...and I hope you'll excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor. Bush won big?
A wartime president has
never had so much trouble retaining his seat. In case you haven't been watching TV, it was a knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish. Throughout history, a sitting president in a war has won by a landslide in almost every case. Bush won by a slighly larger margin than predicted by polls, but he did not win big by
any stretch of the imagination. Yes, he won the popular and electoral votes, and this time the legitimacy of his victory is not in question, but without the advantages of incumbency and wartime presidency he would not have had a prayer.
I am slightly amused but mostly disappointed by the fact that you think the nation is better off because of our recent course of action. We are losing many lives and taking many times more. We're running ourselves deep into debt and manufacturing enemies around the world. Every day in tens of thousands of madrassas, children are learning that Americans and their allies are liars and murderers. They will be blowing themselves up in our faces for decades because of what we are doing right now, and the shortsighted military fervor that drives this war has only worsened the problem.
We're screwing ourselves. Hard. We will be paying for this mistake for the rest of our lives.
Jeff