The Curious Case For Impeachment

Writing in The Nation (a publication that generally despises the nation), Elizabeth Holtzman is upset that her previous cry for impeachment of President Bush fell on deaf ears. But the former Congresswoman is a trooper. She's been trying to impeach a Republican president since she sat on the Judiciary Committee during the Nixon fall, and she's taking up the cause again -- still with no awareness whatsoever that there's a war to be fought.

In fact, her bill of impeachment is all about the fact that we are fighting a war:

• Bush lied to get us into the war
• Bush used illegal surveillance techniques
• Bush violated Geneva in the treatment of detainees

I won't even bother to refute; we all know the talking points to counter hers. What matters is that nowhere in her analysis is there even the spark of recognition that there's a reason for fighting this war. In fact, she is oblivious to the terror threat, which apparently ended on 9/11 in her left-leaning world:

Investigations should also be conducted into Vice President Cheney's meetings with oil company executives at the outset of the Administration. If divvying up oil contracts in Iraq were discussed, as some suggest, this would help prove that the Iraq War had been contemplated well before 9/11, and that a key motivation was oil.

Holtzman and the audience she writes to are so wrapped up in hatred of Bush (which is really hatred of a strong and uncowering America) that she doesn't care what impeachment would do to the outcome of a war on terror. Let me restate that more forcefully: To Holtzman, if impeachment contributes to an American defeat in the war on terror, so much the better.

And it's not just Holtzman; it's the global Left. Der Spiegel's running a long excerpt from the new German book "Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren" (Hooray! We Capitulated) by Henryk M. Broder that concludes with this revealing look into the Heart of Darkness:

Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time chairman of the Social Democratic Party and German chancellor candidate, sees "commonalities between leftist policies and the Islamic religion." In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he says: "Islam depends on community, which places it in opposition to extreme individualism, which threatens to fail in the West. The second similarity is that the devout Muslim is required to share his wealth with others. The leftist also wants to see the strong help the weak. Finally, the prohibition of interest still plays a role in Islam, much as it once did in Christianity. At a time when entire economies are plunging into crisis because their expectations of returns on investment have become totally absurd, there is a basis for a dialogue to be conducted between the left and the Islamic world."

Lafontaine called upon the West to exercise self-criticism ("We must constantly ask ourselves through which eyes the Muslims see us") and expressed sympathy for the "indignation" of Muslims. According to Lafontaine, "people in Muslim countries have experienced many indignities, one of the most recent being the Iraq war. What we are seeing here is resource imperialism."

In other words, Lafontaine is willing to sacrifice the future of Europe As We Know It if it means the Social Democratic Party can get the Islamic vote -- and is more than willing to ignore and rationalize the threat of Islamism to accomplish that end.

Holtzman's thinking is no different from Lafontaine's: If you hate your own country, you are drawn to your country's enemies. She doesn't bother to look at impeachment in the context of American security because she doesn't care about American security. Never having to lift a pinkie to defend her freedoms, she is quick to risk those freedoms.

Hat-tip: Real Clear Politics
Related Tags: The Nation, Impeachment, War on terror, Bush, Holtzman, Islam