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Spratling: Candidates not so similar

ericspratling
Eric Spratling
The State Press

Five days before the election -- it's coming down to the wire. If you're still undecided at this point, just try this: narrow your focus. Pick the single most important distinction between the two men and seize it.

All this stuff you've heard about the candidates differing only slightly and how they both drive toward the political middle for the general election (big surprise there) -- it's complete garbage. What we have in the 2004 presidential election is a very clear-cut choice between two different leaders and two different ideologies.

Sen. John Kerry may have "won" the first debate in that he was more prepared and a better speaker, but in the end, he lost because the real difference between himself and President Bush became clear. When it comes to fighting terrorism and rogue regimes, Bush wants to take the fight to the bastards. Kerry wants to hold meetings.

That is Kerry's single greatest disqualification to be the most powerful man on the planet: He's an opportunistic weathervane -- a man whose moral determination ends when the political going gets tough. The flip-flopping, the medal-throwing and whether it was his own shrapnel that earned him a Purple Heart or two -- none of it rivals the indisputable fact that he views leadership as a popularity contest and not a moral challenge. Kerry has managed to reverse all logic and turned diplomacy from a means into an end.

Has Bush has "ruined" our image in the world by invading Iraq? Yes, I know that you went backpacking through Europe last summer and have come home to report that America is regarded as the source of all the world's woes; and Bush is seen as more evil than Adolf Hitler and Lex Luthor combined. To which I say: so what?

It's nothing new that doing the right thing is often unpopular. As if Ronald Reagan wasn't ridiculed for eight years as a stupid cowboy, always itching to kick-start a nuclear holocaust over what was supposedly just a pissing contest with the Kremlin. As if Winston Churchill didn't spend years being mocked as an outdated alarmist for his unheeded warnings about Hitler (the real Hitler, remember -- not Bush). As if Israel isn't an international pariah merely for defending itself for 60 years against ruthless Islamic fundamentalists who would stop at nothing to finish the job the Nazis started.

Not only does Kerry cloud the nature of tough moral decisions, he also relentlessly focuses his rhetoric on Osama bin Laden -- apparently thinking that the war on terror is really the war on Osama, and the entire success or failure of it relies on his death or capture.

Bin Laden is not what international terrorism is about. President Bush recognizes it for what it is: an ideology of hate, thriving because the collection of tyrants who run the various countries in the Middle East are too corrupt to fix their own problems and too dishonest to blame it on anyone but America.

So besides oil, the entire area's biggest export is generation after generation of restless zealots eager to bring down the Great Satan. These are not the fruits of democracy and hope.

Iran and Syria's home-grown protesters already bubble over, thanks largely to the example of a Ba'athist-free, U.S.-occupied Iraq; the despotic thugs will not be able to hold their citizens down much longer -- not when their next-door neighbor emerges as a prosperous democracy.

A stable and friendly Iraq will eventually give America a reasonable trading partner in the vital oil industry, forcing the sheiks who run Saudi Arabia to reform their oppressive, fundamentalist and sexist government and culture, or lose Western business for years.

There's a saying: "We didn't invade Iraq so we could invade all the other terrorist states. We invaded Iraq so we wouldn't have to."

This is it, folks: the democratization of the Middle East. That's what's on the table. Everyone's so caught up in the little details that they can't see the big picture.

In World War II, we were forced to team up with the ghastly Soviet Union in order to stop the German war machine. After that, we faced off against the Soviets in a half-century Cold War and we had to side with Islamic fundamentalists against our mutual enemy. These fundamentalists later attacked us in turn. Now, we're eliminating Islamic fundamentalism from the inside out. The president wasn't kidding when he called this "hard work," because it is. It may even get worse before it gets better. But trust me, it's worth it.

Bill Clinton spent his last years desperate to find himself a "legacy," but this is the legacy of President Bush: The day is coming when the United States no longer has to make alliances with sinister bedfellows in order to preserve a greater "stability."

That's the difference, that's the distinction, that's the one thing that would have me voting for Bush even if he were a transgender socialist pagan from Canada. John Kerry may have a "plan," but George W. Bush has a mission.

What's your choice?

Eric Spratling is a public relations senior. Explain to him why a Canadian couldn't run for president at Eric.Spratling@asu.edu. Read his blog online at www.asuwebdevil.com.


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