Monday, May 21, 2007

In the Political World, Primary Cutters Should Not Be Tolerated

Today, the Governor Crist of Florida signed a bill to move Florida's 2008 Presidential primary up to January 28. This puts Florida only behind the Iowa and Nevada Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, and on the same day as South Carolina's Democratic Primary. This follows California moving up its primary, which was in turn followed by New York and New Jersey and others moving their primaries' up. This latest move by Florida will give it more say over who will get the Democratic and Republican Parties' Nominations for 2008.

Now I live in Kentucky, who doesn't have their primary until May 2008. I'm getting tired of Kentucky always being passed by in the Presidential primaries, as I'm sure other citizens of my state and other states with late primaries. My vote does not matter in the Presidential primary, the race is already determined by then.

Kentucky should move their Presidential primary up to before the Iowa Caucus, putting us in the lead. If we do that, instead of the candidates pandering to Iowans to make ethanol out of corn, they will be pandering to Kentuckians to run cars off of tobacco and use clean coal. (which I'm not a big fan of but I'm a Kentuckian and I'm suppose to support coal) Think of the great benefits of running a car off of tobacco, once we start we won't be able to get enough. We will break our addiction of foreign oil with an addiction to tobacco. Might I point out tobacco, unlike corn, is green, making it better for the environment.

But back to Florida. The Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee are threatening to take up to half of Florida's delegates away for their treacherous move. We cannot tolerate a state trying to get more say in the Presidential election. After all, from time immemorial New Hampshire and Iowa have had that privileged, God given position and it is a political trespass to even think of taking that away. If we tolerate Florida's move, we will soon have states continuously outdoing one another, until we're deciding the Presidential nominees for 2050 in 2009. I fear that the DNC and RNC may be too late, already having let New York and New Jersey slip by. I call for the DNC and the RNC to do more, strip Florida entirely of all its delegates. And to make atonement for their sin, they should have to move their primary to the end of the line just to keep the delegates they have now. Cutting is not tolerable. If you're going to cut you have to ask everyone in front of you if they don't mind.

If only there was a way that we could be fair and give everyone an equal vote. If only it was logistically possible to hold some sort of vote in all 50 states on the same day. But that's just ridiculous. We have a hard enough time holding an election for President on the same day across the United States. To risk our all-important primaries in that logistical nightmare would be insane and irresponsible. The results are too important for fairness. In fact, if anything we should move our Presidential election in each state to different days to avoid such a situation. And we'll put Florida upfront so to give it more time to count and recount all its votes.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

A New Plan For Iraq

Today President Bush vetoed the funding bill for the Iraq war on the grounds that it includes a time table for a troop pullout. Why does Bush say he is against this? Because if we tell the terrorists when we are going to leave then the terrorists are going to lie in wait until we leave, then spring up. So lets examine this for a moment.

First of all. If the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq would just stop fighting if we told them when we'd leave until we left, why have they not stopped fighting? The Democrats want to set a date by which we will leave. But Bush would agree that we'd leave when we get the job done. So why don't the terrorists lie in wait now, so that we will think we won and leave, and then spring up. They may not know what date we are going to leave by, but they do know the conditions under which we'd leave, victory, and could make that happen. So my point is not to give the terrorists advice, but to say we may give them too much credit. We're assuming that they are, well, rational. But they are not rational, or the situation in Iraq wouldn't be in Iraq.

I think they might just keep fighting either way. Don't forget they are in a civil war, and if they stopped that would give others a chance to get a firm grasp on power before the chaos starts back up. And then of course, which terrorists. We have Sunnis fighting Shites, are they really going to cooperate long enough so that we will pull out? In history there are examples of such cooperation. During World War II the Communists led by Mao and the Nationalists had a truce in order to focus their efforts on repelling the Japanese invaders. But if the various Iraqi factions would do this, why haven't they already joined forces to try and repel America rather than continue to fight themselves?

If we really cared about creating a strong Iraqi state then we'd declare war on that state. I don't mean war with the insurgents, I mean war with the whole US backed Iraqi government. Right now we're fighting Shites and Sunni terrorists, but not the state itself. If their government is being attacked that would grant it a level of legitimacy in the Middle East that we could never attain anyway else. A war is just what Iraq needs to unite it. We were united in our fight against the British, Iraq could be united in their fight against us. We would then have a peaceful, prosperous, democratic America hating Iraq, which is the best we can probably hope for. Case in point, France, we actually liberated them and they don't like us, how can we expect anything better from Iraq? Plus, we do well in conventional wars, its these wars after we've taken over that get us. So, by declaring war against the Iraqi government, we get to fight another conventional war which we can win, and then get bogged down after the Mission Accomplished. (Which may I be the first to wish you a Happy Mission Accomplished Day, this being the 3rd anniversary of the beloved day when it was announced by our glorious leader that we were at an end of major combat operations in Iraq.)

We're probably not going to go the route of declaring war on our own puppet state, too hard to get Congress to go along with it. But, its really a win-win situation for Bush if he agreed to a time table. If he is right and the terrorists did lay down arms until after the date we set, then he's right and he can say "told you so," in a very presidential manner of course. And it could be spun as the Americans defeated the terrorists in Iraq, passed power on to the Iraqis, who then dropped the ball. The buck stops there, make the Iraqis the scapegoat if all goes wrong. So if he's oppose to a time table because the violence is going to stop until we pull out, then therefore if he knew the violence wouldn't stop, then he would agree to a time table. Quod erat demonstratum we could pull out gracefully with our heads held high as the country is continuing to fall apart, as the logic would dictate. Bush would have to agree to that.

Then we have the whole if we're not fighting the terrorists away then we'll be fighting them at home. But in Iraq we have Sunnis and Shites and Americans fighting each other. So, if we step out of the equation that will leave Sunnis and Shites fighting each other away. Therefore, if they're not fighting each other overseas they'll be fighting us at home. This means the last thing we want is the civil war to end in Iraq. They fighting themselves would mean they're not fighting us. If we do achieve a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq then the attention will turn back to us at home. So we should really pull out but define victory as the fighting continuing, keeping us safe at home, which is the only thing that really matters.

But Iran is controlled by Shites, so although it would be preferable for an indefinite civil war, if one side is to eventually triumph then we need that side to be the Sunnis, so to form a buffer state with Iran. And since Iran is a strong, totalitarian Shite state, we need a strong, totalitarian Sunni Iraq. Sadly, the perfect guy to be the counterpart to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, was executed. (Perhaps because Shites say our plan to back Saddam's bid for power, making our whole invasion of Iraq and dethronement of Saddam in vain.)

So, we have a couple of options. If it is true that the terrorists would just stop fighting until we leave if only we announced when we'd leave, then we can use that as an advantage. We announce a date to leave. Then peace breaks out in Iraq. Our casualties stop occurring, we can remove some of our troops, and spend less money the Iraq war while this date is approaching. Thus, peace means ostensibly victory, therefore we have attained victory. During this time Iraqis will get use to peace and prosperity, as to dry up the insurgents support later down the road. Iraq's government will have time to strengthen itself, prepare its army, etc. Then when we do pull out they'd be better prepared. But, why rush if there is peace, no casualties, and a skeleton army left basically on vacation? So we then announce we our postponing the withdrawal, and announce a new date. We'll just give the insurgents excuses so they won't be suspicious. The President forgot to purchase the plane tickets, our bad. You know how hard it is to book a flight anytime soon, especially with Jet Blue cancelling every weekend on us. You get the idea. So we indefinitely postpone our withdrawal, leaving us in a perpetual state of near victory conditions. We won't be able to pull all the troops out, but it will be like our bases in Korea, potentially very dangerous, but effectively not, and which we likewise never officially won nor lost.

To the Democrats I say this. Bush has said he opposes setting a time table because that's telling our enemies when we'll leave. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a time table, he's just not telling anyone so it doesn't get leaked out, you know how Washington is. If he told you all you'd just blurt it out to get the credit. Shame on you for opposing the President's secret time table by pursuing publicly the matter of a time table. Do you know how much the President would like to tell you what date he picked, but can't because he's doing what's best for the country? One day we're going to reach the date he set, and it will be on the evening news that we left Iraq that day. And we'll have avoided the whole problem of having the insurgents stop fighting temporarily, having continued fighting the whole time we're in Iraq without missing a beat. How will you feel then?

The other way we'd move leave is if we attain victory. So who is standing in the way of us leaving Iraq? The media. Everyday they report on how dire the situation is. If they'd only broadcast good news then America would think everything is going well, that a prosperous, peaceful, democratic Iraq existed. Then we would say we had attained victory and leave. But no, they just have to keep on talking about how bad everything is. Our troops could already be home if it wasn't for the media. George Bush wants victory before we leave. The Democrats want our troops home. If we'd just tell the American people that we have victory we could all be happy. (Besides maybe Iraqis.) A little white lie never hurt anyone, and could have gotten us out of Iraq before last year's midterm elections, saving us from the oppressive rule of our Democrat overlords.