From the Athens, GA Banner-Herald (!!!)

Tant: It's time for all Americans to join anti-war movement
Story updated at 12:25 AM on Saturday, January 20, 2007

Two more years. Will we make it? Two years from today, on Jan. 20, 2009, the "long national nightmare" of the Bush administration finally will come to an end - and not a moment too soon. It's going to be a long and harrowing ride for this nation and the world for the next 731 days as the Bush/Cheney White House junta proves the adage that rats are at their most dangerous when cornered. One can only hope that impeachment will cut short the folly, failure and fascist trends of Bush and his corporate, cutthroat crew, but already the moderate, mainstream milquetoast quislings of the dithering Democratic Party have declared impeachment "off the table."
For many millions of Americans, impeachment of this corrupt and criminal president and vice president should be on the agenda, not off the table. In a full-page advertisement in the Jan. 12 edition of The New York Times, an organization called Vote to Impeach outlined its case. "The illegal war of aggression Bush launched against Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and killed or wounded tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers," says the ad headlined "Impeach Now!"
The ad lambastes the Bush administration for setting up a "worldwide network of secret prisons, where torture has become the norm" and for assuming the Orwellian powers to "wiretap, open the mail of, search and indefinitely detain any American." It urges Americans to "take a stand" for impeachment and to come to Washington on March 17 for an anti-war march on the Pentagon to coincide with the upcoming fourth anniversary of the start of America's ill-fated and imperialistic invasion of Iraq. The impeachment drive is backed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is vilified by Bush's bootlickers but who would be a far better attorney general than the one who "serves" today.
For more information on the much-needed drive to oust Bush and his boardroom buddies, go to the Web site, www.impeachbush.org.
Impeachment of Bush is desirable but unlikely, "a consummation devoutly to be wished," as Shakespeare put it. Still, something must be done to muzzle Bush's dogs of war and put the corporate curs of his administration on a short leash for the next two years.
If the Democrats won't do it, the dissidents will.
The anti-war movement hit the streets of this nation as soon as Bush announced his so-called "surge" plan to escalate his Iraq war by sending in more cannon-fodder troops.
Thousands of Americans are expected to demonstrate against the war next weekend in Washington, and right here in the Classic City, peace activists will gather at the University of Georgia Arch at noon Sunday to show that people here in Georgia are taking a stand against the Iraq war.
Even some Republicans are aghast at Bush's preposterous "plan" to sacrifice more young troops on the altar of his egotism in Iraq. Chuck Hagel - a Nebraska senator, Vietnam War veteran and possible GOP presidential candidate - was quite correct when he said Bush's recent speech to the nation on the troop-surge scam "represents the most dangerous foreign-policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out. I will resist it."
It's way past time for all Americans to resist the warmongering "plans" of the Bush cadre. Before Bush's Iraq invasion even started, thousands of Americans, including me, marched on Washington under the rallying cry to "stop the next war before it starts." If only Bush and his apologists had listened, the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis would have been spared.
With two years left in the Bush administration, and with the possibility of a war with Iran waiting in the wings, it is time for a resurgent anti-war movement that will refuse and resist the militaristic machinations of the White House and Pentagon. As historian Howard Zinn has said, "Citizens of war-making nations will no longer tolerate the deaths of their offspring and the theft of their national wealth."

• Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive, Astronomy magazine and other publications.