My parents met at a Young Republicans meeting. My father was the only person I knew who hated John F. Kennedy, and I would not have be surprised to learn that my father had been spotted near the grassy knoll* with a high-powered rifle. My father and I both liked Rush Limbaugh and detested Bill Clinton. I cheered the 1994 Republican Revolution, and I proudly voted for Bob Dole in 1996.
After 1996, I started reading novels by Ayn Rand and essays by Milton Friedman and became a registered, donating, card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party. In 2000, I went door-to-door helping a Libertarian candidate campaign for the Colorado legislature (she finished third). That year, I proudly voted for Harry Browne, the Libertarian nominee. If I hadn't voted for Browne, I would have voted for George W. Bush.
Since 2000, I've lost some of my libertarian faith in the justice of the unfettered free market. In its place, I've gained only a little trust in the ability of the government to effectively regulate human affairs. This places me squarely in the realm of the politically confused. I'm a man adrift without an ideology or a party to guide me. My political philosophy changes from day to day depending on what op-ed columns I read, the alignment of Saturn with Aquarius, and whether the vending machine guy stocked Hostess Chocolate Donettes that morning.
My point is that I'm neither a knee-jerk liberal nor a Democrat. In fact, I have never voted for a Democrat in my life. But on November 2, I will be voting for John Kerry for president.
My reasons for doing so have little to do with John Kerry. To be honest, I don't know much about the man. But before he was even nominated, I had decided I would vote for whomever the Democrats picked , whether that was John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, or a Meat Lover's Skillet from Denny's. I made this decision because it seemed to me that nobody -- not even a delicious combination of diced ham, bacon, and sausage served over seasoned country-fried potatoes and topped with shredded cheddar cheese and two eggs cooked your way -- could do a worse job of governing the most powerful nation on Earth than George W. Bush.
My primary reason for opposing Bush is for the destructive and wasteful war he started in Iraq. By any rational set of criteria, this war has failed terribly. Bush sold the war to the American people based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction which, as it turned out, were only vapors in the fevered imaginations of Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. Over 1,100 U.S. soldiers have been killed, over 7,700 more have been wounded, and uncounted thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians have lost their lives. True, Bush deserves credit for crushing Saddam Hussein's evil dictatorship. But he did so without any credible plan for filling the resulting vacuum of power, preferring instead to believe that grateful Iraqis would greet American soldiers with roses and that a Western-style democracy could be quickly assembled using Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys or something. At this time we have no realistic exit strategy and no assurance that Iraq will not devolve into (a) a money-sucking, U.S.-controlled puppet state, (b) a dictatorship under a new strongman, or (c) a chaotic hellhole torn apart by a three-way civil war. Our adventure in Iraq will cost us at least $200 billion, and nobody knows how high the final tab will run. All this to prosecute a war against a country that represented no serious threat to the United States of America.
Some Bush supporters will concede all of these points while maintaining that the Iraq War, as a necessary chapter in the larger War on Terrorism, has made the U.S. safer against terrorist attack. I disagree. Here are four reasons I believe the Iraq War has weakened America's fight against terrorism: - The minimum $200 billion we will spend on this war could have been better spent on improving homeland security and thwarting terrorist plots through intelligence and law enforcement actions.
- This war has overextended our military and left us ill-equipped to respond to legitimate terrorist threats.
- This war has infuriated the Muslim world, making it fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.
- This war has taught terrorist organizations that the U.S. can be goaded into fighting the wrong war and wasting resources that could have been used to destroy them.
Some Bush supporters have criticized Kerry's plans for Iraq, and with good reason (why does Kerry think that other nations, who didn't want any part of the war when it began, would want to risk blood and treasure now?) But are Bush's plans for Iraq any better? Not that I can tell -- I examined his website and could find no definite strategy for dealing with the problems in Iraq, or even a hint of recognition that problems exist in Iraq. And here's the clincher for me: Bush got us into this mess, so he gets the blame. I'm not going to blame Kerry for not having a good solution for Iraq, because nobody has a good solution for Iraq. There might not be a good solution for Iraq. People aren't calling it a "quagmire" because it's a good Scrabble word.**
I want to keep writing. I want to describe in withering detail every reason I have to vote against George W. Bush. I want to write about the Federal Marriage Amendment and how it symbolizes Bush's eagerness to mangle the law of the land to suit his narrow, bigoted religious views. I want to write about Bush's bungling of the economy and about the jobs he's lost. I want to write about the ballooning deficits Bush has created through profligate spending and irresponsible tax cuts. I want to write about the arrogance of the Bush Administration, about its refusal to admit when it's moving in the wrong direction, about its willingness to use 9/11 to hack away at civil liberties, about its cronyism, about its cynicism, about its intolerance for criticism, about its willful twisting of facts and logic, about its endless grasping for more and greater power.
But it's 2:30 in the morning, and I need sleep.
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*"Grassy knoll" is one of those terms you only seem to hear in one context, in this case JFK assassination conspiracy theories. Other such terms include "fire-bombing" (only used in connection with the WWII destruction of Dresden, Germany) and "distended" (only used to describe the bellies of starving children in Third World nations).
**A very good Scrabble word. If you held AEGMQRU and played across an I in a triple-triple lane, you would score 248 points.
+posted by Lawrence @ 10/19/2004 11:55:00 PM
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