BURNED BY BUSH, VOTING FOR KERRY



This article in the Chicago Tribune (thanks agains Sully) pretty much sums up my dilemma this election and my decision to vote for Kerry.

For most liberal hawks, there is little doubt that Bush bungled the Iraq campaign. Many, however, still believe deeply that going to war in Iraq was the right decision, and some remain cautiously optimistic that Iraq eventually will steady itself and move in the right direction, as long as America and the world provide the necessary help.

That belief only compounds what is a heart-splitting decision.

They find Bush's policies on just about everything outside the war abhorrent. The administration's tax policy is offensive to people who believe in reducing economic disparities. The government's manipulation of science for political gain, including its approach to stem cell research and contraception, infuriates many.

Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is personally offensive to almost every liberal. And yet, Iraq still stands as the pivotal issue in the international arena, one that will have implications for the future of the Middle East, for democratization, human rights and international security.

In the end, most liberal hawks will find it impossible to vote for Bush.

They likely will stand with Kerry, praying that as president he will take the right action; that the words of the candidate on the campaign trail were aimed at gaining the vote of a sharply divided nation, concealing what they hope is Kerry's knowledge that the liberal hawks were right all along.

The last sentence however does quite get things accurately. Kerry has since the beginning of the campaign tried to appeal both to die-hard dovish opponents of the war, condemning the fundamental policy decisions underlining the war, and at the same time reassure liberal and centrist hawks that he would not aband


I can't speak for all liberal hawks, but I don't happen to think that Kerry's critiques of the Bush's decision to go to war ("wrong war, wrong time, wrong place") are merely sops to his party's base and that in his heart of heart he is a fellow Wilsonian. No, it is far more likely that Kerry's Jeffersonian tropes come from the heart and his more hawkish stances are the strategic counter-thrusts. No, the faith that I have with Kerry is his essential pragmatism. That even though he would never have gone to war in Iraq to begin with, he has the analytical gifts and intellectual flexibility to understand the very real national security interests America has in seeing the project of a stable and democratizing Iraq. That's what I'm praying for when I'm pulling that Working Families Party lever for Kerry on November 2.