The Partial Observer by Adrian Kuzminski
Who Will Lead the Charge To Impeach President Trump?
There is one person in our region who is in a unique position to take direct action to impeach President Trump, and that is our Congressman Josh Riley.
Trump’s unconstitutional attack on Iran and his genocidal threat to destroy Iran are war crimes more than sufficient to disqualify him from office. On April 7, Trump posted on his Truth Social account with regard to Iran all the evidence anyone needs to justify his impeachment: “A whole civilization will die tonight,” he threatened, “never to be brought back again.”
The Democratic leadership eagerly impeached Trump twice, in 2019 and 2021. The first impeachment charged Trump with trying to get the Ukrainian government to interfere in U.S. elections, and the second charged him with inciting the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His unconstitutional war mongering today is even more egregious and blatant, yet the Democratic Party leadership has sidestepped the impeachment issue this time around. They are in the minority in Congress, to be sure, but they have an opportunity to use the mid-term election to rally the country to restore the basic principles of constitutional rule. Yet, instead of leading on the main issue of our time, they are waiting to be led by the electorate, hoping that voter rage against Trump will somehow carry them to victory. That may be a mistake.
With his illegal war-mongering, Trump has betrayed his own supporters, many of whom held their noses and voted for him because of his campaign pledge of “no more wars.” By coming out for impeachment over illegal foreign wars, Riley would give disaffected Trump voters and independents a powerful reason to vote for him. He would force his opponent to defend Trump’s crimes. He would offer our largely disillusioned youth a reason to go to the polls. He would inspire countless people hungry for inspiring leadership in defense of moral and constitutional principles in this dark time.
This is a path to victory for Riley in a narrow election, if he’s bold enough to seize it. The alternative is to play it safe, avoid talk of impeachment and structural reform, and offer more of the status quo almost no one is satisfied with. It’s not just about Trump’s war crimes. It’s his vulgarity and self-aggrandizement. It’s his corrupt financial dealings. It’s his assault on environmental protections and public health. It’s his racism and anti-immigrant prejudice. It’s his violations of civil liberties with ICE. Where is the outrage? Riley and the Democrats might still win, but he and his party would not have the mandate they really need not just to impeach Trump, but to restore the integrity of the American government and address the deeper ills haunting our society.
Trump is not the cause but the symptom of our ills. We need fundamental reform to restore government to public accountability. We need to end the control of the oligarchs and super-rich over our government. We need to stop the undue influence of foreign governments over American foreign policy. We need to end the monopoly of the two corrupt political parties over the electoral system. We need to end the power of the military-industrial complex. We need to regulate the monopolistic corporations which dominate our lives. We need to give up our overseas wars and our global empire whose costs are bankrupting us. We need to spend our money instead on healthcare and social services and education and rebuilding our domestic industrial economy. We need to end the abuse of our civil liberties.
There is much that needs to be done. We need inspiring leadership to do it. So far it has been lacking, but this writer remains optimistic that the dire challenges of our time, as with difficult periods in our earlier history, will yet call out that leadership.
Adrian Kuzminski lives in Fly Creek.
