THE Issue This November

Within the next couple of days, I will find a cozy place to snuggle up with my Oregon Voters’ Pamphlets and my mail-in ballot. I will study the pamphlets, make my decisions on the smaller issues that I have not yet reviewed, mark my ballot and send it off. And be done with it. If only my sending off my vote would end the incessant barrage of spin, sniping, name-calling and pure fantasy by both camps.

Upon the biggest issue, I have already made my choice. For President of the United States, I will place my vote for John Kerry. I’ve heard the spin coming from both camps…you’d have to have been living in a cave in Tibet for the last year NOT to have heard it. I freely acknowledge that the information coming from either side is collected and distributed in a way to make that party appear to be God’s gift to the civilized world. It is mostly organic fertilizer, with very little regard for truth.

Domestic policy, fiscal policy, stance on Medicare, tax and spend, spend and spend…in the long run, there is little difference between the parties on these issues. I’m of the opinion that the economy does NOT live or die by which party occupies the White House. Spin these issues all you want. They REALLY make no difference.

What DOES make a difference is this: George W. Bush led our country halfway across the world to invade a small, relatively helpless (in the face of a vastly superior United States military) nation, for reasons most of the rest of the world found so flimsy that they not only wouldn’t participate in a "coalition" to invade Iraq, but condemned the United States for invading. Thousands of people have died, and a country has been reduced to anarchy, if not civil war, because our president wanted to invade it. For reasons, I suspect, that had little to do with hunting down terrorists, seeking out weapons of mass destruction, or helping a suppressed people fling off the bondage of a megalomaniac dictator—the "flavor of the month" reasons put forth by the administration as each previous reason was proven untenable. We know that Mr. Bush was seeking reasons to attack Iraq almost from the moment he took office, well before the 9/11 attacks. He WANTED to make a war. And he did.

This is not the way that the "Leader of the Free World" may behave. He may not put our nation into the position of being the Bully of the Free World. He may not appoint himself "savior" and go off to topple regimes all over the globe which do not subscribe to our chosen form of government. Is this not the tactic for which the Soviet Union and Communist China have been roundly condemned by the rest of the world, with ours being the loudest voice of condemnation? Why is it permissible for US to do what the rest of the world may not? Because we currently have the biggest gun and the brass balls to aim it at anyone we choose?

The Bush administration is solely responsible for the travesty in Iraq. Not one iota of blame for this can be laid at the feet of the previous administration, the other party, the Baathists, Osama bin Laden, the Red Menace, or the devil. Any other issue debated during this campaign has simply been an attempt to sidestep this ONE. George W. Bush is the author of unspeakable horror in Iraq. If ever there was a legitimate reason to become a single-issue voter, this is it. He does not deserve another four years in office, based on this issue alone. Not only that, but I truly fear what another four years of a George W. Bush administration would mean to this country and the world. The next regime he chooses to topple might well have more dangerous weapons at its disposal with which to punctuate its demise. Are we willing to take that chance? Apparently, President Bush is. How many thousands, perhaps millions, will die—possibly in the wink of an eye—in the next war our president starts?