November 1, 2004

My Vote.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jim @ 9:02 pm

My choice for the presidency will not surprise anyone who knows me, nor will it surprise just about anyone who stops by here.

I am voting for George W. Bush.

To me, the security of the nation is the overriding issue in this election, and Mr. Kerry’s twenty-year record in the Senate more than amply demonstrates that, despite his current persona of a terrorist hunter-killer, he is not the man I trust with the security of the country. Significantly, the people closest to the battle apparently overwhelmingly agree with this assessment.

Mr. Kerry promises to make us safer than we are today, while somehow ignoring that there has not been an attack on American soil since September 11, 2001. I believe that this is not the result of dumb luck on our part. Rather, it is the result of an aggressive effort to rout out, capture or kill those who would harm us. In that regard, seventy-five percent of al Qaeda’s leadership has been captured or killed, leaving Osama Bin Laden running from rat hole to rat hole with a camcorder.

I also have no doubt that we have been free of attacks for the last three years because of ongoing operations that often go unseen. Sometimes this is because the stories don’t make for ratings-grabbing television (e.g. disrupting terrorist financial networks), but more often because the operations are covert in nature and must remain so (running the gamut from identifying international and domestic terrorist cells to actually thwarting planned attacks). I am sure there are those who doubt that these activities are ongoing and/or successful, but I believe that such a view is naïve and is an insult to the counterintelligence professionals in our various civilian and military intelligence agencies.

Mr. Kerry promises real “leadership,” even though for the past twenty years he has never “led” anything. Despite his lack of executive experience, he promises to “build a stronger coalition,” but he has dismissed our current allies as having been “bribed and coerced.” Even France and Germany have made it clear that “President” Kerry cannot expect any help in Iraq.

Try as he might to dance away from his statement that actions taken in furtherance of America’s security must pass a “global test,” his record of an abiding fascination with the United Nations (mired in scandal though it may be) tells me that he is being less than candid when he says that America will never seek a permission slip from that organization or from any other country when it comes to protecting our national security.

On the domestic side of things, there are a few areas in which I do not believe that the President has done a very good job, and I will be among his critics in those areas should he be re-elected. However, none of those issues will matter if thousands more Americans die on American soil at the hands of Islamic terrorists. And I believe that the better man to prevent that from happening is President Bush.

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