An idea that I've encountered (most recently in an email conversation with Trakker, but other times as well) in response to my stance against voting is that if only Al Gore had won in 2000, we never would have invaded Iraq. And somehow this proves that voting, and voting for Democrats specifically, is a very important obligation. I don't get the logic, but I don't think logic is really the point with this argument. Nevertheless I'll respond to it.
First of all, Al Gore did win the election in 2000 and the votes didn't matter because the Supreme Court said the son of the guy who gave them their job was the winner. And, as I've mentioned before, Al Gore in his role as Senate President blocked the attempts of a few Democrats from the House of Representatives to contest the election. So the votes didn't matter, and even the guy who won the election agreed that the votes didn't matter.
But more to the heart of it, was there any reason in fall of 2000 to think Gore would advance a less destructive foreign policy than Bush? Specifically in regards to Iraq, Gore had just been part of 8 years of the Clinton regime that imposed brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people. When it was pointed out to Secretary of State Madeline Albright that these sanctions caused the death of over half a million Iraqi children, her response was "we think the price is worth it." I think it is reasonable to assume that "we" includes Gore, and as far as I know Gore never spoke against those sanctions as a candidate.
So Al Gore was part of an administration willing to kill over 500,000 children on the theory that starving the Iraqi population would cause them to overthrow Saddam and enhance US access to Middle East oil. But at the time of the 2000 election, even if everyone could have magically known that a group of fanatical religious fundamentalists with no connection to Iraq would fly planes into U.S. buildings, we were supposed to be quite certain that Gore would be less inclined than Bush to respond by killing more Iraqis in an effort to overthrown Saddam. Decisions must be judged by the expected outcomes at the time of the decision, and I don't see any way that it would have been possible to forecast the Iraq outcome.
And so now here were are, worrying about the 2008 election and how McCain will be more of a disaster than Obama for some reason or another. And who is the headliner of Obama's national security advisory group? Madeline "worth it" Albright. As far as I can tell, the decision available to voters is between Republicans, who drop bombs on brown folks, and Democrats, who prefer to starve them to death.
2 comments:
Gore lost the election in 2000 because of the stupid electoral college that should have been eliminated years ago but hasn't because the American people haven't demanded it. Gore won by more than a half million votes so it never should have come down to hanging chads and the SCOTUS. We the people are to blame.
And why would any same person believe Al Gore would advance a less destructive foreign policy that Bush. You point to his being part of the Clinton regime that agreed with the harsh U.N. economic sanctions. The difference between Clinton/Gore and Bush is obvious: Clinton/Gore relied on the U.N. to deal with Saddam, Bush invaded!
Weren't you just going on and on about how wonderful and genius the Constitution is? Now you don't like electoral college?
I'm pretty sure that the way the UN shit went down was the US rammed the sanctions through and then the rest of the UN meekly went along. And we were the ones carrying out the bombing campaigns, right? So this big important distinction you're making is that Gore would have gotten international approval for his terrorist crimes, but Bush didn't bother?
Post a Comment