Kucinich has a new ad up that a conservative blogger I won't link to thought distasteful. Judge for yourself. One can argue that the deaths of U.S. soldiers ought not be used for political gain in a campaign. But that's not the story here. People are in fact dying. These deaths are caused in large part by the policies and actions of our current administration. If a candidate for President can't say, "Hey! I have a better plan that will cost fewer American lives!" then something is wrong.
Especially when the reasons we were given for this conflict (Iraqi weapons of mass destruction posing a threat to the world's safety and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda) have proven to be a sham, and instead we see corporate administration backers seemingly rewarded with reconstruction contracts, it might just be unethical NOT to say something about this. Otherwise, we sit idly by while more Americans die.
And for what? We're still waiting to find out. It's not Al Qaeda. We've apparently given up on finding Osama. It's not Saddam. We can't find him either. It's not weapons of mass destruction. They never existed. The new reason is apparently to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. But it's fairly clear the administration really doesn't care about that either, because they've just decided the new governmental structure has to be set up by election time '04, like it or not. Otherwise Bush won't get to fly in on another aircraft carrier and declare victory again. That could look bad for him and might hurt him in the polls! Whether the Iraqi's get a workable long-term solution matters far less to Bush than whether he gets to keep his job another four years.
Oh. And let's place a bet. If he does win, I bet he takes another month-long vacation. Don't remember that? Yeah that was the 32 days he spent in Crawford playing golf and watching his dogs chase armadillos right before 9/11. Time when he could have been acting on the explicit warnings the outgoing members of the Clinton administration gave him, that Osama should be a top priority. But, if you'll recall, a missile defense system seemed like a better priority to this administration. That's another topic though...
On the ad: American soldiers are dying. That can happen under any President, and even when a Democrat is elected in '04, it will continue to happen. But, if it is going to happen, we owe it to them, their families, and ourselves to know for sure just why they are dying and we had better be confident it is a worthy cause. I can't say for sure that I know that right now. That's a problem that requires attention.
Posted by Brian at December 8, 2003 01:20 AM | TrackBack