Journal rdewald's Journal: My final political JE before the Election 6

I am going to make a change here that reflects changes going on in real life. I am more focused on myself right now. I am going through an important period in the near future. Every new low weight will be a ten-year low from here on out, I am already starting to experience the newness of this body, and I wanted to enforce a little self-discipline to focus on this period

In concert with this, i.e., the real life focus, I am going to intend a policy of limiting JE's to the weight loss project and further limiting those to weekly posts for the next six weeks. This will help focus my writing in a way that dovetails with projects I am imagining for the future. I need to answer some questions for myself.

Before I go, however, I must make a parting observation or two.

When GWBush tells you that the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power is reason enough for him to be satisfied with his conduct of this war he chose to wage, whether or not you support him, get people to see this for what it really is. He is using the ends to justify the means.

If you haven't had enough training in ethics to understand why using ends to justify means is wrong, you owe it to the quality of your own life to do a little reading. I am not an ethicist, I am not going to try to explain this here. It is not a controversial point in ethics.

If you see this for what it is, and you think that Bush's choices are sound, and your government is doing things in your name in a way and for reasons you approve of, then excuse and/or dismiss my observations here concerning Bush's ethical weaknesses and vote for him. I'm making no claim to any particular wisdom here, these are just my observations through my own glass, darkly.

1. Saddam Hussein is less of a threat in prison. That's true. That does not mean that anything one might do to secure that end is right. To believe so is to grant license to essentially all conduct. This is really the root of Abu Ghraib. It is only shame that remains to inhibit the means. Even then, it is far too easy to justify the use of things like nuclear weapons and prisoner torture in the ends-justify-means context. If the debate gets too intense, questions of morality of conduct are summarily dismissed as irrelevant when desirability of ends are used to trump-card discussion of the means.

2. When those ends include modification of the political structure of a foreign sovereign power, when said power has not attacked us, that's called imperialism. They teach this at Yale. The probably even teach it at Harvard Business School.

But what echoes through the halls of the Bush Doctrine? Get them over there so we don't have to defend ourselves over here. Freedom is not America's gift to Iraq, it's God's Gift to every human being.

Freedom is on the march in Iraq. Haven't heard that? You aren't listening to Bush speak. It's really tragic that I can use his own words to make my point.

More Bushit: Your Medicare premiums are going up because of trial lawyers. I want to limit the huge awards given to trial lawyers, my opponent put one on the ticket! My opponent believes in more government, I believe in more opportunity.

Kerry isn't Klean.

Kerry needs to hang up this $200B prive tag on Iraq. The real cost so far is $120B. He needs to use the real numbers. He's assuming all of the future spending that will be authorized before he could take office. Deceitful, Mr. Kerry. Stop it or you will lose.

Lt. Kerry, we need a plan, both strategic and tactical outlines (deployments, etc), of what you'll do in Iraq. We know what Bush is going to do, catch up, drop everything else. Tell us, even those who have decided to vote for you, what you are going to do. What's going to happen to the National Guard deployments? What about the vet benefits? What about the VA?

Can we streamline these disability awards at least to the same standards that we coordinate ground artillery attacks and infrantry deployment? If you can keep track of everyone on the battlefield in real time, you'd think you'd be able to do the same at the VA, right? By the standard, we ought to be able to make disability awards in real time.

Sen. Kerry, I know you care about this and understand this problem as few do. Talk about it.

Okay, that's it. I'm fairly sure that's all I can really add to the debate. I leave it to the rest of the blog-o-sphere to maintain the dialog. My next political JE will be after the winners have been determined, unless the votes aren't counted again, and then I will not be able to keep quiet.

You might notice, I leave myself some wiggle room in my declarations of intent. I mean, moderation in all things, including moderation, right?