Please, Impeach my Commander-In-Chief

Washington Times
11/9/98 Daniel J. Rabil (USMCR)

The American military is subject to civilian control, and we deeply believe
in that principle. We also believe, as affirmed in the Nuremberg Trials,
that servicemen are not bound to obey illegal orders. But what about orders
given by a known criminal? Should we trust in the integrity of directives
given by a president who violates the same basic oath we take? Should we be
asked to follow a morally defective leader with a demonstrated disregard
for his troops? The answer is no, for implicit in the voluntary oath that
all servicemen take is the promise that they will receive honorable
civilian leadership. Bill Clinton has violated that covenant. It is
therefore Congress' duty to remove him from office.

I do not claim to speak for all service members, but certainly Bill Clinton
has never been the military's favorite president. Long before the Starr
report there was plenty of anecdotal evidence of this administration's
contempt for the armed forces. Yes, Mr. Clinton was a lying draft dodger,
yes his staffers have been anti-military, and yes, he breezily ruins the
careers of senior officers who speak up or say politically incorrect
things. Meanwhile, servicemen are now in jail for sex crimes less egregious
than those Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey say Mr. Clinton committed.

Mr. Clinton and his supporters do not care in the least about the health of
our armed forces. Hateful of a traditional military culture they never
deigned to study, Mr. Clinton's disingenuous feminist, homosexual and
racial activist friends regard the services as mere political props, useful
only for showcasing petty identity group grievances. It is no coincidence
that the media have played up one military scandal after another during the
Clinton years. This politically-driven shift of focus, from the military
mission to the therapeutic wants of fringe groups, has taken its toil:
Partly because of Mr. Clinton's impossibly Orwellian directives, Chief of
Naval Operations Jay Boorda committed suicide.

So Clinton has weakened the services and fostered a corrosive anti-military
culture. This may be loathsome, but it is not impeachable, particularly if
an attentive Congress can limit the extent of Clinton-induced damage. As
officers and gentlemen, we have therefore continued to march, pretending to
respect our hypocrite-in-chief.

Then came the Paula Jones perjury and the ensuing Starr Report. I have
always known that Clinton was integrity-impaired, but I never thought even
he could be so depraved, so contemptu-ous, as to conduct military affairs
as was described in the special prosecutor's report to Congress. In that
report, we learn of a telephone conversation between Mr. Clinton and a
congressman in which the two men discussed our Bosnian deployment. During
that tele-phone discussion, the Commander-in-Chief's pants were unzipped,
and Monica Lewinsky was busy saving him the cost of a prostitute. This is
the president of the United States of America? Should soldiers not feel
belittled and worried by this? We deserve better.

When Ronald Reagan's ill-fated Beirut mission led to the careless loss of
241 Marines in a single bombing, few questioned his love of country and his
overriding con-cern for American interests. But should Mr. Clinton lead us
into military conflict, he would do so, incredibly, without any such trust.
After the recent American missile attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan, my
instant reaction was outrage, for I instinctively presumed that Mr. Clinton
was trying to knock Miss Lewinsky's concurrent grand jury testimony out of
the headlines. The alternative, that this president --who ignores national
security interests, who appeases Iraq and North Korea, and who fights like
a leftover Soviet the idea of an American missile defense --actually
believed in the need for immediate military strikes, was simply
implausible. And no amount of scripted finger wagging, lip biting, or
mention of The Children by this highly skilled perjurer can convince me
otherwise.

In other words, Mr. Clinton has demonstrated that he will risk war,
terrorist attacks, and our lives just to save his dysfunctional
administration. What might his motives be in some future conflict?
Blackmail? Cheap political payoffs? Or-- dare I say it-- simply the lazy
blundering of an instinctively anti-American man? It is immoral to impose
such untrustworthy leadership on a fighting force.

It will no doubt be considered extreme to raise the question of whether
this president is a national security risk, but I must. I do not believe
presidential candidates should be required to undergo background
investigations, as is normal for service members. I do know, however,

that Bill Clinton would not pass such a screening. Recently, I received a
phone call from a military investigator, who asked me a variety of
character related questions about a fellow Marine reservist. The Marine,
who is also a friend, needed to update his top-secret clearance. Afterward,
I called him. We marveled how lowly reservists like us must pass complete
background checks before routine deployments, yet the guardian of our
nation's nuclear button would raise a huge red flag on any such security
report. We joked that my friend's security clearance would have been
permanently canceled if I had said to the investigator, "Well, Rick spent
the Vietnam years smoking pot and leading protests against his country in
Britain. His hobbies are lying and adultery. His brother's a cocaine
dealer, and oh, yeah-- he visited the Sovi-et Union for unknown reasons,
while his countrymen were getting killed in Vietnam."

Do I show disrespect for this president? Perhaps it depends on the meaning
of the word "this." If Clinton were merely a spoiled leftist taking
advantage of our free society, a la Jane Fonda, that would be one thing.
But you don't make an atheist pope, and you don't keep a corrupt security
risk as commander-in-chief.

The enduring goodness of the American military character over the past two
centuries does not automatically derive from our nation's nutritional
habits or from a good job benefits package. This character must be
developed and supported, or it will die. Already we are seeing declining
enlistment and a 1970s-style disdain for military service, squandering the
real progress made during the purposeful 1980s. Our military's heart and
soul can survive lean budgets, but they cannot long survive in an America
that would tolerate such a character as now occupies the Oval Office. We
are entitled to a leader who at least respects us -- not one who cannot be
bothered to remove his penis from a subordinate's mouth long enough to
discuss our deployment to a combat zone. To subject our services to such
debased leadership is nothing less than the collective spit of the entire
nation upon our faces.

Bill Clinton has always been a moral coward. He has always had contempt for
the American military. He has always had a questionable security
background. Since taking office, he has ignored defense issues, except as
serves the destructive goals of his extremist supporters. His behavior with
Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey was bizarre and deranged -- try keeping a
straight face while watching mandated Navy sexual harassment videos,
know-ing that the president's own conduct violates historic service rules
to the point of absurdity.

For a while, it was almost possible to laugh off Mr. Clinton's hedonistic,
"college protester" values. But now that we have clear evidence that he
perjured himself and corrupted others to cover up his lies, Bill Clinton is
no longer funny. He is dangerous.

William J. Clinton, perhaps the most selfish man ever to disgrace our
presidency, will not resign. I therefore risk my commission, as our
generals will not, to urge this of Congress: Remove this stain from our
White House. Banish him from further office. For God's sake, do your duty.
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NOTE: We need more and more of these brave Marines and other military
personnel to come forward like this righteously indignant man has done. Do
not lose sight of the fact we ask our military men and women to place their
lives on the line. This isn't an issue of losing office or a job. It's like
the conversation between the chicken and the pig about breakfast: The pig
says to the chicken "For you it's only a days work; for me it's total
commitment!"
-- Carl F. Worden