Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Move On

As the magic date of January 20th approaches, the question on the minds of a lot of my more extreme left friends is this - when do we finally start impeachin' and jailin'? You know what I mean. And in the past I've said that if we learned anything from the Clinton years, its that impeachment is no big deal. That is snarky. Impeachment is a big deal.

As a nation, we just can't afford to investigate the alleged crimes of the Bush administration. First of all, who wants to relive that crap? We got plenty of fresh problems to deal with; one of them the epic fail of our economy. If we pour government resources into lawyers' offices for six years, we lose. Ironically, one of the reasons the Clinton impeachment flew is because we could AFFORD to be that frivolous then.

And ultimately, the reason to prosecute any crime is to prevent other people from committing it. If Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress and a grand jury, it didn't stop Bush from the former. Anyway Bush, hopefully, was a unique animal; he did things that Presidents haven't tried since the mid 19th century. I doubt that we're going to have these abuses of power again, unless Karl Rove goes back into that business. And the money is probably better at Fox News.

Bush's punishment, I suspect, is that he's not going to be doing a lot of international travelling from here on in. We're willing to forgive and forget, but Europe may not be so amnesiac. Any foreign soil he sets foot on is likely to have a warrant out for him. And don't get them started on Cheney. Thus, Bush is in a prison which comprises 50 states. It's roomy, sure, but it's still limiting. Plus also, by his own estimation he's unlikely to see the vindication of history unless he lives to be 105. Until then, he's surrounded by a country who think he was wrong.

One more thing, which I hate to bring up, is the blowback factor. Remember when all these stories started coming out about the Clinton impeachment team? Bob Barr had paid for an abortion once, Henry Hyde had committed the "youthful indiscretion" of an affair while in his mid-forties, and so on. The point is, there's always plenty of dirty politics to bring to light. When you out someones misdeeds, you better have your own misdeeds thoroughly vetted when the dude's defense team goes after you.

6 comments:

Publius said...

I doubt GW would be much interested in foreign travel anyway!

But, one thing about foreigners "arresting" ANY U.S. gov't official...

I would hope that we'd bomb the crap out of ANY nation that has the gall to think it can arrest ANY of our officials for ANY reason.

This is the USA. We are not some banana republic to be treated as such.

Further more, there is no such thing as justice outside the borders of the USA. I do not trust, nor respect their so-called law.

piker62 said...

See, this is why the rest of the world (which is actually larger than America!) thinks of us as "arrogant." Crazy Frenchies.

Anonymous said...

Piker, would you support the arrest of a former United States President by a foreign Country?

piker62 said...

ANY former President? Under any circumstances? Nope.

Publius said...

So, then, if they TRIED it, you'd have to be up to DO something about it. Hence, you agree with me. We tell them if they try it they get CREAMED!

piker62 said...

If they tried with with ANY ex president. On the other hand, say a specific ex president raped and killed a nun in a public square in the Balkans. I'd rather that guy was tried and convicted in that country, because he gave us a bad name. And no, in that case I'd say we shouldn't lift a finger to help, except maybe to forward files and offer legal resarch for free.