Election Eve - Scarier Than Halloween?

When I got home from work today I spent a good half-hour playing with my younger daughter, who is just a few days shy of 23 months. Her favorite activities all involve vigorous physical play, wrestling, jumping, diving onto the sofa, etc. - she already has the makings of a real athlete and will undoubtedly follow that path as she grows older. She is of course quite oblivious to the war that has been raging in Iraq since shortly after she was born and knows nothing of the election campaign that has filled the headlines and airwaves for so many months.

As it happens, our birthdays are only five days apart. When I was her age, it was October of 1966, U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were quickly approaching 385,000, and there was no end to the war in sight. A few months later, President Lyndon Johnson went before Congress and spoke in terms that are strangely - or perhaps not so strangely - familiar:

"I think I reveal no secret when I tell you that we are dealing with a stubborn adversary who is committed to the use of force and terror to settle political questions.

I wish I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony. For the end is not yet. I cannot promise you that it will come this year - or come next year. Our adversary still believes, I think, tonight, that he can go on fighting longer than we can, and longer than we and our allies will be prepared to stand up and resist."

Source: "President Lyndon B. Johnson's Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 10, 1967," Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1967. Volume I, entry 3, pp. 2-14. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1968.

Fueled by ideology and the President's own vain ambitions, Johnson's war increasingly took on a genocidal cast, and the country turned - ever so slowly - against it. In the first instance, that growing opposition cost Johnson his career. His successor, Richard Nixon, persisted in a reckless policy to "win" the war even as organized citizen action against such a policy continued to grow larger, eventually helping to destroy his presidency as well.

My hostility to Bush's insane war in Iraq and his utter contempt for democracy at home is combined with a genuine faith in the ability of ordinary people to recognize Bush's policies for what they are and to take action against them. Tomorrow's election presents our citizens with an opportunity to remove Bush from office and thereby send a clear message to his successor that the war must end. The election is nothing more or less than a referendum on the Bush presidency, and in its countless failures there seems to be no doubt about the outcome.

I find it astonishing that on the eve of the election there could be any question regarding the certainty of Bush's defeat...until I recall the unattractive record of his challenger and realize that hope must find some place to resonate and to be expressed, just like fire needs oxygen. But Kerry is suffocating that wildfire. An excellent analysis by Alexander Cockburn in the current New Left Review makes clear the dismal state of Democratic Party politics as embodied by the record of its standard-bearer. If, as Kerry insists, he will pursue a more vigorous and effective "war on terror," what will that mean for us and for the people of Iraq and elsewhere?

In the final analysis, I will cast my vote against Bush tomorrow and say "No!" to four more years or his policies. The election offers the possibility of removing Bush from power without the spilling of blood at home. But the war continues, and with it opposition must continue to grow, or we will become ever more numb to the consequences of empire in the 21st century.