[+] A Conservative's View on Bush: "Dangerously simplistic, arrogant, inept"

Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet
by Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinel

Americans should realize that if they vote for
President Bush's re-election, they are really voting
for the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of
neoconservative ideologues and their corporate
backers. I have sadly come to the conclusion that
President Bush is merely a front man, an empty suit,
who is manipulated by the people in his
administration. Bush has the most dangerously
simplistic view of the world of any president in my
memory. It's no wonder the president avoids press
conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards
and he can barely talk. Americans should be
embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan)
spoke more fluently and articulately in English than
our own president at their joint press conference
recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who
knows how to think and who knows that the world is a
great deal more complex than Bush's comic-book world
of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's
unfortunate that in our poorly educated country,
Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adopt
simplistic slogans might doom his presidential
election efforts. But Thomas Jefferson said it
well, as he did so often, when he observed that people
who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never
was and never will be.

People who think of themselves as conservatives will
really display their stupidity, as I did in the last
election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as far from
being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled
me once, but he won't fool me twice. It is not at all
conservative to balloon government spending, to
vastlyincrease the power of government, to show
contempt for the Constitution andthe rule of law, or
to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American
jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade
deficits don't matter, and that people should not know
what their government is doing.

Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive
president in the 20th century. His administration
leans dangerously toward the authoritarian. It's no
wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few
Arab-American of supporting terrorism. What would you
do if you found yourself arrested and a federal
prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can
plea-bargain this or the president will designate you
an enemy combatant and you'll beheld incommunicado for
the duration?

This election really is important, not only for
domestic reasons, but because Bush's foreign policy
has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost restarted
the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race.
America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it
has few friends anywhere in the world thanks to the
arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration.
Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us,
Israel, North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats
to world peace.

I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with
Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains
enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to
Kerry's Web site (www.johnkerry.com) and read some of
the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there
is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs
would have you believe. Besides, it would be fun to
have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, rides
motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and
speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the
White House who has killed people face to face.
Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and
dispels all illusions about war.