Reaction to Vice Presidential Debate

No clear “winner” in this debate. One can see how Cheney will appeal to those who already believe in him, or to those who are fearful of every shadow. Edwards will appeal to those that already wanted change, and for the undecided, he probably did himself a favour by avoiding being labelled Dan Quayle II.

The Bush/Cheney campaign, indeed their entire presidency post-9/11, has used fear as their principal campaign weapon. Make no mistake about it, the campaign for 2004 started on September 12, 2001.

This isn’t a cynical or heartless comment on my part. The Bush administration contains the most right wing, aggressively neoconservative inner circle of any administration in history. They are telling the absolute truth when they say they want to change things – folks like Pearle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld want to use force or whatever means to fundamentally change all middle east countries to democracies.

Its a worthy aspiration to want to see democracy spread throughout the world, but in my opinion it is wrong-headed to believe that it can be done through the use of force by the US acting pre-emptively.