Congress Should Censure President Bush
President Bush used the occasion of Veteran’s Day to attack critics of the Iraq war as unpatriotic. In the face of the overwhelming evidence that the war was started on false premises, the president has the audacity to state that anyone who raises questions about the origins of the war are hurting our soldiers and giving aid and comfort to our enemies. The president makes no sense and has no shame.
Bush makes no sense because he pulled a bait and switch and asks us not to notice. He asked Congress for a blank check to use force if necessary against the government of Saddam Hussein because they supposedly had weapons of mass destruction which they might use against us. Since this was false, we had no reason to attack Iraq. Indeed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has pointed out that the war was illegal.
The original bait was false, but the switch is equally outrageous. What is the mission now? Hussein is in jail so we are no longer there to fight him. Bush is acting like a drunk who stumbles into the wrong house in the subdivision and then pulls out his gun and starts shooting when the homeowners start bickering among themselves about the best way try to drive him out. Why not just leave and let everyone live a little longer?
Of course, Bush is not himself bearing arms. It is our young men and women who are doing so. It is Bush who has cavalierly sent our volunteer soldiers, overwhelmingly working class, into harm’s way on false pretenses and keeps them there without justification. He demands the rest of us cheer on this misuse of our own sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends and neighbors. But the truly moral thing to do is to stand up and speak truth to power, insist that our young not be sacrificed to an ignoble cause in which torture becomes as routine as drinking a few beers on Saturday night.
Bush calls out Senator John Kerry by name because he was one of those who voted to give him a blank check and now criticizes the war. But John Kerry is following the fine example of Senator J. William Fulbright, who shepherded the Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress and then led in criticizing the Vietnam War and the false pretenses that President Lyndon Johnson used to escalate it.
The Vietnam analogy is apt because in both this war and the war of the last generation the country initially gave strong support and then came to see it was misled and wanted an end to the conflicts. The Vietnam war analogy is apt in another way: it provides a window on the character of George Bush.
What did you do in the Vietnam War, Mr. Bush? Was Mr. Bush asked that question in the presidential debates? It was an appropriate question to ask in 2004 because Bush was sending young people into harm’s way. He had the chance to serve for a cause he believed in during a time when we had a draft, but he avoided service. Despite his affectation of a down home demeanor, Bush exhibits the sick arrogance of the bad rich boy who never did a lick of work but feels entitled to look down on working people as dumb oxen.
The popularity of the film Good Night and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow’s challenge to Senator Joseph McCarthy should remind us of the importance of speaking truth to power. McCarthy had intimidated most politicians and millions of Americans but Murrow called him out. The Senate eventually censured McCarthy.
George Bush has no shame. As an arrogant party boy in his youth, he maneuvered his way out of serving in a war that he thought was a good cause so that working class youths could fight and die in his stead. As president he sent working class youth off to fight and die for a false cause, getting rid of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and continues to keep them in harm’s way with no end in sight for a purpose that’s supposedly about creating a democratic government but is really about opening up the Iraqi economy, particularly oil, to exploitation by a few big corporations.
While speaking falsely about creating democracy in Iraq, Bush shamelessly seeks to undermine democracy at home by branding his critics as virtual traitors.
It is time to follow the example of Joseph Welch and ask George Bush, “Have you no shame?” It is time for the Senate and the House of Representatives to follow the example of the Senate against McCarthy and to censure George Bush for lying to the Congress and the American people to launch a war on false pretenses, for continuing a war on false premises, and for undermining the rule of law and democracy at home by authorizing torture and seeking to silence his critics.
It is time to follow the example of Edward R. Murrow, who declared in his broadcast critique of McCarthy, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. . . .” At stake are the well-being of our soldiers in Iraq, the moral character of our nation in the eyes of the world, and the democratic system at home. We have only our fear to lose. It’s time to act.