Thursday, November 24, 2005
Why I won't vote for George Bush
An essay written by Keith in October 2004, right before the Presidential election. Worth reading again -- tj
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Why I won’t vote for George Bush
I consider myself a reasonable man. By that I mean not just that I listen to both sides of an issue, but that I also take time to ponder and weigh the merits of both sides. In doing so I seek to not just understand the logic of a point of view, but to find the humanity, the value, the wisdom if you will, of a point of view. If I can justify a point of view with an argument based on wisdom, I can do nothing but adopt it – no matter from what point of view I began my thinking.
We are all subject to partial information. Any discussion we have with each other and ourselves has to work only with what we have absorbed. We get our facts from the mainstream media and some from non-mainstream media and some from personal experience and experience of people we know. That’s what we have to work with, and it is never a full accounting of facts. So we need to make decisions and judgments on what knowledge we have, or we will never move forward.
I feel George Bush did the wrong thing in going to war in Iraq. At the time I didn’t see enough power in the arguments presented by him and his staff for doing so. The intelligence they supposedly had was flawed, and little of it was actually revealed to the American people. Now the blame seems to fall on the intelligence agencies for producing faulty intelligence, but I frankly don’t believe that, since I have some working knowledge of that community and realize that analyst reports are often steered to support the conclusions that management would like to see. But even if there were WMD in Iraq, there were other countries as well that had, and to this day still have, weapons as dangerous. Saddam used them against the Kurds, true, but did he present an imminent threat to the United States? I didn’t see how. There is the argument that he might have given them to Al Quaida, but they could have gotten weapons from Syria or Iran, nations that were not as contained as Iraq was, it being under sanctions by the UN. And did Iraq harbor Al Quaida operatives? The evidence revealed to us at the time was very thin. Iraq was a dangerous country, but was it an imminent threat? No, the facts presented to the United States public prior to the invasion was not satisfactory to me to justify invasion, or its costs in lost lives, lost economic output and higher national debt.
Why did Congress, and Senator Kerry, approve going to war, then? I believe America had fears that lead the nation to strike out. Bush attacked Afghanistan and cleared out the Al Quaida training camps – this made sense to me. But America, through its elected representatives, let him invade Iraq soon after. I believe it was from an irrational fear of an enemy that could not be pinpointed to a country or a government. It was a fear that a strike that could cost us our lives, in our own home towns, could occur at any time that allowed the majority of our people to approve a strong reaction, even if they didn’t really understand why. In the same way we strike out irrationally when threatened, the majority of people needed a release from our fear. Bush presented us with war in Iraq as a way to feel in control again, to feel like we had an answer to this pervasive fear. None of us had all the facts. Instead we relied upon our elected leaders to make judgments for us.
But did it work? Was war the answer to make us feel more secure? In thinking this through and looking for the wisdom of this approach, I find it was a mistake. It was a mistake because our striking out at Saddam, while it temporarily made the country feel good again, feel in control again, was ultimately only a short term release of fear. Do we feel more secure here in the United States now that Saddam and his sons are no longer a threat? Do we have less to worry about in our home towns? I would suspect most people would say no.
And how could we? The threat and fear we feel didn’t originate with Saddam. It originated with Bin Laden and Al Quaida. And this is exactly what terrorism is all about. Terrorism is not about the attack, it is about instilling fear of an attack. It is about the fear, and making us act out of fear in destructive and irrational ways that are the ultimate aims of terrorists. It is why the word originates with the word “terror” – terrorists are people whose goal is to terrorize their enemies. As long as we act out of fear and use our fear as justification for our actions and decisions, the terrorists have won.
So I come back to whether George Bush has acted with wisdom in his term as President. I believe he had not acted with wisdom. It was wise to eliminate Al Quaida from Afghanistan in order to show the world that the United States will act when threatened in a strong and decisive manner – that we are not weak, but a force to be reckoned with if provoked. Any less of a response would have been capitulation and the beginning of our end. But it must have been out of fear that America then allowed him to invade Iraq, because there was not the clear tie between the terrorist threat and Iraq. We need to continue to track down and eliminate Al Quaida throughout the world, but we are in that situation with or without Saddam in power. We eliminated a dictator, but others in the world remain. As a leader, Bush did not do the wise thing. He did not lead the nation through the immediate fear it had to steadfastness and resolve to not let the fear dominate our lives. He did not show us a path to sense of security after Afghanistan, but instead engaged us in another, more costly war. Today the fear of Al Quadi continues to trouble all of us, and the Vice President even uses it to campaign with, citing the possibility that a bomb could be smuggled into the US in a suitcase. This is not leadership, it is submission to fear.
I don’t know how Kerry will lead us. But I have seen how Bush has succumbed to fear, not shown American a path away from fear, and has used fear for political advantage, and so believe he is ultimately damaging to the strength of our country. I will vote for John Kerry in hope of finding in him a leader who can show us a better way, and in hope of eliminating a leader who can only weaken our country.
No matter who wins, though, I call on our next President to help use find a way of wisdom, not of terror.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why I won’t vote for George Bush
I consider myself a reasonable man. By that I mean not just that I listen to both sides of an issue, but that I also take time to ponder and weigh the merits of both sides. In doing so I seek to not just understand the logic of a point of view, but to find the humanity, the value, the wisdom if you will, of a point of view. If I can justify a point of view with an argument based on wisdom, I can do nothing but adopt it – no matter from what point of view I began my thinking.
We are all subject to partial information. Any discussion we have with each other and ourselves has to work only with what we have absorbed. We get our facts from the mainstream media and some from non-mainstream media and some from personal experience and experience of people we know. That’s what we have to work with, and it is never a full accounting of facts. So we need to make decisions and judgments on what knowledge we have, or we will never move forward.
I feel George Bush did the wrong thing in going to war in Iraq. At the time I didn’t see enough power in the arguments presented by him and his staff for doing so. The intelligence they supposedly had was flawed, and little of it was actually revealed to the American people. Now the blame seems to fall on the intelligence agencies for producing faulty intelligence, but I frankly don’t believe that, since I have some working knowledge of that community and realize that analyst reports are often steered to support the conclusions that management would like to see. But even if there were WMD in Iraq, there were other countries as well that had, and to this day still have, weapons as dangerous. Saddam used them against the Kurds, true, but did he present an imminent threat to the United States? I didn’t see how. There is the argument that he might have given them to Al Quaida, but they could have gotten weapons from Syria or Iran, nations that were not as contained as Iraq was, it being under sanctions by the UN. And did Iraq harbor Al Quaida operatives? The evidence revealed to us at the time was very thin. Iraq was a dangerous country, but was it an imminent threat? No, the facts presented to the United States public prior to the invasion was not satisfactory to me to justify invasion, or its costs in lost lives, lost economic output and higher national debt.
Why did Congress, and Senator Kerry, approve going to war, then? I believe America had fears that lead the nation to strike out. Bush attacked Afghanistan and cleared out the Al Quaida training camps – this made sense to me. But America, through its elected representatives, let him invade Iraq soon after. I believe it was from an irrational fear of an enemy that could not be pinpointed to a country or a government. It was a fear that a strike that could cost us our lives, in our own home towns, could occur at any time that allowed the majority of our people to approve a strong reaction, even if they didn’t really understand why. In the same way we strike out irrationally when threatened, the majority of people needed a release from our fear. Bush presented us with war in Iraq as a way to feel in control again, to feel like we had an answer to this pervasive fear. None of us had all the facts. Instead we relied upon our elected leaders to make judgments for us.
But did it work? Was war the answer to make us feel more secure? In thinking this through and looking for the wisdom of this approach, I find it was a mistake. It was a mistake because our striking out at Saddam, while it temporarily made the country feel good again, feel in control again, was ultimately only a short term release of fear. Do we feel more secure here in the United States now that Saddam and his sons are no longer a threat? Do we have less to worry about in our home towns? I would suspect most people would say no.
And how could we? The threat and fear we feel didn’t originate with Saddam. It originated with Bin Laden and Al Quaida. And this is exactly what terrorism is all about. Terrorism is not about the attack, it is about instilling fear of an attack. It is about the fear, and making us act out of fear in destructive and irrational ways that are the ultimate aims of terrorists. It is why the word originates with the word “terror” – terrorists are people whose goal is to terrorize their enemies. As long as we act out of fear and use our fear as justification for our actions and decisions, the terrorists have won.
So I come back to whether George Bush has acted with wisdom in his term as President. I believe he had not acted with wisdom. It was wise to eliminate Al Quaida from Afghanistan in order to show the world that the United States will act when threatened in a strong and decisive manner – that we are not weak, but a force to be reckoned with if provoked. Any less of a response would have been capitulation and the beginning of our end. But it must have been out of fear that America then allowed him to invade Iraq, because there was not the clear tie between the terrorist threat and Iraq. We need to continue to track down and eliminate Al Quaida throughout the world, but we are in that situation with or without Saddam in power. We eliminated a dictator, but others in the world remain. As a leader, Bush did not do the wise thing. He did not lead the nation through the immediate fear it had to steadfastness and resolve to not let the fear dominate our lives. He did not show us a path to sense of security after Afghanistan, but instead engaged us in another, more costly war. Today the fear of Al Quadi continues to trouble all of us, and the Vice President even uses it to campaign with, citing the possibility that a bomb could be smuggled into the US in a suitcase. This is not leadership, it is submission to fear.
I don’t know how Kerry will lead us. But I have seen how Bush has succumbed to fear, not shown American a path away from fear, and has used fear for political advantage, and so believe he is ultimately damaging to the strength of our country. I will vote for John Kerry in hope of finding in him a leader who can show us a better way, and in hope of eliminating a leader who can only weaken our country.
No matter who wins, though, I call on our next President to help use find a way of wisdom, not of terror.
