Impeachment's too good for them

Nixon wasn't impeached when he lied about his plans for war, ramped up the violence in Vietnam, or secretly expanded the war into Cambodia - instead, the country had to wait for some two-bit thieves to bungle a break-in before action was taken. When the debate in Congress centered on 18 minutes of blank audio tape, did anyone believe that the plumbers were more worthy of our attention than the thousands being slaughtered in a war that had long-since been lost? The one article of impeachment that mentioned the war didn't even make it out of committee - which only dramatizes the odd priorities of a Congress finally willing to stand up to a tyrant, but not for his most atrocious crimes.

We saw this again earlier this year. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, was brought to his knees not for his role in creating one of the modern era's great quagmires out of smoke and mirrors, but for giving his girlfriend a raise.

Why isn't lying our way into a war enough reason to impeach? Why isn't clear, recorded evidence of our leaders deceiving us about issues that have claimed untold thousands of lives cause enough for us to demand that the few public officials who still pretend to represent us do what is necessary to end this war now? If our demands for change result only in our Senators giving up one night's sleep, or issuing subpoenas into the black hole that our Justice Department has become, perhaps our demands are not really being heard.

The streets are a perfectly good place for a protest, but maybe it's time to move beyond protest. We need to move our demands inside the Capitol itself. If the US Congress can't manage to give up their summer vacations, if they can't bring themselves to hold their colleagues' feet to the fire, we need to pay them a visit and let them know that we're watching and waiting for them to take action, and that we intend to hold them accountable. Every day that goes by is more blood on their hands, but at some point, we must admit that we have not done enough to force them into action.

If Congress is going to ask for our patience while they try and find a way to satisfy every one of their members' petty demands and cower in the face of a few Republicans' pathetically transparent appeals toward patriotism, perhaps they should have to face us while they do so.

We've let our Capitol become an amusement park - a plastic castle where tour groups go to see statues and hear tales of our country's fabled past. But the House and Senate chambers are not dioramas, they are the factories where our Democracy is made, and the machinery has grown rusty from lack of use. More importantly, they belong to us. Our government has proven itself unworthy of our deference, so let's stop waiting around for things to get better, let's go take it back.

Look at any Congressperson's website. They're practically begging us to come to Washington for a tour and a gold star. Let's take them up on it. The fact that the galleries of the House and Senate sit mostly empty in this time of crisis might be the perfect symbol of how we've given up on the idea that this is our country, our government, our responsibility. Jefferson and Madison would be dismayed that the most we do to keep tabs on our leaders is read about them in the paper and flip past them quickly on C-SPAN. Watching the lowlights of their vapid debates on the Daily Show isn't enough - they need to know we're watching.

We have a little over a month until Congress reconvenes from its summer vacation (we cluck, cluck at the Iraqi parliament for taking a break in August - is it really less offensive that our representatives are headed for the beach while our soldiers endure another hot summer in Iraq?) When they return to DC, let's fill the galleries of the House and Senate and let them know that we're done pretending that everything is ok, done waiting for them to take real action to bring our troops home, done living in a pale shadow of the country our founders intended.

Meet us in Washington, and we'll take our country back together.

Good luck storming the castle,
AmericaStandsWatch.org

A PS to the impeachment crowd: more power to ya. Anyone who slows this bunch of thugs down is doing right in my book. If a technicality ends the war and brings this would-be-king down a notch, then bring on the technicalities.