An ethicist strips off Bush's moral veneer

[radfringe]

An ethicist strips off Bush's moral veneer
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/tom_brazaitis/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1074335519172181.xml
01/18/04

With the Democratic presidential nominating process starting at Monday's Iowa caucuses, the question being asked is, which of these nine candidates, if any, could beat President George W. Bush in November?

Wrong question.

In a presidential election with an incumbent running, the first question voters ask is whether the man who holds the job merits a second term. Only after that question is answered in the negative or with a "maybe not" does attention turn to the qualifications of the challenger.

Those of you who have made up your mind that Bush deserves four more years may skip the rest of this column. For those who are undecided, I have a recommendation: Put in an order for a new book by Peter Singer, due out in March, called, "The President of Good & Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush."

---snip---

"When I have told friends and colleagues that I am working on a book about 'Bush's ethics,' some of them quip that the phrase is an oxymoron, or that it must be a very short book," Singer writes in the introduction.

---snip---

Bush sold Congress and the American people on the idea that ousting Saddam Hussein was necessary because he harbored weapons of mass destruction that could be used against U.S. citizens. That claim turned out to be false.

Switching course, Bush stressed that getting rid of Saddam would liberate the Iraqi people from a vicious dictator who had killed tens of thousands of his own people.

Singer isn't buying. From what we now know, he says, "it appears that the Bush administration decided what action it wanted to take, and then selected and massaged the intelligence information to make it support that action."

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Good v. Evil. The danger of bi-polar reasoning.

(There's a joke in there -- wait for it....)

Moral of this story: Beware of those who limit your options to two choices. You've already made a mistake if you think that in all God's creation, there are only two to chose from and that both are mutually exclusive.

It's been Bush's strategy from the beginning. The Republicans wrap themselves in American icons (The flag and the crucifix) and then they claim, "You are either with us, or a'gin us. The first thing we must do is show them that they don't have a monopoly on patriotism. And their biggest weakness is there support of policies which result in outsouring. Outsourcing is hurting the American worker. It's the Republican legislature which has brought this on. Why don't we hammer that one away? (Of course, you need a Democrat who is free of sin in this arena. i.e. Not Lieberman.)