The Selfish and the Blind
The key war issue that the Democrats have been blind to for 4 years is that Bush is not a war president. Politicking aside, Bush does not play offense. He’s a defense guy and has been so from the get go. In the 2000 debates, Bush proclaimed:
“When it comes to foreign policy that will be my guiding question. Is it in our nation’s interests?”
This selfish line of thinking is defensive and is a recipie for bad leadership. Bush never wanted to engage the world - his platform was and continues to be selfish and he won over the 50% of Americans who think selfishly. To contrast, Gore was almost prescient about what would happen if Bush was elected:
“The power of example is America’s greatest power in the world. And that means, for example, standing up for human rights.”
As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and it was not readily apparent then that Bush was a defense player. After all, he took us to war with Afghanistan, he lead the charges against Saddam, he took us to war with Iraq. But while these were strong actions, they were not offensive moves. We went to Afghanistan because they were harbouring those who planned attacks against us. We were responding to Saddam’s perceived threads. We coerced the UK (and Poland!) to go to war in Iraq. We’re fighting the terrorists over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here. Now we’re being goaded by North Korea and Iran and playing defense again.
Bush’s foreign policy is to defend the American way of life. Bush coerces but he doesn’t engage and coercion never won a war. America needs to lead and to play offense. We should secure our citizen’s privacy. We should stand firm against torture because regardless of their malice these are fellow human beings. It’s time to play offense; it’s time to lead and it’s time to oust or defensive, selfish, reactionary officials: the Bush Administration, their supporters and their blind and toothless detractors.
It’s an election year so ask yourself: is my Congressman or Senator a leader?