> And the reason I should vote for him is?
>
> Once an ABB-er, but now wondering,
(Sigh.)
Because Bush's people get up in the morning literally every day and think non-stop about how they're going to slit our throats. Of COURSE Kerry is an opportunist and a "flip-flopper" -- in comparison to Bush, that makes him positively wonderful. Kerry and his crew are at least human beings to be reasoned with, and are responsive to some pressure. Bush's people see the class struggle as the deadly-serious war that it is.
It is folly for leftists to base their real-world electoral tactics on the foreign policy positions of candidates when the winner is bound to be a ruling-class candidate AND we have not yet built the kind of crisis that splits the ruling class over foreign policy -- let alone some pre-revolutionary situation where people are abandoning the war effort by the millions.
Here's how it works: the anti-war movement had the impact it did before the war because, as a massive WORLDWIDE movement that had the sympathy even of conservative governments like the French and Russians, it split the US ruling class. Probably a majority of capitalists in the US were skeptical of or even opposed to entering the war, and found the people around Bush to be ideologically dangerous adventurists. Once troops were committed, however, the whole issue of "national prestige" -- read, the "step out of line, and we'll wack you" implied intimidation of imperialism itself -- was on the line, which is why people like Dean (who was opposed to entry into the war) ended up saying, "Now that we're there, we have to stay." Similarly, Kerry agrees with Bush on Israel because there's a longstanding bipartisan consensus on support for Israel. Neither the occupation of Iraq nor the "special relationship" with Israel will end until both resistance from the people on the ground and burgeoning opposition here causes a section of capital to conclude that it is in their best interests to cut their losses rather than risk even greater ideological damage to "national prestige."
Meanwhile, in the real world, you won't build the kind of movement needed to stop imperialism as long as the working class is under relentless attack, and its white sector in particular is more and more susceptible to bigoted appeals than to organizing for greater working-class solidarity to defend what's left of working-class gains in this country, not to mention abroad. To create the necessary breathing space for any such effective movement to develop, our worst enemies MUST be defeated. Their replacements will be far from adequate from our point of view, and on the maintenance of imperialism they will be barely distinguishable from our worst enemies, differing only on tactical points. But it seems to me that anyone who's surprised by this has been an unstable ally all along.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!