History lesson: GOP must stop Bush

By Carl Bernstein

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Thirty years ago, a Republican president, facing
impeachment by the House of Representatives and
conviction by the Senate, was forced to resign because
of unprecedented crimes he and his aides committed
against the Constitution and people of the United
States. Ultimately, Richard Nixon left office
voluntarily because courageous leaders of the
Republican Party put principle above party and acted
with heroism in defense of the Constitution and rule of
law.

"What did the president know and when did he know it?"
a Republican senator — Howard Baker of Tennessee —
famously asked of Nixon 30 springtimes ago.

Today, confronted by the graphic horrors of Abu Ghraib
prison, by ginned-up intelligence to justify war, by
652 American deaths since presidential operatives
declared "Mission Accomplished," Republican leaders
have yet to suggest that George W. Bush be held
responsible for the disaster in Iraq and that perhaps
he, not just Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is
ill-suited for his job.

Having read the report of Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, I
expect Baker’s question will resound again in another
congressional investigation. The equally relevant
question is whether Republicans will, Pavlov-like,
continue to defend their president with ideological and
partisan reflex, or remember the example of principled
predecessors who pursued truth at another dark moment.

Today, the issue may not be high crimes and
misdemeanors, but rather Bush’s failure, or inability,
to lead competently and honestly.

"You are courageously leading our nation in the war
against terror," Bush told Rumsfeld in a Wizard-of-Oz
moment May 10, as Vice President Cheney, Secretary of
State Colin Powell and senior generals looked on. "You
are a strong secretary of Defense, and our nation owes
you a debt of gratitude." The scene recalled another Oz
moment: Nixon praising his enablers, Bob Haldeman and
John Ehrlichman, as "two of the finest public servants
I’ve ever known."

Sidestepping the Constitution

Like Nixon, this president decided the Constitution
could be bent on his watch. Terrorism justified it, and
Rumsfeld’s Pentagon promoted policies making inevitable
what happened at Abu Ghraib — and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The legal justification for ignoring the Geneva
Conventions regarding humane treatment of prisoners was
enunciated in a memo to Bush, dated Jan. 25, 2002, from
the White House counsel.

"As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new
kind of war," Alberto Gonzales wrote Bush. "In my
judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s
strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners
and renders quaint some of its provisions." Quaint.

Since January, Bush and Rumsfeld have been aware of
credible complaints of systematic torture. In March,
Taguba’s report reached Rumsfeld. Yet neither Bush nor
his Defense secretary expressed concern publicly or
leveled with Congress until photographic evidence of an
American Gulag, possessed for months by the
administration, was broadcast to the world.

Rumsfeld then explained, "You read it, as I say, it’s
one thing. You see these photographs and it’s just
unbelievable. ... It wasn’t three-dimensional. It
wasn’t video. It wasn’t color. It was quite a different
thing." But the report also described atrocities never
photographed or taped that were, often, even worse than
the pictures — just as Nixon’s actions were frequently
far worse than his tapes recorded.

It was Barry Goldwater, the revered conservative, who
convinced Nixon that he must resign or face certain
conviction by the Senate — and perhaps jail. Goldwater
delivered his message in person, at the White House,
accompanied by Republican congressional leaders.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee likewise
put principle above party to cast votes for articles of
impeachment. On the eve of his mission, Goldwater told
his wife that it might cost him his Senate seat on
Election Day. Instead, the courage of Republicans
willing to dissociate their party from Nixon helped
Ronald Reagan win the presidency six years later,
unencumbered by Watergate.

Another precedent is apt: In 1968, a few Democratic
senators — J. William Fulbright, Eugene McCarthy,
George McGovern and Robert F. Kennedy — challenged
their party’s torpor and insisted that President Lyndon
Johnson be held accountable for his disastrous and
disingenuous conduct of the Vietnam War, adding weight
to public pressure, which, eventually, forced Johnson
not to seek re-election.

Today, the United States is confronted by another
ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and
pursued with contempt for truth, disregard of history
and an arrogant assertion of American power that has
stunned and alienated much of the world, including
traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the
United States needed a president to intelligently and
forcefully lead a real international campaign against
terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead to
unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that
never represented a terrorist threat; to claim
exemption from international law regarding the
treatment of prisoners; to suspend constitutional
guarantees even to non-combatants at home a d abroad;
and to ignore sound military advice from the only
member of his Cabinet — Powell — with the most
requisite experience. Instead of using America’s moral
authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered
it.

In Republican cloakrooms, as in the Oval Office,
response to catastrophe these days is more concerned
with politics and PR than principle. Said Tom DeLay,
House majority leader: "A full-fledged congressional
investigation — that’s like saying we need an
investigation every time there’s police brutality on
the street."

When politics topples principles

To curtail any hint of dissension in the ranks, Bush
scheduled a "pep rally" with congressional Republicans
— speaking 35 minutes, after which, characteristically,
he took no questions and lawmakers dutifully circled
the wagons.

What did George W. Bush know and when did he know it?
Another wartime president, Harry Truman, observed that
the buck stops at the president’s desk, not the
Pentagon.

But among Republicans today, there seems to be scant
interest in asking tough questions — or honoring the
example of courageous leaders of Congress who, not long
ago, stepped forward, setting principle before party,
to hold accountable presidents who put their country in
peril.

Carl Bernstein’s most recent book is a biography of
John Paul II, His Holiness. He is co-author, with Bob
Woodward, of All the President’s Men and The Final
Days.