It's Time for Bush to Go

Every generation in American History has had at least one presidential election in which it truly matters which candidate wins. Some elections that come to mind are Jefferson's in 1800, which marked the advent of the Jeffersonian Revolution; Lincoln's in 1860, which prompted Southern secession; Rutherford Hayes's in 1876, which ended Reconstruction; and FDR's in 1932, which brought the beginning of the end of the Depression. There is no election in recent memory and perhaps will be none in the near future that will have as much importance in affecting the world as will the election of 2004. For our generation, this is the vote that's going to count in the long run. Now more than ever is the time to care.

After a grueling primary schedule, John Kerry seems to have emerged as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. You may not like him as a person or as a candidate, but that should not matter. There is no more important task for our generation than the unseating of George W. Bush.

The first issue on the list of long-range dangers of a second Bush term is the scariest one. Due to outside circumstances, whoever is president for the next four years will have the privilege of nominating three, perhaps even four, justices for the Supreme Court. In his first four years as president, Bush has appointed judges to lower courts with the following beliefs: opposition to interracial marriages (Charles Pickering); opposition to abortions, even in the case of rape (Leon Holmes); and even judges who have argued to shoot down a Violence Against Women Act (William Pryor and Jeffrey Sutton). No doubt, a Democratic president will seek judges who have social views more similar to those of the mainstream of America.

Next on the list of grievances is the Iraq War. In the Oval Office, Bush proudly displays a bust of his hero, Dwight Eisenhower. In 1956, when President Eisenhower was faced with the challenge of Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and his undeniable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, Ike, who like Kerry knew firsthand what war is about, opposed unilateral or even bilateral invasion of a foreign land. He told the British that if they swept into Egypt to oust Nasser, the action would lead to a catastrophic rise in Anti-British sentiment. Ike is also famous for his denunciation of the "Military-Industrial Complex."

Dick Cheney, Lt. General Jay Garner, Condoleezza Rice, and Richard Perle are four people who have been instrumental in urging Bush to war. They also all have corporate connections with vested interests in the Iraq War.

Moreover, George W. Bush led this nation to war on information that was faulty at best. He said there was "no doubt" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. With David Kay's "We were all wrong" testimony to Congress, that clearly was not the case. Now, hundreds of people have died to dethrone one man, whose power was declining anyway. It cannot merely be the fault of intelligence. The fault has to lie with Bush. He is the president, and the buck stops there.

The permanence of a doctrine of preemption will change geopolitics forever, giving any nation legitimate precedent to start a war for any reason at any time they feel like it, no matter what the UN or the world at large says. An installed Democrat will revoke preemption as a policy and reinstate the United States in the worldwide community of nations. A democrat will also defer to the United Nations to get this country out of the Iraqi quagmire.

Since taking office, Bush has taken such a hard line with the environment that the consequences could ripple for generations to come. In fact, the Academy of Sciences, a nonpartisan group, has said that should the proposed Bush rollbacks on environmental regulations come to fruition, the end result will be 30,000 premature American deaths per year. When choosing his Secretary for Energy in 2000, Bush hired Spencer Abraham, who as a senator tried on three occasions to eliminate the very position he now holds.

Bush's administration has avoided dealing with global warming trends by withdrawing from the international Kyoto Accords, which were monumental in dealing with the issue. Ithas allowed toxins like arsenic to be unregulated in our water, and has rolled back Clean Air Regulations. Environmental observers assert these moves have come as a wave of deference to Bush's corporate special interests, while a democratic alternative will surely take our world in another direction.

It is easy to be taken in by W's folksiness and "Ordinary Joe" appeal. But behind the façade is a man whose campaign is so determined to prevail in its extremist agenda that they even released pamphlets in the 2000 South Carolina primary questioning John McCain's patriotism for having adopted an African American. (The child, by the way, is from Bangladesh.)

As radical as the above actions of George W. Bush might be, these policies might be just the start of things to come. His first four years in office came during a time when he had to worry about being reelected. Imagine how much further he and his passionate cohorts will go should they be given an unchecked second term. Please join the fight to prevent that from happening. The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.