THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

SADDAMITES | 1998-12-26

We are being told that this Iraq attack had nothing to do with the impeachment.

We were also being told the impeachment ought to be delayed or canceled because of the attack on Iraq. We were also told that impeachment should have been dropped because Saddam doesn't understand it. We were also being told impeachment should be dropped because our "Allies" -- by this term is meant those who sit there and complain about our military action -- would not understand it.

The respectable conservative response to all this is the same as always: "DUHH!"

When liberals said they only wanted a brief delay, respectable conservatives did not make fun of them. When they demand delays, the obvious thing for conservatives to do is to remind them of last year, when Senator Thompson gave them a delay. As soon as they got it, they called Thompson names and blocked everything until the cutoff date.

Any person with a memory would mention that. But if you have a memory, you don't stay respectable for long.

So when liberals demanded a delay, conservatives sat there with that look of constipated earnestness they always assume when liberals speak. In other words, respectable conservatives did their usual respectful routine.

So let's take a real, hard look at the dumbass things the liberals were saying this time.

First of all -- I kid you not -- they were openly arguing that impeachment should be abandoned because Saddam Hussein might misunderstand it. He might think we were being weak. So we had to think like a thug, too, you see.

We should only do what Saddam Hussein can identify with. I call this new political theory Saddamism, and those who propose it are obviously Saddamites. Saddamism would be quite a change for us. We never paid any attention before about what some dictator thought of our system, even in a state of all-out war.

There was a presidential election in the United States in 1944, at the height of World War II. In that election, President Franklin Roosevelt could have been removed. As a matter of fact, Roosevelt got a lower percentage of the vote in 1944 than he had in any previous election.

I have not the slightest doubt that Adolf Hitler did not understand why the United States was having an ELECTION at the high point of a total war, an election in which the president could have been removed from office.

Us Americans didn't consider it odd at all.

Liberals say we should now consider it odd to go ahead with our domestic processes regardless of the attitudes of foreign dictators. And, of course, if liberals take this seriously, respectable conservatives do, too. So everybody is seriously saying that maybe we shouldn't have had an impeachment if Saddam wouldn't understand it the way we do.

Certainly Europe would agree with the Saddamites. Unlike America, they suspend elections in wartime. Under Britain's parliamentary system, all elections were suspended for the duration of World War II, from 1939 to 1945. This was despite the fact that elections had not been held for years before 1939, and the fact that the British Constitution requires elections within five years of the last election.

Britain and France suspended elections during World War I, too.

In other words, the United States held the 1942 and 1944 elections in the teeth of the disapproval of Hitler, Churchill, the Emperor Hirohito, Joseph Stalin, Mussolini, Charles DeGaulle, the Pope and maybe even popular opinion in Liechtenstein.

So who cares?

You can get whiplash trying to keep up with what opponents of impeachment say. First, they say congress should not remove the president "because we don't have a parliamentary system in America." Under the parliamentary system, as in Britain, the prime minister who heads the executive branch is elected and removed by the legislative branch.

Liberals say we don't do that here. So we don't do it the British way here. OK so far. But now they say there should have been no impeachment because there is a war on.

In other words, we should follow the parliamentary system's precedent of suspending the system because of the fighting, as Britain did between 1939 and 1945.

What is frustrating is that we all know that respectable conservatives will bring none of these contradictions up when liberals throw up their next new and conflicting argument.

A real opposition to liberalism could take this country over. It could rule this country, even as liberals win and hold offices. But we could do all that if only we had a real, determined, intelligent antiliberal leadership in this country.

As I explain in the next article, the only way to save American is to get rid of the conservative respectables and replace them with a serious opposition.

But the liberals are not going to let unrespectable people unseat the respectable conservatives. In the United States, the combination of liberals, respectable conservatives, and shrieks of "anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews!!" is too powerful to allow the formation of serious rightist opposition.

Secession is probably the only hope for both North and South.