I didn't say it when his incompetence led to September 11th (President's Daily Briefing, anyone?). I didn't say it when he he took us to war in Iraq unjustly and dishonestly. I didn't say it when he imprisoned U.S. citizens without charge as "enemy combatents," or when he held foreign detainees in violation of the Geneva Convention. I didn't even say it when we discovered that his administration had systematically and self-consciously developed a legal cover to justify torture!
It wasn't because these things weren't serious, but it was because I felt that the bar to impeachment needed to be unambiguously high and difficult to surmount. Well, friends. He's now surmounted it. Not only has he authorized the surveillance of American citizens in direct violation of Federal law. Not only has he done it many, many times. But he's admitted to it and he's even standing up and justifying it in the name of the War on Terror.
Please, please, make no mistake. This isn't a transitory problem that happened and will be remedied. They're proud (retroactively) of what they've done. They think it's honorable. And, lest you think it's a temporary measure to handle an emergency situation, the President himself has said that he intends to continue authorizing these wiretaps for as long as Americans are in danger. Please, dwell on that sentence. Let it haunt you. Let it keep you up at night. If the President gets away with this claim, if he is not impeached, if he is not removed from office and disgraced, along with all of those who knew about and supported this action, then he has opened the door for any president to do essentially anything, as long as he can justify it by claiming that he's doing it to protect the American people.
Even if you massage the statement to mean "for the duration of the war on terror," ask yourself, how long will that be?
We keep playing this game by calling the war on terror a war, pretending that it has a foreseeable goal and a determinable duration, but the nature of terrorism as such means that we may be at war in principle forever, and the President has arrogated to himself the executive authority to do whatever he sees fit in the name of national security, completely independently of legislative or judicial oversight, for the duration of that war.
Repeat after me: "Eurasia is our friend. We have always been friends with Eurasia. East Asia is our enemy. East Asia has always been our enemy."
It is time. From this day forth my mantra will be: Impeach Him!
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