These things do not follow one another

As elec­tion day nears, I’m remind­ing myself of a few impor­tant things that the Repub­li­cans would like me to ignore.

First: Believ­ing that Sad­dam Hus­sein should have been removed from pow­er is not the same as believ­ing that an essen­tial­ly uni­lat­er­al first strike was called for. I believe the first, but not the sec­ond. As I believe that democ­ra­cy works only when cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate, I believe that inter­na­tion­al treaty orga­ni­za­tions like the UN can only func­tion when mem­ber states, and espe­cial­ly states that act as an exam­ple to the rest of the world, fol­low the rules that they made. The UN may well be irrel­e­vant, but that’s because the world’s super­pow­er has decid­ed it isn’t inter­est­ed in mak­ing it relevant.

Are we a nation that leads by exam­ple, or are we a nation that sub­scribes to Mao’s notion that pow­er flows only from the bar­rel of a gun?

Sec­ond: Believ­ing that Sad­dam Hus­sein should have been removed from pow­er is not the same as license for the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to tell bald-faced lies to con­vince us to go to war. I can hear the Bush sup­port­ers now out there pip­ing up about how he did­n’t lie, and all I can say to that is, “start pay­ing atten­tion.” He made very spe­cif­ic claims which were not only unsup­port­ed, but in direct con­tra­dic­tion to the evi­dence that was avail­able to him and to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Just as bor­row­ing with­out ask­ing is the same as steal­ing, say­ing some­thing you know not to be true is lying.

The fact that I believe Sad­dam Hus­sein should have been removed from pow­er makes the lies all the more galling. There were damn good rea­sons to take action. Fail­ing to use those rea­sons and rely­ing on lies and dis­tor­tions indi­cates that the admin­is­tra­tion has the roles back­wards. Some­one for­got who is the boss and who is the servant.

Third: believ­ing that it is impor­tant to sup­port the Pres­i­dent in times of war (or war-like con­flict) does not mean a free pass. I was pret­ty restrained about protest­ing going to war before the inva­sion. I made some argu­ments and I had some dis­cus­sions, but I did not attend ral­lies. To some extent, I believe that it is our duty to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the lead­ers whose job it is to pro­tect us, so that they may more effec­tive­ly pro­tect us. And that means sup­port­ing the Pres­i­dent in action I don’t agree with. He’s got the job, he makes the deci­sions. I have to put some lev­el of trust in that.

The last cou­ple of sen­tences DO NOT APPLY IN AN ELECTION YEAR. Or more specif­i­cal­ly, the above does not apply on elec­tion day. Novem­ber 2^nd is the day when we eval­u­ate the job our ser­vants have done and make deci­sion whether to retain them.

We have a duty to sup­port the Pres­i­dent in times of con­flict. But on elec­tion day, we also have a duty to choose a Pres­i­dent to sup­port. Uncon­di­tion­al loy­al­ty in times of con­flict is due only to the office, not to the man. The man is a cit­i­zen and noth­ing more, doing a vital­ly impor­tant task. We in the Unit­ed States have the equal­ly vital task of choos­ing a cit­i­zen to do a bet­ter job than has been done.

As we go to the polls (and if you don’t go, shame on you) let us remem­ber Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s admo­ni­tion that we not pray for God to be on our side, but rather have faith that the Almighty would be on the side of right, and pray that we should be on His side.