Influence my vote!

I do not know who I will vote for tomorrow. You can influence my vote, possibly very easily. What you have to do is mentioned at the end of this piece.

I had been sure I would vote for Bush, even though I disagree with most of his domestic agenda. Because I agreed with going to war with the Hussein regime, and I thought that was more important than the domestic issues. (And in fact I still think it is.)

But lately, there have been so many signs that Bush simply hasn't put enough troops in place to do the job that needs to be done, I have been sympathetic to arguments that he isn't competent to lead the war. In an election battle between the incompetent and the incoherent, it is possible that I may be persuaded to prefer the incoherent.

So, on occasion I have found myself leaning towards voting for Kerry. My thinking has been: Kerry says he won't put more troops into Iraq, although it needs them, but the other hand, while Bush presents himself as the macho leader who will do whatever it takes, he's not putting more troops in either. In other words, Bush beats his chest more, but in the end, it's hard to see a practical difference between his and Kerry's policies for winning the war in Iraq.

But. There is one difference between the candidates that is so large that, to my way of thinking, it must sweep away all the others.

To me, it seems pretty obvious that technology is soon going to be providing the world with WMD's that are far harder to stop than have ever existed before. A guy carrying a suitcase into New York City containing a biological weapon (as just one of many possible examples of an attack modality) will before too long have the potential to kill millions of people.

In the old days, there was Mutually Assured Destruction to avoid millions of deaths. The Russians couldn't kill millions of us with their missiles without expecting us to kill millions of them with ours. But not only would the terrorist carrying that briefcase not be deterred by the thought of his own death -- he would actually desire it so that he could achieve the glories of martyrdom. And we wouldn't necessarily have any way of putting return address on the attack; there will not necessarily be a particular country that we can hold accountable; so he wouldn't even necessarily have cause to be concerned for the lives and comfort of his friends and family.

We're in a new world, folks, or soon will be.

The evidence that I see is that a) Bush understands this, and b) Kerry does not.

Kerry seems to think that managing terrorists is a matter of law enforcement -- that it can be kept to manageable levels, like prostitution:

‘’We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,'’ Kerry said. ‘’As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.'’

But that analogy is not only fundamentally flawed -- it is deeply, and extremely dangerously, stupid. A prostitute isn't going to cause millions of innocent children and adults to die horribly. A single terrorist with the right weapons will. In other words, keeping prostitution down to a certain level may be acceptable, but to have only 10,000, or 1,000, or 100, or 10 terrorists, or 1 terrorist, willing and able to destroy a major U.S. city is not acceptable. The two phenomena Kerry compares are simply not comparable. And Kerry's error is not simply an academic question. It's one with deadly consequences on the greatest imaginable scale.

It takes some effort and some some willed acts of imagination to see this. If all a person pays attention to in the news is the latest trevails of Martha Stewart, or even the latest swings in unemployment rates, that person will not necessarily have the means to be aware of this risk. Even if a person pays a lot of attention to news about Osama bin Laden and Iraq, if one still doesn't take the time to conduct "thought-experiments" about what would happen if technological and religious/political trends progress along certain highly likely lines, this very grave, very real threat probably won't appear as more than a faint shadow. But if one does take the time, it seems clear that this is a situation that we will eventually have to deal with, one way or another (that is, after millions of possibly-preventable deaths of innocent civilians, or before).

I see no evidence whatsoever that Kerry takes that time. I don't think it's a matter of IQ, or of his degree of caring about people. I think it's a matter of commitment to making the effort to think things through to their logical conclusion. (Although, frankly, I must admit I am tempted to suspect it is not a complete coincidence that Kerry's IQ is apparently lower than Bush's, if one compares their publicly available test results.)

There is a lot of reason to believe, at least post-9/11, that Bush understands the magnitude of the threat. It's that magnitude that justifies such things as the invasion of Iraq, to root out a leader who supported terrorism by literally paying the families of suicide bombers, and who had the capability and intent to build weapons of mass destruction. (The fact that he temporarily abandoned such efforts with hundreds of thousands of our troops on his border did not change his intent or long-term capabilities, even according to the reports that denounce the intelligence failures regarding WMD's in Iraq). And in response to the questions, "What about North Korea? What about Iran?" I respond: does the fact that you can't immediately solve every problem now mean you shouldn't start by addressing the ones you can? But of course that's an area which could be the subject of many books of discussion and analysis, and more relevantly, my point here is not the Bush's strategy is perfect, but that at least he recognizes the problem well enough to actually have a strategy.

Kerry simply doesn't get it, as far as I can tell. And in this day and age, I think it is more risky to have someone running the show who simply doesn't have a clue about our gravest threat, than it is to have someone who is showing real evidence of not having the competence to manage that threat well. At least someone who understands a threat has the opportunity to learn from his failures and do better. That's no guarantee that he will, of course. If I knew Bush would actively and aggressively try to learn from the mistakes of the last few years, I'd have much less hesitation in voting for him. But one who doesn't take a threat seriously in the first place is extremely unlikely to succeed at making real headway against it -- especially when doing so demands real sacrifices, as it does in this case.

So... the thing that can convince me to vote for Kerry would be links to news items that show that I am wrong -- that not only does Kerry understand the threat, but that it's his #1 concern when he thinks about the future of the world -- or at least among his top two or three. Note that such links would not only have him saying he feels that way, but the quotes would have to somehow convince me that that's how he "really" feels, and that I should therefore disregard the quote about terrorism-as-prostitution referred to above.

Note to those who are voting against Bush due to his ludicrous FMA or any one of a number of other issues that would determine my vote in most past elections: Yes, I understand and agree with you. The religiously-motivated ban on government supported stem-cell research beyond some inadequate pre-existing lines... etc., etc. I agree with you that Bush is wrong on those issues. He is far too influenced by fundamentalist Christian beliefs when it comes to those things. But I don't want my kids to die prematurely because we didn't open our eyes to the graver threat.

Further note: if you don't know why Iraq is a key to this struggle, and imagine that it is simply a war over oil or to enrich Halliburton, you really need to do some studying, in my opinion. If you would like to find a good source for the pro-war argument, I strongly suggest you read Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism. Berman is a liberal, so if you're a liberal too, you'll be in good hands reading it.

Update written on Election Day: No one has written in to influence my vote, so...

Update to the above update... actually there was one very rich response -- see the comments section. But my spam filter ate TypePad's notification email until it was too late... but it wasn't what was needed to change my vote anyway. I'll comment in the comments section when I get a chance.

Comments

[Justin]

Hi Gary!

Taking the War on Terror as the #1 priority, I would narrow it down to the following.

There's a lot of evidence that Bush invaded Iraq based on an ideological platform, namely that of the neo-cons. I'm convinced of this at least, based on what I've read. There's also a lot of evidence that the neo-cons have sidetracked existing counter-terrorism schemes by the CIA, FBI, et al in favour of their own homegrown ideas, even where the existing schemes were effective.

I am also convinced that Bin Laden escaped due to their keenness to invade Iraq, even if it meant leaving Afghanistan unpoliced by competent troops. Killing or arresting OBL would have been a massive coup in the WoT, and as it stands, his presence as a figurehead at large strengthens his side.

Next, it strongly appears that Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and White House policy leaned towards the use of torture, internment, and widespread application of very harsh tactics across civilian populations, even where it seemed likely there would be a high rate of false positives. The results are the Abu Ghraib scandal, and people who know, suggest that that's only the start of it. In my experience as a citizen of Ireland who knows the history of his country ;), I can tell you that harsh tactics breeds resentment and is the most effective way for terrorist organisations to recruit. I saw this during the Hunger Strikes with my own eyes, and the older generation witnessed it post Bloody Sunday. But that's how the Bush team seem to intend to carry out the WoT. I am certain it will be a disaster.

Next, on the 'nuisance' point -- I actually agree with Kerry. in my opinion, there will always be lone crazies, the Unabombers etc., who want to explode bombs in any given capital. You can never defeat terrorism 100%. But what you CAN do is reduce a thousands-strong terrorist network to a tiny pool of 10 lone crazies, or similar, who cannot act -- and that's what I picked up from Kerry's comment. And you do that by removing their support network. You say that a sole terrorist could detonate a dirty bomb. This is true, but a sole terrorist has a much, much lower probability of effectively getting to that stage; they have to (a) find the contacts who can sell them the equipment they need, (b) ensure those contacts aren't CIA guys running a sting, (c) assemble a device, (d) get it into the country... etc. All these things take money, fake documentation, experts in whatever tech is being used, etc. Terrorism requires a support base for all this.

Right now, if the IRA history is anything to go by, al-Qaeda members are probably viewed as heroes by a subset of their own friends and family. They probably get donations of money to finance their terrorism. That has to be dealt with. They need to be viewed as crazies, extremists, even by their own friends and family; ostracised. Removing their support base emasculates their efforts, until eventually they're lone crazies, and their community betrays them and turns them in for rewards, or exiles them as a danger to their community.

Again, this is something I've seen in Ireland, where support for the Provisional IRA dwindled after Thatcher's regime lost power, and a more enlightened approach to Northern Ireland (as a whole) appeared during the 90's; until by now the remaining active terrorists are a tiny group of less than a hundred people, beset by surveillance, internal betrayals, schisms, and without equipment and incapable of attack.

Finally, an international police force in Iraq. This would mean that there are more forces in Iraq, and I'm sure would be more acceptable to the Iraqi people than the current occupation primarily by US forces. I'm confident Kerry will bring in the U.N. This will involve compromises by the US, e.g. in opening up the reconstruction contracts or similar, but it's insane to think otherwise; the US can't reasonably say "we want your help, but we won't give you anything in return".

phew! that was long. I'm not here for a discussion, just listing out my own thoughts on the primary points that I believe things could improve under Kerry, as requested. These are what I believe to be true, and I hope it has some effect ;)

--j.

[Justin]

'But my spam filter ate TypePad's notification email until it was too late...'

ha, damn those spam filters! ;)