impeachment movement: the convening of “people’s impeachment hearings” all over the country. This is especially important given the timidity of the Democratic Party. Such hearings would bypass Congress, which is not representing the will of the people, and would constitute an inspiring example of grassroots democracy.

These hearings would be the contemporary equivalents of the unofficial gatherings that marked the resistance to the British Crown in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The story of the American Revolution is usually built around Lexington and Concord, around the battles and the Founding Fathers. What is forgotten is that the American colonists, unable to count on redress of their grievances from the official bodies of government, took matters into their own hands, even before the first battles of the Revolutionary War.

In 1772, town meetings in Massachusetts began setting up Committees of Correspondence, and the following year, such a committee was set up in Virginia. The first Continental Congress, beginning to meet in 1774, was a recognition that an extralegal body was necessary to represent the interests of the people. In 1774 and 1775, all through the colonies, parallel institutions were set up outside the official governmental bodies.

Throughout the nation’s history, the failure of government to deliver justice has led to the establishment of grassroots organizations, often ad hoc, dissolving after their purpose was fulfilled. For instance, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, knowing that the national government could not be counted on to repeal the act, black and white anti-slavery groups organized to nullify the law by acts of civil disobedience. They held meetings, made plans, and set about rescuing escaped slaves who were in danger of being returned to their masters.

In the desperate economic conditions of 1933 and 1934, before the Roosevelt Administration was doing anything to help people in distress, local groups were formed all over the country to demand government action. Unemployed Councils came into being, tenants’ groups fought evictions, and hundreds of thousands of people in the country formed self-help organizations to exchange goods and services and enable people to survive.

More recently, we recall the peace groups of the 1980s, which sprang up in hundreds of communities all over the country, and provoked city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons. And local organizations have succeeded in getting more than 400 city councils to take a stand against the Patriot Act.

Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive.

Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress” published by City Lights Books. See Howard on C-SPAN Booknotes Sunday Feb 4, 2007 at 4:30pm.