Bush will have to resign or face impeachment
President George W. Bush is in second term when tragedy struck in form of Hurricane Katrina, adding to his problems as America's chief executive. He is in the same boat as President Richard Nixon, who resigned 33 years ago than face the possibility of an impeachment, on August 9, the year he was re-elected. President Bush has gone to war against terror in Iraq, when Hurricane Katrina struck. New Orleons and the southern states are just an excuse, but the anti-war crusade has been buttressed by American incompetence in the south, President Bush has taken the blame, and provides reasons by the day why he should be impeached. He has taken responsibility for all that went wrong with Hurricane Katrine. He will dither with excuses until the mid-term elections next year, and then he would resign or face impeachment. But the Republicans are also asking for answers. Even if the Republicans are in the majority in the House of Representatives (Congress) or the Senate, the possibility of an impeachment is real.
Times have changed in the 33 years since President Nixon resigned. President Nixon ended the war in Vietnam but the Watergate caper sunk him. It was a political affair at the top which sank him. President Bush is fighting for his presidency for reasons that had to do with the people. And they have two scores to settle with him: that of sending their sons to Iraq on the dubious anti-Muslim war on terror in Iraq, and of inept handling of Hurricane Katrina. He had projected American superiority a la Hollywood on the rest of the world, but the people who elected him are not happy with having to pay the price. He has got the Sunni Muslims in the Middle East against America, brought religious rivalry in Iraq, supporting Shia Islam against Sunni Islam, in effect supporting a non-Arab ideology in an Arab land. Saddam Hussein saw the opportunity, and while many in the Middle East hated him in office, he is now the Arab hero. He has agreed to die for Arab Islam, and he wins both ways. If he is convicted and sentenced to death in a country where the American passport holder President Jalabani has publicly stated his abhorence to the death penalty, and said he would ask his vice-president to sign the death warrant. If he is not convicted, or if he is not sentenced to death, he becomes a martyr for the Arab cause. Either way he wins.
He faces the same position that President Nixon, then a Pepsi Cola general, found in Vietnam in 1966. I was with Reuters news agency then and was reporting his visit to the higlands. A boy, who looked 13, was brought to the great man's presence. He was told that he was before the great white man, who could American president before long. The boy looked at him, rolled his tongue, and spat at him, with his spittal landing on the future President's nose. The UPI photographer, who unlike today were free lancers, took a photograph of the event, My memory must be failing me, for I had always thought that the UPI photographer was Martin Stuart Fox, who now lives in Bali, but I was told later on by Fox himself that it was not he. I reminded the UPI photographer that the photograph he took was worth its weight in gold, and he should view it as such. When we were returning to Saigon by helicopter, the UPI photographer made the mistake of putting the camera on the seat, the open helicopter made a shake and the camera with its weight in gold disappeared in the forests beneath. President Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972, ended the war in Vietnam, opened bridges with China, and resigned.
Vice President Spiro Agnew was to have taken over, but he had to resign because of the ground. And for the first time in American history, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Gerald Ford, took over. President Bush's vice president, Mr Dick Cheney, is not acceptable to the ground, and would have to resign, his presidency of Halliburton, the huge construction company which stands to benefit from Iraq and the southern states, being a problem. But President Bush's resignation could also cause the same debacle for the Republican Party, and like President Carter, who defeated President George Ford in 1976, the Democratic candidate for the presidency should have an easy ride. How easy a ride that would be depends largerly on how President Bush conducts himself in the coming months. The American newspapers will only catch on the public mood after the rest of the country has caught it. They are now critical of President Bush's handling on Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, but no one has yet drawn the parallels between President Nixon in 1973 and President Bush in 2006. Not yet.
President Bush's reign should also be the end of America as a great power. President Bush diverted more money to rebuild the south than it has in iraq, which it first destroyed and now tries to wriggle out of rebuilding it. He, as commander in chief, allowed the US armed forces to use Depleted Uranium bullets in Iraq. The US does not announce in advance that its troops are using DU bullets or its navy ships are using nuclear weapons. But it obviously does. It has withdrawn USaid from those countries who are not prepared to vote against any attempt to bring the US to the International Criminal Court. It has signed an agreement with North Korea not to make nuclear weapons in return for American recognition and aid. All the time, US forces in South Korea carry DU bullets and other weapons of mass destruction. It is reverse side of globalisation. There is an assumption that globalisation should only be good. But the good is only for the Western powevers, as China is finding herself. But Osama bin Laden, who may be dead but is kept alive by the United States, and the Arab Muslim revolt in the Middle East is the reverse of globalisation. The US has got countries around the world to decry the Arab nations and Al-Qaeda and the Arab attack on New York. It is President Bush and the Western countries that now shiver in their pants. President Bush had a great role in this. And for which he will rue in his retirement.
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