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An Impeachable President
// The price of the question
The old year ended with the hasty execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the New Year is beginning in like spirit with unfestive talk about Iraq and Iran. The main international news is the plan for a large addition to U.S. troop power in the region. U.S. President George W. Bush mentions the need to counter Iranian influence in Iraq as a motivation for his actions. With his characteristic plain speech, the U.S. president called things by their real names. It is not a matter of preventing Iraq from falling into the abyss so much as the solution to a political problem that has little to do with the daily terrorist acts and violence taking place in the country.
That solution is shaped by U.S. domestic politics. A battle of giants will take place this year as the Republic administration in the White House faces off against a Congress controlled in both houses by Democrats. The main battlefield will be Iran and Iraq. Congress will not take idly Bush's dispatching more troops to Iraq against its will. It is likely that the riled-up legislators will begin impeachment proceedings against the president. They have no other recourse.
Is Bush's impeachment realistic? Several years ago, after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Congress tried to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton. But even as the Republicans tried to unseat him and the press fanned the flames of scandal, the American public never understood what the president did that was so bad. In the November 1998 elections that they expected to win thanks to Lewinsky, the Republicans lost. Average Americans still liked Clinton. And then passions died down fast, and the new Congress rejected impeachment, allowing Clinton to finish out his term in peace.
Bush's rating continues to fall, however, placing him in a different situation. America is paying for his geopolitical mistakes with daily bloodshed and huge monetary outlays. This is no melodrama with female aides in the pages of the yellow press. Potential 2008 presidential candidate Joseph Biden sounded convincing when he warned Republicans that supporting the president's new plan will be political suicide. The case of Iraq differs from the Monica story, and Bush will have much more trouble shaking off its consequences.
American society has already practically expressed its lack of confidence in its president. That is why Bush is making such a big noise. He understands that he has nothing to lose by burning his bridges.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 15, 2007
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