[Rhodes22-list] Politics- my position, if anyone cares

[Gardner, Douglas (LNG-DAY)]

Some observations and opinions

With only a couple of vague exceptions, I've remained publically silent on
election issues this year.  I have had private backchannel discussions with
several people on policy issues, and I'll mention some of those issues later
in this opinion piece.  However, certain precipitating events are of such
import that they have caused me to end that silence.  I hope that it doesn't
negatively affect certain friendships I have developed.  However, the
consequences of silence dictate that if it does: so be it.

First, some background, as I know most of you don't really know or care who
I am.  I have voted for every Republican candidate since (and including)
Reagan, except one.  I consider myself independent, but have largely
libertarian values, including smaller government, lower taxes, respect for
individual liberty and state's rights.  Throw in my belief in the need for a
strong defense and a willingness to use it when it is in our best interest,
and that means I almost always vote republican.  I think that these values
are consistent with respect for the rule of law, protecting our democracy
(republic), and ensuring the rights of all citizens to participate in the
democratic process.  

The facts are yet uncertain and therefore "Truth" is difficult to determine.
But many hints to the facts are now available. In Ohio alone, the GOP has
challenged 35,000 voter registrations.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/28/oh.registration.challenge.ap/index
.html  Apparently, these challenges are not limited to Ohio, and are common
across the country.  In Georgia, virtually all hispanic voters in a county
are being challenged.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4129390  In interviews
I heard with representatives of the Democratic and GOP parties on voter
registration, the Democratic representive was clear that their goal is to
register all voters.  The GOP said clearly that they intend to register
Republican voters.  I contend that in order to be trusted with a voter
registration activity, you must accept the responsibility to complete the
process for ALL citizens who entrust you or your organization with their
sacred rights.  Failure to do so abrogates both the voters' trust through
disenfranchisement and the DUTY of the person or persons undertaking the
registration campaign.  This year, there are too many instances of failures
of this sacred trust for it to be an accidental or isolated incident.  These
include willful destruction of democratic registrations in Nevada,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4107720 , and
pre-selecting "Republican" on registration forms and telling everyone else
they need to go elsewhere.  Add to this, the mysterious "disappearance" of
nearly 60,000 absentee ballots in Broward County, FL
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3960679.stm.  It is hard for me to
fathom how the disappearance of absentee ballots in the most heavily favored
"Gore" county in Florida is anything but deliberate.  This, combined with
these other issues, has the appearance of a concerted and deliberate attack
upon the rights of voters and the integrity and sanctity of the electoral
process.  I do not dispute how important it is to make sure that only
citizens have the right to vote, and to vote only once.  But challenging
35,000 registrations in one state alone without first verifying the case
against each voter has nothing to do with maintaining the integrity of the
voter roles.  It is a blatant attempt to disenfranchise huge numbers of
voters (who are believed, statistically, to support Kerry). This strikes me
as a direct attack upon the foundations of the republic.  As such, it
transcends petty bickering over military service, and even foreign policy
issues, no matter how questionable the wisdom of those policies.  

In Florida in 2000, I favored the Bush outcome because I believed that it
was correct.  Hey, the count supported Bush, if only by a small margin. That
is what happens in politics.  Until recently, I defended that belief because
I refused to entertain the possiblility that voter tampering through
registration irregularities and intimidation at the polls was happening in
the United States.  I now believe that I was wrong.  Dreadfully wrong.

One might argue that "even if true, George W didn't order them and therefore
shouldn't be held accountable."  I might agree with you, if there weren't
overwhelming evidence that this is his standard pattern.  In the 2000
primary, Bush had a guest speaker at a rally who trashed John McCain's
service in Vietnam and his conduct as a POW.  Bush survived the backlash
from that by contending that it was only a guest speaker who made those
comments, not himself.  When McCain confronted Bush on this issue on Larry
King Live, Bush responded with "John, I honor your service."  The same words
he used with John Kerry in response to the swift boat attacks on him.
However, we now are beginning to understand just how tightly controlled
Bush's campaign really is.  Even attendance is strictly regulated. I can
only imagine how strictly controlled the messages presented by speakers is.
Bush or his campaign clearly vetted every word of that man's speech.  It was
THEIR message, plain and simple.  There are similar cases throughout Bush's
political career.  

We are, in my opinion, engaged in the most serious threat to our republican
(small R) experiment since the civil war.  If we cannot trust the
enfranchisement of our electorate, confidence in our government, and hence,
our system of government, will fail.  It is a sad day when UN (or any other)
elections inspectors should be deployed in the United States for any reason
other than to "learn how it should be done."  

I call on all of you to clear your minds and examine the evidence.  Make
your decisions as the evidence and your conscience guide you.  

In the interest of full disclosure, I supported Kerry prior to and
independently from these observations.  However, I considered these to be
normal political disagreements and not worthy of a political rant from me.
If you care to know why I support Kerry for president (other than the
above), here are some of my reasons:

I'm in favor of the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy.
However, our use of force should be restricted to situations where the net
result is positive for us, and that includes thinking about if our actions
actually generate more hostility toward us and actually increase the
probability of an attack on US soil. We've made a lot of enemies lately, and
not all of them are Muslim.  The consequences of Bush's Iraq policy have
been to split the Western Alliance, to weaken the internal support of those
allies who stuck with us, to create a breeding ground for radical Muslim
terrorists, and to provide them with easy access to weaponry and weapon
making supplies and equipment.  The interest in the election abroad is a
symptom of this. I don't think that this is contributing toward our quality
of life, improving our standing in the world, or making us safer.

Don't overinterpret the lack of recent attacks on US soil as evidence we are
safer.  Remember, terrorism on US soil is very difficult for terrorists to
do.  They've hated us for decades, but they've not been able to mount more
than about one attack per decade.  It just so happens that the last one was
a biggie.  If they get another in before 2009 or so, I'd interpret the
threat to have INCREASED since our response to 9-11.  The way to combat the
terrorist threat is to recognize if for what it is: by definition it is an
attempt to frighten the population into doing what you want.  They want to
frighten us into giving up our liberty.  I think they've largely succeeded,
and George W Bush has played right into their hands in his zeal to use the
attacks to his own political advantage.  DON'T BE AFRAID!  Statistically,
you should be far more scared of cancer or heart disease.  That's what is
going to get you.  Not some nut case with a box-cutter.

Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist threat until Bush invaded.  Bush
created the terrorist threat in Iraq, and he armed them. Saddam hated
terrorists.  They were historically a bigger threat to him than the west.
As far as contribution to terrorism is concerned, we would have been FAR
BETTER OFF at this point in time with Iraq as a totalitarian state. Saddam's
extraordinary security apparatus guaranteed that these materials were
extraordinarily secure in Iraq under his boot.  In the short run, we were
safer, I believe, with a brutal totalitarian regime in Iraq to crush any
threat to his leadership than we are now that those weapons are essentially
free for the taking.  Bush himself said "If Kerry were president, we never
would have invaded Iraq and those 380 tons of explosives would still be
under his control."  Yes!  Exactly right!  They would be under his control
and tagged by the IAEA in a warehouse.  Not in the hands of terrorists
waiting to be used against us.  By the way, this was the same type of
facility where nuclear equipment went missing.  I know people who speculated
that it was US who took that equipment.  The failure of us to locate and
secure explosives at a nuclear facility makes that assumption unlikely.  We
should assume that terrorists now control that nuclear equipment, and the
fact that they do is a direct consequence of the US invasion of Iraq.  It is
our fault (Bush's fault) and there is no denying it.

Certainly, we needed to eventually deal with Saddam (and other brutal
totalitarian Arab states) in order to stabilize the middle east and promote
the values of liberty.  I've been an advocate of getting rid of Saddam since
1991.  I think there were 2 times when we should have done it.  1) in 1991
when we had the means and the international support which could have (with
some work) been brought to bear on the problem.  G H W Bush failed us then.
Perhaps he was right to stop.  Hard to know, now. If he had supported the
Shia uprising against Saddam, he might have been able to have them do the
dirty work for us, and increased our status in the world as a benign and
just counrty.  Instead, over 240,000 Shia were slaughtered by Saddam, and we
stood by and let it happen.  That fact has not served us well in Iraq.
2) 1998 When Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors.  That was a violation
of the cease fire of 1991, and with that one act he opened the door to
pretty much whatever we felt we needed to do.  Clinton failed us at that
time.

Also, would have been a 3rd time: After the immediate threat from terrorism
had been significantly reduced and we had built a solid coalition to support
the activity.  The endeavor is simply too risky to attempt without the
support to conduct reconstruction cleanly, quickly, and effectively.
Unfortunately, we were not prepared for catastrophic success, and had too
few troops to ensure order and security over Saddam's vast arsenal  That
arsenal is now in the hands of our enemies.

Bush took his eye off the ball.  More to the point, he did it in a way that
made us weaker internationally.  The net result is that 
1) the terrorists are better organized, better armed, and recruit new
members more easily than any time since the invasion of afghanistan, and
probably any time EVER.
2) Our diplomatic position is far weaker.  Yes, we now know for sure who
will stick with us no matter what. But we really knew that before, didn't
we?  Now those leaders are weaker as the support of their own people wanes.
3) Individual American's are more vulnerable that ever.  Have you travelled
abroad since the invasion of Iraq? I haven't, but I know a lot of people who
have. They say basically the same thing.  We are not loved around the world.
Whatever support we had because of the 9-11 atrocity was squandered by the
invasion of Iraq.  

It doesn't matter if the Iraqi people or people in general will be better
off in the long run as a result.  What matters is that the logic used in
Bush's arguments leading up to the war were unsupported and transparent.
The Europeans didn't support the war because they knew the arguments were
unsound.  Not because they were on the take.  There were plenty of SOUND
arguments Bush could have made to support the war, but the fact is he didn't
make them.  He insisted on connecting Saddam and al queda with a vague
threat of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists.  That argument simply
didn't fly.  Saddam wanted WMD.  Absolutely.  But he DIDN'T want his enemies
to have them.  In Saddam's mind, a NBC weapon in the hands of Osama would
have been as much of a threat (probably more) to him than to us. The
Europeans knew this, and weren't about to support a war that couldn't be
effectively defended to their own people.  Because of the failure to gain
support for the war, we engaged in this effort at great cost to our
traditional alliances, and we are going to have to clean up the mess largely
alone.  That has stretched our considerable resources so far that we
couldn't do everything we needed to do in Iraq quickly enough.  What happens
now?

I think the threat to us is greater than even Bush imagines.  Radical
fundamentalist Muslims are gaining influence in the Arab world.
http://jihadwatch.org/ When we attack, we play right into their hands and
recruiting will be easier for them as their world becomes more polarized.
The civilized world cannot end this movement through force of arms, unless
we are willing to commit genocide on a scale that even Hitler couldn't
imagine.  Clearly, we have the means to do this. Those means remain, and
will still be fully available if we were to wait 20 years, or until
otherwise forced to action. But is there an alternative?  Frankly, I do not
know the answer to that question.  The only hope is to rely on moderate and
liberal Muslims to take control of their faith and their societies, and
bring civilization back to the arab world. We could engage in policies to
facilitate this, rather than to work against this end. It is clear that Bush
is either incapable or uninclined to use diplomacy as a tool of foreign
policy. I do not believe that at this point he could be effective at it,
even if he were inclined. Kerry has engaged in diplomacy his entire
political life. There are only 2 viable choices on this ballot. Only he has
the chance to succeed at a diplomatic solution. You make the choice.   


--Doug Gardner
s/v Fretnaught

Please note that these are my own thoughts, and have nothing to do with my
employer.