Why I am voting for John Kerry
I am an American. I take my right to vote very seriously. Tomorrow when I go to my local polling place and register my vote I will be voting for John Kerry for President of the United States. I encourage every American visitor to my website to do the same.
George Bush is demonstrably the worst President of the United States in modern history. To add up the list of ills that have emanated from the Bush White House could run hundreds of pages, but I will just bring up a few of particular importance to me:
- President Bush has an appalling record on the environment. His administration has not made a single environmental decision that, on balance, did not leave our environment in worse shape.
- President Bush has turned an enormous federal budget surplus into the largest budget deficit in history. He has done this in two ways: one, through enormous tax cuts to America's ultra-rich, and two, by a massive increase in spending, particularly to fund a poorly-conceived war.
- President Bush has led us into a terrible war. 100,000 Iraqis dead. 1,000 Americans Dead. 200 billion dollars spent. An Iraq that has become a haven and breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. A world that is infinitely less safe.
I have listened to Senator John Kerry's proposals about each of these areas of importance to me and it is clear that he both shares my concerns and will address them in manner much different than President Bush.
But if you came to my website to learn about terrorism, please consider this: President Bush has made America much more vulnerable to terrorism. He has done a terrible job of waging his "war."
This week Osama bin Laden admitted what we've all known since September 11, 2001: he is responsible for the deaths of 3000 people in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Seeing his newly released video also served to remind us that he is still alive, still running loose, and still not in the hands of America. If we are fighting a War on Terror, why aren't we spending those 200 billion dollars on capturing Osama bin Laden?
The reason that the war in Iraq is going so poorly is because it is fundamentally illegitimate in origin. We know it, every Western democracy knows it, the Iraqi people know it, and every Islamic fundamentalist knows it. We absolutely cannot "win" this war because our justification for war was so clearly flawed.
Compare the war in Iraq to the war in Afghanistan. Despite having let bin Laden fall through our grasp, America has done a relatively successful job in Afghanistan. Why? Because we went to war against a state that harbored, financed, and supported a terrorist that killed 3000 people. Afghanistan had the blood of September 11 on its hands and Afghanistan paid the price. Generally the world supported these actions. Had the US stopped after Afghanistan the world would be a different place, and possibly I would be encouraging you to vote for President Bush.
Anti-American terrorists once targeted my father for death. They also came close to killing my mother. I am appalled by ANY action that encourages further terrorist violence against Americans. Yet through his illegitimate war against Iraq, President George Bush has undoubtedly given rise to untold numbers of new terrorists, isolated America to an unprecedented degree, and made the world a much less safe place.
Please vote John Kerry November 2.
