Hardest reason not to vote for Bush.........

As a Massachusetts raised progressive democrat, who has never voted for any republican in his life, I am having a hard time making my choice this year. This email sent to the Instapundit describes why pretty well-

"Consider the following: If you were told on 9/21/2001 that by this date:

The Taliban have fallen

Iraq has fallen and has become a bastion of free press in the islamic world.

Libya had given up its WMD's

North Korea is in multi-lateral talks about WMD's

A majority of the leadership of Al Queda are dead or in custody

Pro-democracy rumblings are going on in Iran

Arafat is isolated

Many convictions of domestic sleepers or Al Queda members (Portland, NY etc...) and finally

NO SUCCESSFUL TERROR ATTACKS ON US SOIL

And all of this has cost less than 1000 dead American soldiers.

You'd be thinking "not bad."

Bush said in his Sept. 20th speech that even if the country forgets he will not. He was right." .

I agree with that completely. I disagree with just about everything else Bush has done in office. So I am faced with a dilemna. The single most important issue to me is protecting our country from the Islamofascists who wish to see "the great Satan" turned in to an Islamic state, or destroyed. The rest of the issues will become a moot point once a mushroom cloud shows up over a US city.

Gay marrige? Don't care.

The economy? It seems to be doing ok.

Healthcare? Get a job.

Unemployment? It's lower than it was under Clinton.

Corporate control of Washington? Like that will change if a democrat is elected. Especially one married to the Heinz heiress.

All that matters to me is this- what are YOU going to do to win this war?

An unacceptable answer is "apologize to countries like France for our reckless behavior".

All I want to hear is, are our enemies running like frightened animals or not?



UPDATE: Once again, Victor Davis Hanson puts it in to words I could only wish to write as well....Do We Want to Go Back?

Excerpt-

"Just as a presidency of earlier ossified liberals like Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale probably would have led to support of a utopian nuclear freeze and subsequent Russian intimidation of Europe, unilateral cuts in military preparedness, and acquiescence to the Soviet Union, so too the election of John Kerry may well undo much of what has been achieved these last three years as we return to the old, normal way of doing business.

With Howard Dean gone, Kerry realizes that suddenly he must move rightward to sound tougher than George Bush. Finally, he seems to understand that every northern liberal Democrat in the last 30 years who ran to the left on national security lost badly — like McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis. And so Mr. Kerry abruptly will have to talk grandly of what he would have done to make us more secure. Yet a better guide is his own record in opposing defense programs, in harboring a chronic suspicion of using American force, and his own contradictory past votes about deployments to the Middle East.

More likely, if President Bush loses, the war against terror will return, as promised, to the status of a police matter — subpoenas and court trials the more appropriate response to the mass murder of 3,000 at the "crime scene" of the crater in New York. Europe will be assured that our troops will stay while we apologize for the usual litany of purported unilateral sins. North Korea will get more blackmail cash, while pampered South Korean leftists resume their "sunshine" mirage. Iraq will be turned over to the U.N. as we abruptly leave, and could dissolve into something like the Balkans between 1991 and 1998. Iran and Syria will let out a big sigh of relief — as American diplomats once more sit out on the tarmac in vain hopes of an "audience" with despots. The Saudis will smile that smile. Arafat will be assured that he is now once again a legitimate interlocutor. And strangest of all, the American Left will feel that the United States has just barely begun to return to its "moral" bearings — even as its laxity and relativism encourage some pretty immoral things to come.