The members of the Pacifica Forum met last Friday in the basement of McKenzie Hall as they have every other Friday for the past few years. But this time, they met with a specific purpose: to call for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
Founded by associate professor emeritus of planning, public policy and management Orval Etter, the Pacifica Forum is a controversial group largely composed of community members that has been lambasted in recent years with accusations of anti-Semitism. The group plans to approach Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and present him with signatures from Pacifica Forum members and encourage him to mention impeachment in Congress.
“He’s gotta have the wherewithal to step up and bring the issue to the floor… so that people are aware that we’re talking about it,” said group member and former University Sports Information Director George Beres.
DeFazio shares the commonly held belief within the Democratic Party that a focus on impeachment would distract more immediate necessities like pulling out of Iraq, his Chief of Staff Penny Dodge said, but Beres maintained that “there is no doubt in my mind that we must impeach.”
In response to announcements about the meeting, Eugene residents called Orval Etter’s house with threatening messages, and he played the tape in the meeting.
“You people are sick,” snapped an unidentified man’s voice from Etter’s message machine. “Why aren’t you people in jail? Bush is the best president we’ve ever had and we’re damn lucky we have him. You people are SICK.”
The 91-year-old retired professor wasn’t much deterred from the threatening messages; he has endured worse criticism in the past.
“You are looking at the most notorious anti-Semitist in town,” he said calmly.
A few years ago, the Pacifica Forum gained attention by promoting a pamphlet that described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “another holocaust.” The group has continually and publicly criticized Israel’s Palestinian policy and last November hosted a speaker, Valdas Anelauskus, who said in the last of his eight-part lecture series that “Jews dictate what you can say, what you can’t say,” and that many Nazi atrocities perpetrated against Jews – including the use of gas chambers – were fabricated.
“We have been critical of Israel on numerous occasions and have been therefore tagged as anti-Semitic,” Etter said.
After the initial accusation of prejudice against Jews, Etter said, “we have had more attendance and livelier spirit in our weekly meetings.”
Because of the increase in interest, none of the members of the group have tried very hard to refute anti-Semitic claims.
“It gets us attention, so it’s helped us,” Etter said.
Although the attendance was modest – about 20 people – the group gave an enthusiastic presentation.
Beres read a statement written by University of Illinois criminal law professor Francis Boyle, that read “the longer we delay the necessary and principled impeachment process against Bush Jr. and his Neo-conservatives apparatchiks the greater will be the disaster for all the peoples of the world and even here in the United States.”
Beres said that Boyle, with whom he has spoken, fully supports the forum’s efforts.
Beres followed Boyle’s statement with a slideshow he and member Jack Dresser created. He expressed concern that the Project for the New American Century, a powerful neo-conservative group, is in charge of national military and foreign policies.
“The PNAC is a set of moles within the U.S. government,” Beres said. “It was entirely neo-conservatives who brought about the Iraq War.”
The PNAC, however, was not Beres’s main concern.
“Here’s the larger purpose of impeachment: We need to purge an attitude, a worldview, which is psychopathic and criminal; it’s this idea of superiority, an idea that we can go anywhere in the world that we want and just take it over.”
He said that egotism is a “tragic flaw” common to the cultural scripts of both America and Israel, and that Bush’s impeachment is necessary to stop our country’s self-destructive behavior.
The Pacifica Forum gave out copies of their call for impeachment for each member or onlooker present to sign. Along with their plan to visit Congressman DeFazio, the forum will also deliver copies to the two Oregon senators, Ron Wyden (D) and Gordon Smith (R).
“The politicians aren’t going to do a thing until they are pushed from below,” Beres said.
When asked whether Congressman DeFazio supported the Forum’s efforts, Bridges answered that, although he “completely shares their concerns, he doesn’t think impeachment is a viable venue at this time.”