Today's Reasons Why We Can't Wait Until 1/21/09

With nary a peep of protest out of the Bush administration, Hosni Mabarak has just enshrined in the Egyptian Constitution the emergency laws by which he arrests, imprisons and tortures all and sundry who would dare to challenge him. The U.S. administration won't even murmur a complaint because Egypt is one of a miniscule and dwindling number of Arab countries that will even give the U.S. the time of day. Egyptian cooperation with Bush's "war on terror", notably providing the convenient outsourcing of torture, has given it a free hand to ditch the last vestiges of civil rights from its Constitution, and establish itself officially as a police state, precisely the opposite direction from the freedom and democracy that Bush claims that his war policy will establish in the Middle East.

Mr. Mubarak's oppression will only lend a hand to the recruiters of terrorists, and we will likely some day receive the fruits of the seeds planted today.

In Pakistan, President Mushareef has dismissed the chief judge of the Pakistani Supreme Court. How convenient for his apologists that they can point to the Bush administration's political firing of federal prosecutors to show that it is nothing unusual. Pakistanis acknowledge and curse the U.S. for its influence and protection of Mushareef.

We cannot contain the pent up rage that Bush and Cheney have caused throughout the world in the last five years. We cannot afford two more years of actions that will only fuel more hatred against the United States and make us less safe.

When Democratic leaders tell us that impeachment is off the table, that there are too many other important issues to deal with, they act as if we were living in a normal time. They think that just because they can't see the death and destruction that our policies have wrought overseas, they don't have to factor them into their daily considerations. As long as people are going to work and going to the mall, our so-called leaders think that they can operate as if it's business as usual. They tinker around the edges of the war, debating non-binding resolutions that give the war faint praise, then continuing its funding with a few wishful caveats about only lasting another year-and-a-half.

These are not normal times. And our representatives are not taking serious stock of what they must do to respond to the crisis in which we find our Constitution, our military, our civil liberties and our standing in the world.

Whether it be before the state legislature of the nation's smallest state, or the U.S. Congress, the people's business today must first be to impeach this lawless administration and to reverse the course of war in Iraq. Only then can we take stock of what the Republic has become and take the first steps towards recovery.