the mailbag

Dear Traveling Soldier:

In your Issue #4, you featured an article, “Should we vote for anyone but Bush in 2004?” This article is does a good job of showing how the Democratic Party is not all that different from the Republicans on the issue of war, and how putting a Democrat in the White House is not a solution to the main problems America faces. This is an argument that needs to be made.

But there is another argument that also needs to be made. In the few years he has been in office, George W. Bush has made radical changes in U.S. policy. He has announced that “preemptive attack”, which used to be called “aggressive war” and was considered a war crime, is now permitted to the United States. He has announced that forcing regime change in countries where the U.S. doesn’t like the government, which used to be called “internal interference in domestic affairs” and was not permitted by international law, is now permitted to the United States. He has announced that the U.S. has the right to arrest foreign people in foreign countries and imprison them, sometimes with a military tribunal, and sometimes with no trial, no lawyer, no charges at all.

And he has done all these things, and lied to the world about why he was doing them.

After having done that, if this man is not punished, not turned out of office, what message does that send to the world about the American voter? He’s got to be dumped.

So it’s a dilemma: Bush has to be kicked out, but Kerry is hardly any better, maybe no better at all. How do we think about that?

For me the best solution is the Support Nader, Dump Bush campaign. Ralph Nader is substantially different from Bush and Kerry. In his campaign he is raising the issues that Bush and Kerry don’t even talk about. He is an honest man, and a courageous one. His campaign deserves to be supported. Supported means: send him money, write letters in his favor, put his bumper sticker on your car, talk him up among your friends, do whatever you can to help get his message out to the people.

But on election day, vote to dump Bush.

Isn’t that betraying Nader at the last minute? Not really. Nader is not going to win this election. He doesn’t expect to become president of the United States, and probably doesn’t want to. He is running an educational campaign, to help people to see that the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is very small, and that we can’t solve the problems the country is facing by voting in a Democrat. His campaign will be a success if he begins to get this message out to the public. How many votes he gets is not the main issue.

So, support Nader in every way but one. On election day, vote to Dump Bush. We have to wipe the smirk off that liar’s face. And if as a side effect of dumping Bush, John Kerry gets put in the White House, well, we’ll dump him next.

- Doug Lummis

Traveling Soldier responds:

The changes that Bush made were not as radical as you claim. Clinton made “regime change” in Iraq official policy back in 1998. Had 9/11 happened during Gore’s watch, there was a good possibility that they too would have attacked Iraq. Gore said he supported Bush’s “next step” in the “war on terror” (in other words, “attacking Iraq”) back in 2002. Bush has gotten away with a lot, but he’s gotten away with it because the Democrats supported him.

You say that “if as a side effect of dumping Bush, Kerry gets put in the White House, well, we’ll dump him next.” And who will we dump him in exchange for? A Cheney-Rumsfeld ticket in 2008?

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