The
Case For Impeachment of President Barack Obama: Illegal
Expansion Of The Afghan War
04 April 2010By Dave Lindorff
Back in 2005-06, I wrote a book, The Case for
Impeachment, in which I made the argument that
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney, as well as other key figures in the
Bush/Cheney administration--Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--should be
impeached for war crimes, as well as crimes against
the Constitution of the United States.
These days, when I mention the book’s title, people
sometimes ask, half in jest, whether I’m referring to
the current president, Barack Obama.
Sadly, it is time to say, just 14 months into the
current term of this new president, that yes, this
president, and some of his subordinates, are also
guilty of impeachable crimes--including many of the
same ones committed by Bush and Cheney.
Let’s start with the war in Afghanistan, which Obama
has taken full ownership of with an escalation that
will bring the number of US troops in that country
(not counting mercenaries hired by the Pentagon and
CIA) to 100,000 by this August.
The president has authorized the use of Predator drone
aircraft for a program of bombing conducted against
Pakistan which has illegally expanded the Afghan War
into another country without any authorization from
Congress. These pilotless drones are known to kill far
more innocent bystanders than enemy targets, making
them fundamentally illegal on principle as weapons.
Furthermore, this wave of attacks in Pakistan is a war
of aggression against another nation if the word “war”
is to have any meaning at all, and as such it is
illegal under the UN Charter. Indeed initiating a war
of aggression against a country which does not pose an
immediate threat to the invader is described in the
Charter and in the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter as the
gravest of all war crimes.
The president, as commander in chief, has also, in
collusion with Attorney Eric Holder, blocked any
prosecution of those who authorized and perpetrated
torture against captives in the War in Iraq, the War
in Afghanistan, and the so-called War on
Terror--notably Federal Appeals Court Judge Jay Baybee,
and Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, who as Justice
Department attorneys authored the legal briefs
justifying torture-- and has in fact continued to
permit the application of torture against captives.
All of this is in clear violation of the Geneva
Conventions, which as a signed set of treaties, are
part of the law of the United States. Under those
treaties, failure on the part of those up the chain of
command to halt or to punish those who commit torture
are themselves guilty of the crime of torture.
As commander in chief, President Obama has also
overseen a strategy in Afghanistan of expanded attacks
on civilians in Afghanistan. As in Iraq under the Bush
administration, this current phase of the war in
Afghanistan is seeing more civilians killed than enemy
combatants, because of the widespread use of weapons
like helicopter gunships, aerial bombardment,
fragmentation bombs, etc., as well as a tactic of
night raids on housing compounds where insurgents are
suspected of hiding--raids that frequently lead to the
deaths of many women and children and innocent men. It
is significant that even the recent execution-style
slaying of nine students, aged 11-18, by US-led
forces, has not led to an investigation or prosecution
of a individual. Rather, the incident is being covered
up and ignored, with the clear acquiescence of the
White House and the leadership at the Pentagon.
It is also widely believed that under the command of
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is known to have directed
a large-scale death-squad operation in Iraq before
moving to his current position, a similar death-squad
campaign of assassination is being conducted now in
Afghanistan--a campaign that like the notorious
Phoenix Program in the 1960s in Vietnam, is almost
certainly resulting in the deaths of many innocent
Afghans.
Domestically, the president has continued to allow the
policy of detention without trial of hundreds of
captives in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons,
including Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and his
director of national security has even stated that it
is the policy of this administration that American
citizens deemed by the administration to be enemy
combatants or terrorists may be targeted for summary
execution. Such officially sanctioned state murder is
a blatant violation of the Constitution’s insistence
that every American has a right to a presumption of
innocence and to a trial by a jury of his or her
peers.
The president has also continued and in some ways even
expanded the Bush/Cheney administration’s program of
warrantless spying by the National Security Agency on
the electronic communications of millions of
Americans. A part of that program, the monitoring of
communications of a now defunct Islamic charity, was
just declared illegal by a federal judge in a case
that was brought against the Bush/Cheney
administration, but which continued to be defended by
the current administration. There has not been a
decision as yet by the Obama administration about
whether to appeal that decision. While the case in
question does not represent a crime by the Obama
administration, it is clear that it only represents
the very tip of the huge iceberg of domestic spying,
and the administration’s vigorous efforts to shut down
this case or to win it are clear evidence that the NSA
is continuing to do the same thing on a vast scale. In
fact, the only reason this case even got to trial is
because of a government error that resulted in a memo
describing the monitoring being mailed inadvertently
to the victims of the spying.
While we’re at it, I would also suggest that there is
ample evidence to call for the impeachment of Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner, who appears, as head of
the New York Federal Reserve, to have colluded in an
effort to cover up a massive fraud at Lehman Brothers,
and who has subsequently as Treasurer, participated in
unprecedented giveaways of taxpayer funds to several
of the country’s largest banking institutions.
The above enumeration of criminal and Constitutional
transgressions makes it clear that this president,
like his predecessor, has, almost since his first day
in office, continued down a road of criminal and
unconstitutional behavior that threatens the survival
of Constitutional government in the United States.
Let me state it simply: President Barack Obama, as
well as Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates, and Treasury Secretary Geithner,
should be impeached for war crimes and high crimes
against the Constitution.
Of course, having watched the Democratic Congress
shamelessly duck its solemn duty to initiate
impeachment proceedings against President Bush, Vice
President Cheney, and their criminal subordinates for
two years, I have no illusions about that same
Democratic Congress allowing an impeachment bill to be
filed against this president.
Having said that, I think it is important to at least
make the point publicly that this president, like the
one before, deserves to be impeached for high crimes
and misdemeanors. At least Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(D-OH), backed by a number of co-signers, was able to
file a bill of impeachment in Congress against both
Bush and Cheney, putting their crimes on the
Congressional, and historical, record. He or some
other member of Congress with integrity and courage
should do the same with Obama and his accomplices.
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