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> Open letter to Senator John Kerry

10 November 2004, 18:29

Good question, how did I come to the conclusion that Bush supports me the best? Here’s why. In 1983 I worked for a company whose VP was a very outspoken Middle East immigrant married to an American woman. Saad liked to chat with the employees very candidly, and during one of our group lunches he told us that he was collecting weapons at his home because there was a jihad coming and he wanted to be ready for it. He explained to us that jihad was a holy war between Muslims and Infidels, and that it was inevitable.

I promptly wrote him off as some kind of right-wing NRA nut and never gave it a second thought. I mean come on, holy way against the United States? Come ON! Utterly ridiculous, the rantings of an egotistical manager trying to impress us underlings with his insider’s knowledge into an apocalyptic future. Fast forward to September 11, 2001. I gave it a second thought then. I got laid off that week from my job and had plenty of time to research our foreign policy and history with the Middle East, which I’d had no real interest in previously. I learned that in 1994 Steven Emerson had produced the PBS documentary "Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America". That was ten years after my conversation with Saad, but it drove home the point that this movement has been gathering like a storm among us for years. I experienced a defining moment in which I grasped the significance of these events - that there are people diametrically opposed to our way of life who want to kill us, and that killing "us" includes innocent civilians going about their daily work, young children at school, students on their way to college, babies in their mothers’ arms. They killed Michelle Ho, pastry chef at Windows on the World restaurant in 2 WTC, granddaughter of Chin Ho who was my parents’ landlord when I grew up in Hawaii. So 9/11 and the war on terror became rather personal for me.

I grew up in Japan and Hawaii because my father was a pilot in the Air Force, in the 904th Air Refueling Squadron and the 93rd Bomb Wing of the Strategic Air Command. I love cultural diversity, I was a minority as a Caucasian throughout my childhood, and I love the military. John F. Kennedy told me I should ask not what my country can do for me but what I can do for my country, and so I joined the Navy during the Vietnam War in 1971 and served at the same Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado where John Kerry trained a few years earlier to become a swift boat commander. I grew up trusting Teddy Roosevelt’s strategy that we should talk softly and carry a big stick.

So what’s "for me" is not necessarily "for you" because your experiences will naturally be very different, as will your interpretation of them. As much as I want a better world overall, I believe that’s only possible if we defeat terror with great military strength. In my world view, terror is Priority 1. Bush has a plan to do that by bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. When I was a Liberal I was a John F. Kennedy Liberal, and I believe JFK would have very much liked and supported that idea. That is, after all, why he initiated the policy to send our advisors to Viet Nam. So it’s rather fitting that "Yesterday a John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation’s level of political freedom, reports the Harvard University Gazette". http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/nov/09terror.htm

Yes, Bush and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, et al, misunderestimated the strategy of the insurgents and that was just tragic. Franklin Roosevelt and his administration misunderestimated the strategy of Operation Drumbeat, and refused to black out the East Coast and protect the merchant ships that fell prey to the U-Boat attacks of early World War II to the tune of 5,000 needless casualties. Roosevelt was also accused of having foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and using it to launch us into a war we wanted to avoid. I’d still have supported Roosevelt. Lincoln was despised and villifed as a wartime president, and I remember how much people hated Reagan in this country, so popularity and competency are not usually attributes given to presidents during their lifetimes even when they accomplish great things.

People who call Bush a criminal for starting the Iraq War need to read the entire Duelfer Report, not just the section that reports there were no WMD. You can find it here http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/. In it you’ll learn that Saddam Hussein was using the Oil for Food program to secure weaponry, especially long range missiles, and that he’d maintained all of his intellectual property to relaunch his WMD programs the instant sanctions were lifted. The international pressure to remove those sanctions was overwhelming, and that nexus would have made him the most dangerous man alive - he’d developed technology to distribute Sarin gas in aerosol form, for godssakes. I stand with everyone who feels the GAO should investigate the election fraud, because I want to know the truth. God help us all if George Bush did not win this election fair and square. Converseley, does everyone stand with me that the U.N. should be similarly investigated to determine whether the Security Council votes against the Iraq War were paid for by Oil Vouchers? Is there some point at which we can all be Americans rather than idealogues?

And that’s why I voted for Bush this time. Maybe I’ll vote Democrat another time, certainly I will if what that candidate stands for is more in line with my priorities and values than a Republican. I’m writing this to share my thoughts with anyone who cares to read them, I’m not writing it to impress you. I can’t change you, I can only change myself. It’s about trying to communicate, to find some thread of common ground with which we can actually have a dialogue instead of or in addition to a debate. It’s not about you being right and me being totally wrong, it’s about trying to find fellowship. I think it’s healthy to disagree, I don’t want everyone to fall into lockstep with me. What if I’m wrong?

My best friend of 20 years is Liberal and we have spirited discussions frequently. I’ve learned more from her than anyone else about why I’m a Conservative because her facts, statistics, knowledge of current events and history have forced me to do my homework just so that I can keep up with her. It’s a healthy, constructive, intelligent relationship. My sister in law is also Liberal and has set a rule that we are not allowed to discuss politics, it’s taboo. She doesn’t have the time nor the interest to send me articles or read the ones I send her, so the door is closed to dialogue. I enjoy reading Counter Punch, the Nation and New Republic as much as the National Review, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. I know who I am and why I am who I am, but I can also enjoy who you are. Vive la difference.

Still Conservative, still in California