The lesser evil in 2004?

In November, millions of Americans are looking forward to another “regime change” – this time, right here in America. The idea is that “anybody but Bush” would be a better President because no one could be as much of a lying, corrupt S.O.B. as Bush.

The first problem with voting for “anyone but Bush” is that it sets the bar too low. Dick Cheney isn’t Bush, why not vote for him? What about Rumsfeld, or Powell? After all, their names aren’t Bush either.

Getting Bush out of office isn’t an end in itself. Everyone who hates Bush wants something: an end to the occupation of Iraq, money for schools or health care and not for ultra-rich CEOs, for example. Those who are planning to vote for the Democrat John Kerry think that Kerry will get them somewhat closer to their goals.

But step back and look at history, the history of how people got things in this country. The civil rights movement ended segregation in 1965 not because a Democrat was in office. John F. Kennedy had been in the White House for three years and was assassinated before his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed any civil rights legislation. It took years of protesting, sit-ins, and marches on Washington before politicians lifted a finger to help blacks in this country.

The same thing is true of the Vietnam war. In 1964, people against U.S. involvement in Vietnam argued that the thing to do was to vote for the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson because he was the “lesser evil” compared to his Republican opponent Barry Goldwater. The anti-war group Students for a Democratic Society said that the movement would get “part of the way with LBJ,” meaning that while he wasn’t completely anti-war, at least he wouldn’t go “all the way” in Vietnam like Goldwater would.

When LBJ got into office however, he sent tens of thousands of American GIs to die in Vietnam, bombed the hell out of the country, and defoliated Vietnam’s jungles with Agent Orange. LBJ not only went part of the way into Vietnam, he went all of the way. Voting for the “lesser evil” got us BOTH the lesser AND the greater evil; it did then and it will today.

But why?

The reality is that movements can’t sacrifice their independence (that is their strength) by aligning themselves with politicians who are half a centimeter to the left of the Republicans and expect to get anything out of it. John Kerry, because his name is not Bush, assumes that he has the left vote, the anti-war vote, the black vote, the women’s vote, and the union vote in his pocket. He doesn’t have to do a damn thing to EARN those votes, and once he’s in office, he’ll continue the soldier-killing in Iraq that Bush started.

His campaign website says that he wants to add 40,000 active-duty troops to the Army. Those 40,000 aren’t going to be sitting tight in stateside bases; most likely they’ll be deployed to Iraq because Kerry wants to “finish the job” in Iraq. What he doesn’t mention is that “the job” is setting up a puppet government in Iraq that will sell oil at the price Corporate America wants and will allow the U.S. to have large permanent military bases there.

Back in the Vietnam days when Kerry had some principles and led Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he asked the Senate Foreign Relations committee: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Today we need to ask Kerry him the same question. Politicians in Washington won’t end the occupation. It wasn’t LBJ who brought the troops home from Vietnam – it was Richard Nixon, who was even more right-wing than Bush. He had no choice because hundreds of thousands of GIs revolted against the war and wouldn’t fight it anymore. And today we have to build a movement that will force whoever is in the White House – Democrat or Republican – to bring the troops home now.

“Democrats helped put young Americans in harm’s way”

This appeared in the letters section of Feb 16, 2004 Newsweek magazine:

The fact that John Kerry and John Edwards supported our march into Iraq seems to be forgotten by much of the country, including the heretofore anti-war crowd. I opposed the war from the start and will not forget. My memory will be abetted by emails from my son in the 82nd Airborne, who was deployed to Iraq in January, five months after his return from Afghanistan. Your article “Blood and Honor,” about the First Battalion of the Eighth Infantry and the ever-present dangers to young Americans in Iraq, is a somber reminder that the war is far from over. The articles about Kerry and Edwards help us remember that it was Democrats such as these who helped put young Americans in harm’s way.

- Amy Keith
Charlotte, N.C.

Page 8-->