I write letters

Dear Senator [Kerry | Kennedy],

I came across the following on a blog posting the other day. A blogger called hilzoy wrote it, in response to the revelations that President Bush has illegally authorized the NSA to spy on Americans:

This post is not a prophecy of doom. it is an urgent call for backup. Please. Please. Please. Read about those cases. Then go back and read about the President's claims of unlimited power. Ask yourself if you want to trust that he will only use these extraordinary powers against foreign terrorists, and never against innocents or U.S. citizens. Ask yourself if this sounds like the country where you thought you were born, or the country where you want your children to be born. And most importantly--ask yourself what you are going to do about it.

As far as I'm concerned, writing some overheated blog comments about how the administration are fascists and this is the end of American democracy does NOT cut it. As far as I'm concerned that's actively counterproductive. If you can't think of anything else you could start with writing your Congressman.

So here I am, writing my Senator. I am writing to ask you to impeach the President for ordering the NSA to conduct warrantless wiretaps on American citizens. The President believes he has the legal right to order others to break the law, any law. He calls this legal right “executive privilege” or mutters something about “commander-in-chief”. He has lawyers who offer him interpretations of the law that allow him to do whatever he likes.

Do you believe the President can break any law he likes? If not, does it bother you that that is, in fact, what he believes he can do, and that he acts on that belief? Why bother to make laws, why bother to pretend to be a democracy anymore, if the President does not have to follow them?

If you do not believe your job to be superfluous, then you must act. I am not interested in hearing the excuses of my elected representatives about why the President cannot be impeached. You serve The People, not the President. You serve me. I am not so afraid of terrorists that I am willing to give up my power and duty as a citizen to say “Enough is enough.” No more torture, no more renditions, no more spying on peace groups. No more holding innocent people or guilty people without charge. No more breaking the law just because the law is inconvenient. I will not stand for it. I do not stand for it.

I will quote Jonathan Schell in The Nation to close this letter:

Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

[ ... ]

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. [ … ] As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

Like Schell, I expect you to accept this challenge. If you are unwilling to do so, then you ought to resign from office. You should not stay and by doing nothing, ratify this embryonic dictatorship. If you do not act, I will not vote for you again.

Yours very sincerely,

[ Torture Girl ]