The President of Say One Thing, Do Another

Our president is a “compassionate conservative.” This week, it has been estimated that 100,000 Iraqi lives have been taken. We’ve been beyond 1,000 U.S. soldiers’ deaths for a while now as well. This, at least, is in the name of the Bush administration’s interest in Iraq. We were told this was because of the development of weapons of mass destruction there. Then we were told that it was to spread freedom. For those of us who don’t sense the ring of truth in these, we suspect that it has something to do with oil and Haliburton contracts. If so, God help them. Or as Bob Dylan said, “Even Jesus could never forgive what you do.” If Bush loses sleep over this as he claims he does, I hope it occurs tenfold.
If you are planning on voting for Bush because of his position on abortion, consider recent findings that the number of abortions has increased under his administration. Further, it was found that the number has been higher under conservative administrations and lower under liberal administrations. We don’t know why that might be; perhaps it is because of increased funding of sex education during liberal administrations. Isn’t a decrease in the number of abortions the goal? There’s a bit of a misconception that liberals are supportive of abortion itself, whereas the truth is that they (or I, at least) believe this is a decision for an individual to make rather than the government. Jimmy Carter lost a lot of his evangelical Christian support when he made a similar statement. It rings true for me, though, when John Kerry says abortion should be between a woman, her doctor, and God. I would venture to say that God’s dealing with humanity values free will over coercion—we must come to him in faith rather than his forcing us all to him. In other words, it wouldn’t mean much for the choice to be made for us. We in fact wouldn’t be human, we would lose our humanity, if the choice were made for us. So there is a right choice and a wrong choice, but it is by our free will that we distinguish ourselves as creations in the image of God.
Back to my original topic. I almost fell over this week when I heard Bush say Kerry should wait and carefully examine the evidence before he jumps to a conclusion. This was in regard to the missing 300+ tons of explosives. Bush also claimed in the previous election that he would not unilaterally rush into war. At this point, if I have to spell out the connection for you, well, you would not have been able to read this far. Is it a rush to judgment to assume that this kind of thing can happen with overextended, undersupplied troops? This is symptomatic of the Bush administration’s incompetence. I will also call readers’ attention to claims during Bush’s 2000 campaign that he would bridge the gap between the two parties. This is as far from the truth as the east is from the west. Tom DeLay has worked to shut out Democrats, Bush campaigners have worked to disenfranchise Democratic voters, and Bush continues to use “liberal” as a pejorative term. This is how you alienate half the country. America, please do me proud on Tuesday. This guy didn’t win once; let’s make his loss indisputable on November 2.

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