American voters can prove that democracy is alive and well by ousting their dangerous President Anatole Kaletsky

One of the more devastating criticism's of Bush I've seen.

The closing paragraphs are truly scary.

American voters are very reluctant to turn against their president at a time of war. This is a truly terrifying idea. It implies that a president can virtually guarantee his re-election by keeping his nation in a permanent state of war.

This may sound like Orwellian paranoia but it is not far from the thinking of many Republican political analysts. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the neoconservatives have been consciously searching for a new enemy to unite America and restore its military alertness, social discipline and moral fibre. No wonder they seemed so well prepared psychologically when this enemy finally appeared on September 11.

The President is not in the least embarrassed by a preference for warfare: his favourite campaign slogan is “the best defence is offence”. If the American electorate now votes for Mr Bush, war could be restored to the political primacy it has enjoyed throughout most of human history — as the last refuge of politicians determined to keep power.


Damn it. I know I'm not supposed to do this, but The Times has a policy of not allowing non-UK people from reading their online editions. So here's the whole thing. And If they don't like it I'll take it down again.



Reject this failed statesman
ANATOLE KALETSKY
American voters can prove that democracy is alive and well by ousting their
dangerous President
WHO WILL win the American election? At present, the evidence points very
marginally in favour of John Kerry, because the polls probably underestimate
Democratic support by about one point. Beyond that, it is impossible to say
anything definite about the winner of next week’s election. The loser, however, is
very clear. It is American democracy.

Democracy will be defeated in many ways on Tuesday. Several of the flaws in the
American democratic process are obvious and widely deplored, but they are quite
unimportant. The winner of this election could again be the candidate with fewer
votes. Many thousands of voters will again be disenfranchised by complex
registration procedures and faulty voting machines. And there is again a serious
risk that the election will be embroiled in lawsuits, with the final outcome
decided in the courts.

These are embarrassing problems but they reflect the strengths of American
democracy as much as its weakness. The risk of a winner who lags behind in the
number of votes casts nationwide is a hazard inherent in any federal system, with
checks and balances against populism, centralisation and the tyranny of
majorities. Ironically, it could be Mr Kerry this time, who benefits from the
decoupling of national and state voting — which underlines the absence of serious
partisan bias in the electoral college rules. Similarly, the legal arguments about
how votes should be counted can be seen as signs of openness and transparency. In
other countries, disputes about registration procedures are simply crushed by the
weight of bureaucratic resistance, while legal allegations of bias against
election officials are almost unheard of — not necessarily because such things
never happen, but because they are almost impossible to bring to court.

Why, then, do I maintain that democracy will be the sure loser in next week’s
poll? Because if America were a healthy democracy, George Bush would not even be
running in this election. He would have been ousted by his own party, in favour of
another candidate with a better chance of keeping the Republicans in power.

The primary function of democracy is not to elect good leaders, since nobody can
predict in advance how a politician will perform. It is to eject leaders who have
manifestly failed. The ability to remove leaders who turn out to be corrupt,
dangerous, outrageously dishonest or manifestly incompetent is the primary
privilege and duty of any democracy. And if any leader in our lifetime deserved to
be ejected by voters, regardless of their ideology or political persuasion, it is
surely President Bush.

He inherited a prosperous, peaceful, law-abiding country which was universally
admired around the world. He promised, if elected, to govern as a “compassionate
conservative”, to end partisan confrontation in Washington and to run a “humble”
foreign policy which would respect other countries and show restraint in the use
of America’s global power.

Four years later, he presides over a struggling economy, the steepest four-year
loss of jobs since the Great Depression, and now has the biggest budget deficits
and trade imbalances on record. Far worse, he started an unnecessary war on false
pretences and mismanaged it so disastrously that the instability of the Middle
East is probably now a greater danger to world peace than the Soviet Union was
during the Cold War. The President has failed in his primary military mission of
capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and destroying al-Qaeda.

Even the task of eliminating the Taleban and stopping the flow of fundamentalist
teachings from Saudi Arabia has proved too much. Imagine the state of the world
today if instead of invading Iraq, America had finished the job against Saudi
Arabia, the Taleban and al-Qaeda. If, for example, Mr Bush had devoted a fraction
of the military manpower and the $200 billion wasted in Iraq on rebuilding
Afghanistan that benighted country would soon be the Switzerland of the Himalayas.

To make matters worse, Mr Bush has failed in all these tasks, while breaking every
promise he made about his character and leadership style. Instead of running a
bipartisan government of national unity, he has been the most ideological,
divisive and extremist leader America has ever seen. Instead of showing humility
in his international dealings, his punitive and aggressive foreign policies — not
only against Iraq but also against North Korea, Venezuela, Iran and even Germany
and France — have transformed America into the most hated country on earth.
Instead of respecting the primacy of the US Constitution, he has imprisoned
thousands of people without trial or charge — many no doubt dangerous terrorists,
but some presumably just ordinary people caught in the wrong place at the wrong
time.

If Americans cannot bring themselves to vote against the President after this
record, we must ask whether American democracy is capable of performing its
primary function. Can voters no longer remove a failed leader from power? The
answer is even more troubling than the question: American voters are very
reluctant to turn against their president at a time of war. This is a truly
terrifying idea. It implies that a president can virtually guarantee his re-
election by keeping his nation in a permanent state of war.

This may sound like Orwellian paranoia but it is not far from the thinking of many
Republican political analysts. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
neoconservatives have been consciously searching for a new enemy to unite America
and restore its military alertness, social discipline and moral fibre. No wonder
they seemed so well prepared psychologically when this enemy finally appeared on
September 11.

The President is not in the least embarrassed by a preference for warfare: his
favourite campaign slogan is “the best defence is offence”. If the American
electorate now votes for Mr Bush, war could be restored to the political primacy
it has enjoyed throughout most of human history — as the last refuge of
politicians determined to keep power.






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