“War is the health of the state,” said Randolph Bourne. “War is hell,” said General Sherman. The war criminal Sherman was an expert in the subjects of hell and war. When I was twelve, I attended my brother Mike’s graduation from St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute. The year was 1970 and the Vietnam War was raging. The commencement speaker, himself a hero of World War II, was, nevertheless, a man of peace. He blasted away at the war at some risk to his career as a judge in the very conventional and timorous world that was Buffalo in that era.
That same man would later spend many years working for free for the rights of pro-lifers to protest. To him, it was the same issue, life. He also opposed the death penalty so he, like Ron Paul, accomplished the pro-life trifecta, a rarity these days. The commencement speaker that May day was our father, William J. Ostrowski. He knew war and hated it. At age 18, he had marched off to face the Nazis while passing row after row of young American boys dead by the roadside.
Dad left Mike and I five years ago but in a twist of fate, Mike and I have teamed up to write a profoundly antiwar book that we are happy to announce today on LewRockwell.com. When you read the title, you may be tempted to think it’s a partisan book: “The Impeachment of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for High Crimes in Syria and Libya.” But it’s not. It’s mainly an anti-war and anti-state book. Mike is not involved in electoral politics. I am a registered Republican toying with the idea of burning my GOP card over their support for draft registration for women. (I oppose it for men too.) We are not connected to the Trump campaign. I was hoping Trump would veer towards the libertarian view and I passed along some ideas to his campaign but he has not adopted any of those ideas.
I watched the GOP convention last week and, as usual, they missed the point. They were still focusing on Hillary’s “damn emails” and on her alleged negligent supervision of the CIA compound in Benghazi. Don’t expect the clueless GOP to ask why the hell the CIA had a compound in Libya in the first place? Never forget that the GOP is the stupid party.
Our book, short as it is, is really four books in one. First, we explain the colossal error that was American foreign policy in the Middle East for the last 100 years. Second, we expand the theory of progressivism (developed in my 2014 book) and apply it to foreign policy. Hint: progressivism is even worse when applied to foreign affairs. Third, we introduce a new concept into the political dialogue, archism, that helps clarify the source of so many seemingly intractable problems plaguing the modern world. Finally, we do deliver on the promise of the title. The book is a sustained argument for the impeachment of Obama and Hillary for starting or joining two illegal and extremely destructive wars that have the world on the edge of disaster.
Here is the Introduction:
In mid-2016, Americans face the threat of terrorism at home, endless war abroad in the Middle East and a refugee crisis that threatens to overwhelm Europe and America. Two people bear the most responsibility for this state of affairs. One is the incumbent President; the other has about a 50 percent chance to become the next President.
This is a dreary and dangerous predicament we find ourselves in. What is to be done? To sit on the sidelines and allow the nation to be dragged down ever further into the abyss is unthinkable. The Framers of the Constitution provided a legal and political mechanism for just such extreme cases of official misconduct.
This book makes the case for the commencement of impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the event that she is elected President. As of the date of publication, her odds of being elected are better than fifty-fifty. If the publication of this volume lessens those odds, that is all to the good.
Impeachment proceedings are commenced when the House of Representatives agrees to open an investigation of whether grounds exist to file articles of impeachment. A special committee is then appointed to undertake the investigation. After the investigation is completed, the committee votes on whether to send articles of impeachment to the full House of Representatives. The House is the master of its own rules on impeachment including the standard of proof needed to bring charges.
Impeachment is often compared to an indictment wherein the standard of proof is probable cause, more probable than not. However, the House applied a higher standard, “clear and convincing evidence,” in deciding whether to impeach Richard Nixon. An even lower standard is appropriate for merely opening an investigation. That is because, prior to a formal investigation, many of the critical facts are unknown and may be carefully hidden by the miscreants. This is necessarily a judgment call. In the present instance, sufficient facts have been ferreted out by journalists and researchers to lead reasonable people to suspect that two illegal wars have been initiated for improper purposes and based on false information. Only a formal investigation by a House committee can cut through the fog of war and clandestine operations and reveal the true facts of these events. Thus, this book is a sustained argument for opening such an investigation.
The authors are not naïve about the prospects for such an investigation being approved by the House. Our opinion of the House is as low as anyones. Many in the House likely approved the suspects’ projects in Libya and Syria and with the exception of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, have expressed little or no interest in investigating them. As of today, there is zero political will to initiate impeachment proceedings. However, history shows that what is politically impossible one day can become politically mandatory the next.
There are some good men and women in the House of Representatives and it is to them and to the American people that this volume is initially addressed. A copy of this book will be forwarded to each Member of the House so they cannot deny being put on notice of these charges. At the end of the day, the authors are only responsible for what they do, not what others do.
