Commenting on the comments

Bill over at INDC Journal graciously opened his comment section and asked Kerry supporters to explain why they will vote for Kerry. At the same time, he asked Bush supporters to refrain from responding. He sincerely wanted to know what people who will vote for Kerry were thinking.

After reading the comments, I felt compelled to respond. Since I respect Bill's wishes, I will respond here, on my blog, rather than in his comment section. I can't possibly address every commenter, so I will attempt to distill the arguments made and respond to the major points.

1) Too many mistakes after 9/11

How many "mistakes" is too many? Eisenhower lost 2500 to 6000 men on Omaha Beach on D-Day alone. Among the mistakes "he" made were floating tanks that sank leaving the infantry with no protection and much less firepower, ships that bombarded the coast too far inland and completely missed their targets leaving the German machine gun emplacements intact allowing them to riddle the Americans with machine gun fire, bombers that missed their targets by miles failing to destroy any of the artillery emplacements allowing the Germans to rain artillery fire on the already imperiled invasion troops, and paratroopers who landed in flooded fields and drowned without firing a shot because intelligence never discovered that the fields had been flooded.

Should we have fired Eisenhower because of these monumental and terribly costly mistakes?

Mistakes are made all the time. What's important is the goals and the outcomes. We don't know the outcome of Bush's policies vis-a-vis terrorism yet. We probably won't for years to come. However we do know that Afghanistan, for the first time in its history, has held successful democratic elections. Libya has revealed its entire WMD program and turned over all its materiel to the US. In Iraq, al Sadr's "militia" are turning in their weapons. Samarra has been conquered and Fallujah is next. Iraqis are self-governed, national elections are scheduled for January of next year, and Sadaam is awaiting trial for crimes against his own people.

At least to the degree that we can know it, it appears that Bush's policy is working. Yes, there have been setbacks, but were you really expecting perfection?

2) Bush squandered the goodwill America had after 9/11

If you believe that, I have a bridge I'll sell you.

America didn't have any goodwill before 9/11. Perhaps for a few days or weeks after 9/11 "the world" was with us, but Europe (which is really "the world" everyone means when they repeat this canard) has been anti-American for at least the past 30 years. Read European newspapers. Or get up to speed on the Oil For Food scandal. France, German, Russia and the UN were never going to support our efforts anywhere but Afghanistan, but especially not in Iraq. (Although Russia may have had a change of heart after Breslan.) France took bribes in return for agreeing to veto any attempt by the US to do anything serious about Iraq. Do you seriously believe we could "repair" our relationship with them? Why would you want to? Furthermore, old Europe is rife with anti-semitism. (Source) Is that really who you want to align the US with?

Australia supports us. Britain supports us. Italy supports us. Holland supports us. Denmark supports us. Portugal supports us. Iceland supports us. Poland supports us. Japan supports us. South Korea supports us. Hungary, Turkey, Georgia, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Uzbekestan, Ukraine, Czech Republic - all support us. Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Panama - all support us. And there's more. (Source)

That part of the world that matters today is with us. Europe is dying from the self-inflicted diseases of socialism and hubris. Even if France and Germany wanted to provide us with troop support they couldn't. They don't have any troops to speak of. They even refuse to support the UN's mission in Iraq (preparing for elections), forcing Kofi Annan to come, hat in hand, begging to the US for protection. Wake up. The world has changed.

3) Bush failed to protect us at home

No terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11. This is failure? 75% of the al Qaeda leadership is either dead or in prison. This is failure? Al Qaeda is so weak now they can't even manage a major attack in Pakistan! This is failure? The terrorists are busy fighting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and Musharref's troops in Pakistan. This is failure?

How would you define success?

4) Bush took his eye off the ball

I find great irony in the constant complaints of the opposition that Bush "has taken his eye off the ball" (which is not true anyway.) If you vote this election for a candidate because of their stand on domestic issues, haven't you taken your eye off the ball? Have you forgotten? Leon Klinghoffer, Charles Stinson, 243 Marines in Beirut, 17 sailors on the USS Cole, hundreds of people in the US embassies in Africa, PanAm 103 over Locherbie, the Khobar Towers, etc., etc., etc. Europe has lost 5000 people to terrorism in the past thirty years.

Exactly how high is your tolerance level for deaths? Do we have to wait for you to lose someone you love before you get it?

5) The Economy and Bush's tax policy

The economy is better than it was at any time that Bill Clinton was in office. Do the research. A tax policy that places the least amount of burden on the taxpayers is the only way for an economy to prosper. John Kennedy knew this, and pushed through the largest tax cuts in our history up to that time. Reagan's tax cuts ushered in twenty years of prosperity and dramatically increased the government's revenues. Again, do the research. The problem with our budget isn't tax cuts. It's spending.

6) Bush has eroded our civil liberties

Prove it. Seriously. Other than the political rhetoric, can you provide one concrete example of eroded civil liberties? Simply saying "Patriot Act" doesn't cut it. Stop listening to rhetoric and start doing some reading. More than anything, what the Patriot Act did was amend existing laws to give law enforcement the same authorizations they already had with regard to domestic crimes. How were your civil liberties infringed? If you can't articulate that, then why do you believe it?

7) Bush will turn the Supreme Court too far to the right

This is a legitimate concern if you buy the argument that the Constitution is a "living document" subject to the whims of the court. However, this position necessarily places you in peril. If the Constitution can be changed to benefit a liberal agenda, it can be just as easily be changed to benefit a conservative agenda. The very fact that you are concerned about conservative judges changing prior court rulings is an acknowledgement that activist jurisprudence threatens freedom.

We are a nation of laws - laws passed by our legislatures and upheld by our courts. When the courts create law, as they did in Griswold v. Connecticut, when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court discovered a "right to privacy" in the "penumbra of emanations" from the Constitution, then we are all at risk. Just because the result was positive does not mean the methodology was correct.

8) Kerry won't be much different from Bush in the war on terror

If you truly believe this, you have not been listening to John Kerry.

Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no."

If you still want to vote for Kerry, that's your privilege.

We are still a free country.