Home > Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet
by Charley Reese
Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush’s re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.
I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.
It’s no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.
John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush’s comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It’s unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry’s very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.
But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed that people who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.
People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he won’t fool me twice.
It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don’t matter, and that people should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century. His administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian.
It’s no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans of supporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and a federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain this or the president will designate you an enemy combatant and you’ll be held incommunicado for the duration?
This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because Bush’s foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He’s almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration. Don’t forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace.
I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to Kerry’s Web site (www.johnkerry.com) and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You’ll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.
Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.
Forum posts
2 November 2004, 00:39
If President Bush is the front man, an empty suit, the same can be more than said of Kerry who obviously changes his answers to suit the audience and appease the UN, Chiraq, and Schroeder.
2 November 2004, 18:38
Bush has the conviction and strenght of character to lead a war against America’s enemies. He has the audacity to create a democratic Iraq that will tip the balance of power in Middle east thought and politics.
Kerry doesn’t believe in the moral right of American power and would try and subvert our security to the "global test" of the duplicitious French and UN who don’t have our interests in mind. They took money from Saddam in exchange for a threatened veto in the Security Council. France doesn’t deserve a permanent seat there, they are history.
2 November 2004, 22:31
I held my nose and voted for John Kerry. But I have no illusions that should he win very little will change with respect to foreign policy in the middle east. Kerry wants to create two new Army divisions. Once done, he’ll use them in an escalation of the war in Iraq. He’d like to end US involvement there in four years! I am not comforted by that prospect. If the invasion was a mistake, having been predicated on deceptions and outright lies, and the occupation a growing disaster, wouldn’t it be most prudent to begin to pull out?
Kerry will not do this, however, because the underlying strategic issue that put the US there - the need to control mideast oil - is vital to both the Republicans and the democrats. Indeed, during the campaign, Kerry often sounded more warlike than Bush. A mere regime change will not cure the deep-seated, structural problem that plagues the US.
And, Kerry’s attempt to cajole Russia, France and Germany into Iraq with promises of sharing the booty will fail due to too much political pressure from within and too little largesse offered to the recalcitrant Russians, French and Germans.
The peace movement, however, particularly in the US, will grow apace with Kerry’s escalation. It will be the Sixties all over again with the latest "JFK" playing the role of Lyndon Johnson. We realize how Democrats just love to fight wars, especially the ones founded on lies and deceptions. And, once again, it will be mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of right-thinking people opposed to the warmongers that will put an end to it.
Why, then, did I bother to vote for Kerry? That is a good question.
M. Kato