>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >John Kerry is likely to be the next POTUS.
>
>Who knows? Maybe so, and maybe by 5 points. But who knows?
If Bush manages to get elected, I predict that we will be hearing precisely the same arguments in 2008, to the effect that you have to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate because "you have to punish him [Bush], and the best way to punish him is to remove him from office" and "[t]here's no third party."
The question is what the Kerry 2004 supporters will be saying in 2008 if Kerry gets elected.
> >Will Mr. Tariq Ali be advocating a vote for the Republican
> >presidential candidate in 2008, on the grounds that "you have to
>>punish him, and the best way to punish him is to remove him from
>>office" and "[t] here's no third party"?
>
>I can't speak for Tariq, but how would anyone know what to do four
>years from now?
Kerry is committed to continuing the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest news is that "[d]eaths of Iraqis have soared to 100,000 above normal since the Iraq war mainly due violence and many of the victims have been women and children, public health experts from the United States said" ("100,000 Excess Iraqi Deaths Since War-Study," October 28, 2004, <http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6647161>). By election day in 2008, therefore, more than 250,000 Iraqis, and more than 2778 US soldiers (based on the fact that 1111 US soldiers died in 590 days since the beginning of the invasion at <http://icasualties.org/oif/>), will probably have died under the Kerry regime. Will Tariq Ali be advocating a vote for the Republican presidential candidate to punish Kerry for the deaths of Iraqis and US soldiers (among other crimes), because the Green Party will not likely make such a great leap forward between now and then as to receive the polling results that show the Green, Democratic, and Republican presidential candidates in neck-to-neck competition and therefore the best candidate to remove Kerry from office in 2008 will be the Republican candidate, based on Ali's logic in 2004. Or will Ali be "seriously advocating that [Kerry] should stay in power" in 2008?
>He also said that if Kerry is inaugrated on Jan 20, it should be
>greeted with the largest antiwar demo in U.S. history. I agree with
>that too.
I agree that it should be, but you and I, as well as Ali, know that it won't be, realistically. It's only <http://www.internationalanswer.org/> that has been seriously mobilizing for it (to ASWER's credit, its volunteers were already handing out Inauguration Protest flyers at the August 29th anti-Bush/RNC march organized by United for Peace and Justice). It is doubtful that it will be much larger than the Million Worker March. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>