And finally we would have a better check and balance in our government. At the moment one party rules without much concern for the other half.

So yes I was certain as one can be that Kerry would have been much better though believe me he was not in my mind ideal.

But I do not want to ignore your question. I can tell you that I was not voting _for_ the war in voting for Bush. Were you voting _against_ the war in voting for Kerry?

You say that you cannot imagine Kerry would or could be worse than Bush. What you did not say is that you were certain that Kerry would be much better. And this is exactly what I concluded: neither candidate was compelling.

Whatever dreams the hawks might have had about conquering the world through their manifesto of the Project for the New American Century have been DASHED by the situation on Mesopotamia, and by the reluctance of the international community to participate and issue a check for such madness. As for the Coalition of the Killing, it has already started to disintegrate.

To be candid, I cannot understand the substance of your comments or perceive their relevance to the topic sufficiently to be able to disagree in any interesting way. My approach was to state so, try repeating what I heard, and hope for the best.

Apparently, one point you hoped to make was that the neo-cons intended to encourage terrorism in order to advance their ends. Which neo-con(s)? Please name them. And how do you know their intentions? You make the statement as fact, but provide no evidence. By all means, please do so.

I hope eventually ROS devotes an entire show to this issue. It’s certainly timely.

None of this is especially vital to the question of whether the republic has evolved anti-democratically (which you and I seem to agree on). The country’s economic and social conditions are unrecognizably different to conditions at the time of the constitution’s drafting. It’s important to recall that the founders’ job was to unite 13 state governments under a single federal government that gained its legitmacy from 13 states’ citizens (and that said citizens were only white males ‘of property’).

I’d love to carry on this train of thought — but I, like you have been restraining my urges toward digression. If Brendan ever opens an Anything Goes O.S. Pub Tangent Thread, well, then we can resume our drinkin’ buddy gabbing. (Please, pretty please, Coach!) I’ve got tons of responses, both amused and bemused, to stuff you post (including the dropped topics we had goin’ on x-mas eve) that would shamelessly clog the web-page.

Anyway, see ya’ later on the Latin-Socialism thread (probably).

Many of us who voted for Kerry were alarmed by Bush and could not imagine that Kerry would be or could be worse. Where we are now was very visible last Fall. Are you happy about where we are now?

Sorry, this has little to do with Iraq. Enough already.

Now, let me say that I’m glad to see your input here, despite the likelihood that you and I won’t ever agree on political issues. (It’s my feeling that any society’s prime function should be to care for all its members, through sharing, instead of venerating ‘individualism’ — even though such veneration supposedly leads to equitable enrichment. I’d rather live in a poorer but fairer society whose morals stem from empathetic communitarian principles than one like ours, where a hard-hearted pursuit of personal wealth effectively serves as the secular religion. [Oops! I suppose that this part of this post belongs more to the 'Latin America's New Socialism' thread than to this one. Maybe I'll figure a way to contribute the core of it to that thread after hearing our 9PM Pacific Left Coast broadcast tonight. Or not...])

Anyway, glad to see you here. Please comment freely and frequently.

ALYB: Can you give ma a hand in understanding your main idea? I’m not getting it. Are you primarily saying that the goal in Iraq was permanent military bases? Or that the neo-cons intended to destabilize Iraq and even encourage terrorism against the US to reduce personal liberties? Or that the US government exists only to expand the US empire and act solely in the interest of US corporations?

Potter: Why was Bush re-elected? I can tell you that when I voted for Bush, I found neither he nor Kerry compelling, and had to settle for a variety of uninteresting differences to make a choice. I did not expect much from this administration, and have still been disappointed. I am cynical in that I do not think a Kerry administration would have been as dramatically different as you seem to think. The question that I keep coming back to is this: why does a country as large and capable as the US produce such uninspiring candidates for president?

If Clinton’s sex life and lying about it warranted impeachment why are we the people willing to pass on a president who took us to war on lies and deceipt, damaging our security, reputation and our economy in the process?

I can’t stop asking this question and the more disturbing questions: Why was he re-elected? Why was it even so close?

Yet I wonder if the Pentagon’s farcical post-invasion ‘planning’ wasn’t less a design of deliberate neglect and more an unwanted yet predestined failure of neo-con ideology. Like this: maybe the failure to plan for the occupation was an extension of the Bushies’ vapid domestic philosophy, wherein Chalibi stood in as the model’s requisite ‘entrepreneur’ while the power vacuum created by Bremmer’s dismantling of the Baathist state was the ‘tax cut’ that would encourage all the political/nationalist/monetary investment necessary for a ‘blossoming of freedom’ (requiring no real effort by Washington).
That penultimate phrase, in (sarcastic) quotes, I would decode to mean: American-led transnational corporate capitalism – the very parasitism that a few brave ‘renegade’ Southern hemisphere governments are lately labeling ‘economic imperialism’. The point is that if you view the world through such a strictly ideological lens—especially one as myopic as that of the neo-cons—EVERY situation will seem ripe for the very same trickle-down programmatic approach.

Opinions, anyone? (I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to become welcoming and eager for corrections of my disillusioned lefty skepticism.)