Why hasn't impeachment already happened?

Gary Kamiya has written an authoritative guide to Americans’ reluctance to press for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, despite overwhelming disaffection with the war on Iraq. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/22/1362/

The article, originally posted at salon.com, lays out the case that Americans are shy toward impeachment because of our own complicity in this administration’s crimes. This is especially true of the fledgling Democratic Congressional leadership.

While his analysis is penetrating on a psychological level, Kamiya’s argument implies a static quality to the political landscape that masks the dynamic nature of our national conversation. During the week of 5/23, leading Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards repudiated the global war on terror and called for Memorial Day war protests. Former Senator Edwards’ statements alert us to a dramatic shift in possibilities.

During the 6+ year long Bush administration and the 12 year long Republican reign in the House of Representatives, it was assumed that the ship of state could only turn a few degrees in any term. Edwards’ statements signal the prospect of an eventual U-turn from American maximalism.

Opinion polls are useful, but rarely register the intensity of disapproval. The Bush administration has cynically launched a “surge” strategy in Iraq which it knows will fail. It will fail because it violates every tenet of the author of counter-insurgency, current commander in Iraq, David Petraeus. The obvious Bush/Cheney strategy is to prolong the war until their term expires, so they can blame our eventual, Viet Namesque withdrawal on their successors.

As this strategy becomes better understood by citizens, the camel straw of betrayal may result in the seething anger of citizens to erupt in a fury of demands for Bush and Cheney’s impeachment.

The Grassroots Impeachment Movement maintains that the impeachment of Bush and Cheney is a necessary first step on the road to repair the international and domestic wreckage of this reckless administration. Kamiya’s conclusions are both cautionary and encouraging.
“[I]mpeachment, however justified or salutary it would be — and I believe it would be both justified and salutary — remains a long shot…. [But] Congress and the media both gain courage as the polls sink, and if Bush’s numbers continue to hit historic lows, they will turn on him with increasing savagery. If everything happens just so, the downfall of the House of Bush could be shocking in its swiftness.”

John Heuer, co-chair
Grassroots Impeachment Movement
Pittsboro, NC