Swing-Vote

Political State of the Union

OK, so last week I spouted opinions on Iraq.  It's a big subject, and those 3 posts certainly can't convey all of my thoughts on the subject, but this is "Swing-vote", not "What's the deal in Iraq"...

I thought I'd write a little today about my predictions for the political future of America.  Does anyone remember that Bush ran as a "uniter" in 2000 against Al Gore?  I do.  I remember hearing great stories of how he was able to get Texas Democrats and Republicans to work together to accomplish some pretty great things.  He wasn't a "beltway insider", he was from the real US.  A candidate for the masses, right?  I think it was a combination of that willingness to work with both parties and the fact that the average American was ready for a tax break that won him the election.  People like me who were undecided could have easily swayed his way, and most likely did since he won the election.  (I didn't, I voted Libertarian that year, but that's another post).  Let's not forget, however, that he barely won.

In 2004, I would have voted for Bush just because, as I stated before, I still support the Iraq war.   I wasn't sure about Kerry's ability to handle it correctly and that was probably the biggest issue of the election.  (Again, I didn't vote for Bush in '04, but this time some confusion involving my absentee ballot caused caused me to miss the vote altogether, I'm very ashamed of it).  By this time, I had already given up on Bush's ability to unite Congress.  The country seemed more divided than even the post election battle in 2000, but we were in the middle of a war. 

Well, in 2008, Bush can't run again.  With some of the things he and other Republicans have done recently, I really don't see any way that they can stay in power.  Several of us swing voters are out there who are not comfortable with the conservative right calling all the shots.  We like a healthy balance.

My view of the current state of national government is that the moderate swing voters gave Republicans power in a time of war to prevent changing hands in the middle of a delicate time.  The Republicans read that as a mandate from the masses to strengthen their conservative agenda, and now we find ourselves having the debate about Creationism in schools again.  That is certainly not why I (planned to) vote for Bush or any Republican.  I could care less about the religious rigth conservative agenda.  I don't agree with it in the slightest.

So, what's a swing-voter to do?  Eight years of either party is too much for me.  If I learned anything in the 2000 election, it's that every vote counts.  Even though I'd rather vote for someone than against someone else, when presidential margins come down to a few hundred votes, I may have to relax that stance a bit.  I'll likely vote Democratic in 2008. 

...That is, unless Hillary runs.  I don't have a problem with a female president, I just don't like her.  Ah, I'll vote for whoever sounds the most moderate at the time.

Iraq, The Beginning...

Because it’s probably the biggest issue of our time, Iraq is a great place to start.  I began writing an essay on Iraq, but found it becoming very long, so I'm breaking it up.  This post starts at the beginning.  In the future, I'll talk about the present situation, and what I think is best for the future.

As a swing voter, you may think I once supported the war, but then changed my mind. However, swing voter doesn’t mean flip-flopper. The fact is that I support the war in Iraq, still.

At the very beginning, in March of 2003, several Americans supported the impending war in Iraq. Not only that, but several Congressmen supported it. All of this support was based on intelligence. The intelligence is widely accepted as wrong now, but at the time it was widely considered to be correct throughout the government and the public. There were a few who thought it didn’t justify the war, but even they didn’t doubt it’s authenticity. I think there are very few people out there who can legitimately say “I told you so”. Most have just switched sides.

Everyone, even the President, now freely admits that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I, on the other hand, haven’t given up hope. Why? We all know that Hussein has had weapons of mass destruction in the past, and that he has used them against Kurdish people in his own country. UN Resolutions were passed repeatedly to get weapons inspectors inside Iraq to ensure he was destroying these weapons, and Hussein repeatedly kicked them out. If he had no weapons, why kick the inspectors out? If he felt that he shouldn’t be open to inspection as a matter of pride, maybe he also thought he should be open to make WMD as well. Saddam had every opportunity to comply with the UN and the international community, and failed to do so. In my mind, if nothing had been done, the UN would have lost all credibility in matters of international security.

I believe Hussein was hiding something. I think in the months leading up to the war, while the rest of the world was arguing resolutions and debating on whether or not it was time to invade Iraq, Hussein was either hiding, moving, or (let’s hope) destroying the WMD he had. Since there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of his destroying all of the WMD, I believe that he either hid them so well that we still have not found them, or he moved them across the border to Syria. Either way, I think they exist somewhere.

Even if the WMD argument is eventually proven to be false (that he didn’t have them in the first place), I think there was more reason to invade. Not that the US should be policing the world (that’s the UN’s job), but Hussein did very very bad things to his own people, including genocide, and those people had no way of stopping it. History has shown that sometimes people need the aid of another country, even in the form of military assistance.  Even us. Don’t forget that the French helped the US win independence from Britain.

In short, I think we got into Iraq for the right reasons.