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Why
should Mukto-mona support the Kerry-Edwards ticket?
A.H.
Jaffor Ullah
This
November�s presidential election is no ordinary affair.
The election result will have a tremendous bearing on world�s
geo-politics.
That is precisely why Mukto-mona should take a strong stand on one
particular candidate who would lessen war-mongering posture taken by President
Bush.
Mukto-mona is a loose assembly of secularists and well-meaning folks
from South Asia and many other nations including America who want to promote
tolerance, rational thinking, and peace in this world of ours.
President Bush�s policy to dominate the world at all cost do not
quite fit with Mukto-mona�s vision for a just world.
Let
me enumerate here what are the things wrong with the Bush Administration:
- A
bunch of very rightists organization is now controlling Mr. Bush�s
party, the Republican Party.
Prominent among them is the Moral Majority or the Christian Rights
group controlled by such bigots as Jerry Falwell. Mr. Bush who considers
him as a born again Christian revels in the superiority of his religion
over others.
Immediately after 9-11 attack, you may remember that Bush invoked
Christianity and mentioned Crusade by name.
[How Mr. Kamran Mirza, Jamal Hasan, and Sitangshu Guha could
support Mr. Bush knowing full-well Bush�s religious stance baffles me!]
- Mr.
Bush unilaterally has gone to wage a war against a sovereign nation
without establishing a linkage between Iraq and global terrorism.
It is crystal clear now that Iraq had neither �Weapons of Mass
Destruction� (WMD) nor any connection to Osama bin Laden�s terrorist
organization, al-Qaeda.
Bush had other motives for going to war against Iraq.
These motives are now coming out in the media one-by-one.
Bush comes from a family that had made a fortune in oil
explorations.
The VP, Dick �iron-face� Cheney, was the CEO of Halliburton, an
energy exploration company.
Naturally, the Bush-Cheney duo was salivating knowing how much oil
is there in post-war Iraq.
Besides, Cheney�s company, Halliburton, was given a no-bid
contract to do reconstruction work in Iraq that amounts to about 6-7
billion dollar.
Now a woman who worked in the civilian part of the Pentagon had
blown the whistle and the FBI is now investigating whether any influence
peddling by the VP�s office or any member of the administration has led
to the award of such big award to Halliburton.
- Bush�s
domestic policy is in shamble, to put it in milder form.
His tax policy favors the very rich while it burdens the poor.
There are myriad of issues in the domestic front, which are not
pro-growth.
No wonder that the stock market is in the doldrums and the market
indices are trading in a narrow range.
Many high-paying jobs were eliminated altogether.
The corporations are outsourcing jobs to countries where labor is
cheap.
Also, in the last 50-60 years more jobs were eliminated under Bush
than any other president.
But Bush�s people very cleverly chose a time frame when number of
people working in America was the lowest to the present time; thereby they
paint a rosy scenario about job growth.
They keep saying, �The economy is turning corner.�
Why should the voters fall for such sweet talk?
When Bush�s policy had wrecked a sound economy propelled by
technology development under President Clinton, what are the chances that
the economy would turn up and go north?
Let us face the fact that Bush is not a visionary leader.
The Bush Administration frittered away the surplus that Clinton
Administration had garnered in eight years (1992-2000).
The war in Iraq is costing America over 200 billion dollars but the
war-torn nation is in far worse shape than before.
We should ask � is the cost of Saddam�s ouster should be so
great?
In stumps, Bush is saying over and over that our world is a lot
safer now without Saddam to justify his unilateral war against Saddam.
However, seldom does he speak of all the killings and misery the
war has imposed on Iraqi people.
To my knowledge, Iraqi people were not causing any problem to their
neighbors.
Why then the war was imposed on them?
[Could Mr. Sitangshu Guha, Kamran Mirza, or Mr. Jamal Hasan who is
soft peddling Bush�s candidacy these days answer this please?]
- The
Bush Administration has in it a whole bunch of hawks such as Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and many more like them.
The world will not be safer as long as this bunch of sworn hawks is
manning the Pentagon. Mr. Bush aids and supports them. No
wonder when Bush took office in the end of January 2001, Wolfowitz, and
the gang in Pentagon worked out a blueprint for Iraq invasion right away.
- The
Bush Administration had alienated America�s trusted allies in the Europe
barring Great Britain.
This alliance needs to be re-united.
Mr. Bush is also dividing Americans into two camps.
At this uncertain time, it is not a good idea to polarize the
Americans into two camps.
Many Americans see Mr. Bush as a failed president.
More people in America have opined that the nation is headed in the
wrong direction.
Therefore, the U.S. needs a new beginning with a change in
leadership.
Mr. Kerry has spoken about this new beginning in his stumps.
A
postscript: This scribe is not into augury. Three days before the
election The Zogby International, the pollster, who correctly had predicted
Gore�s performance three days before the election in Nov 2000 election, came
out with a poll result just today. Nationwide, Kerry is polling 48% and
Bush is 47%. We know that there is a +/- 3% standard error but 3% voters
are still undecided. Conventional wisdom says that the bulk of undecided
voters will go for the challenger, which means Kerry probably will come out as
the winner on Tuesday (November 2, 2004) election. But there is no final
word in any election until all the votes are counted. Therefore, we have
to wait until November 3 to know the winner in the U.S. presidential race.
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A.H. Jaffor Ullah writes from New Orleans.
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