Why Mitt Romney Should Not Be President

I normally do not make it a habit of coming out against a candidate, I have from time to time brought to light a candidate’s inconsistencies or outright lies but rarely have I made the case against a candidate. This will only be the second such case, the first was Rudy Giuliani because he is running on a misleading and often times false set of circumstances concerning 9/11 and his role in the Bernie Kerik fiasco. In the case of Mitt Romney I am willing to once again demonstrate a basic character flaw which is so entrenched in my opinion it should disqualify him from being elected President.

The deadly character flaw that Mitt Romney suffers from is a lack of courage to lead. America is at a crossroad and the last thing we need is a President without courage and leadership, because the direction and many of the steps we will need to take are not going to be popular and will not be consensus builders. For most of Mr. Romney’s adult life he has avoided the courage of leadership, eventhough he has been in leadership positions. It is one thing to be in charge, it is far different thing to be a leader. Someone in charge merely puts into place the positions and ideas of others, rarely venturing out of the box to express or enact any real change. Our country is in desperate need for real change, not someone who has made a life following and maintaining the status quo.

Civil rights became an even more insistent issue, when boycotts and violent protests over the university’s virtually all-white sports teams broke out at away games. The Mormon Church at the time excluded blacks from full membership, considering them spiritually unfit as results of a biblical curse on the descendants of Noah’s son Ham. (During their training, a fellow missionary of Mr. Romney took notes that read: “All men were created equal — No,” followed by “Sons of Ham. ”)

A handful of students and prominent Mormons — including the Arizona congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother Stewart, then secretary of the interior — called for an end to the doctrine. Some Mormons hoped the pressure would persuade the church to abandon its exclusion of blacks, just as it had stopped endorsing polygamy.

Mitt Romney had walked in civil rights marches with his father and said he shared his concern for racial equality. But neither publicly questioned the church’s teachings.[1]

During the earth-shattering struggles of his time, Mr. Romney repeatedly chose to remain on the sidelines while others took the lead and now he wants us to believe that he is a leader. Where was your leadership Mr. Romney when the country was going through the previous struggles that defined a nation and a generation? An example would be the exclusion of blacks from his Church, Mr. Romney would have us believe that he was against it, yet nowhere publically did he speak out against it, even though being the son of one of the most prominent Mormons in the country he had a platform to do so. But Mr. Romney chose to play it safe and go with flow supposedly secretly wanting the Church to change its doctrine of exclusion.

In this article that I cited Mr. Romney states that how things are done in his church is by God’s intervention, well that’s all fine and good Mr. Romney but you might consider when your “Church” violates a commanding principal of God to maybe join another church? If my church begins to teach the doctrine that women are not spiritually fit to become members it is the time that I as a member must make a decision, to follow God or to follow my church. In this case I am not given the choice of doing nothing, because doing nothing is a choice.

Most of the missionaries, though, were also relieved that their service meant a draft deferment. “I am sorry, but no one was excited to go and get killed in Vietnam,” Mr. Hansen said, acknowledging, “In hindsight, it is easy to be for the war when you don’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.”

Mr. Romney, though, said that he sometimes had wished he were in Vietnam instead of France. “There were surely times on my mission when I was having a particularly difficult time accomplishing very little when I would have longed for the chance to be serving in the military,” he said in an interview, “but that was not to be.”

While many Mormons — and eventually, some of his fellow missionaries — enlisted, Mr. Romney got a student deferment after returning from France. When the draft lottery was introduced in December 1969, he drew a high enough number — 300 — that he would never be called up.[2]

The other issue where Mr. Romney again showed a lack of courage was the question of the war in Vietnam. I’m sorry but I just have to ask; besides John McCain was there any Republican politician that went to defend the country they now hope to lead? So the best the Republicans can offer the country is another long list of chickenhawks, defenders of the war only because they or their ilk will never have to fight in it. What a sad state of affairs for our country. Mr. Romney not only chose to take a deferment, he again uses the disingenuous response of I really wanted to go, but. Mr. Romney if you really wanted to go there would have been nothing to stop you. Take for instances the former professional football player Pat Tillman, he really wanted to go and he went. He left all the comforts and privilege and chose to stand up for what he believed in. It eventually cost him his life, so don’t disgrace the memories of all those who did choose to go and fight with that weak kneed answer.

Mr. Romney has never shown the strength and courage of his convictions, even now on the campaign trail he has stood for something different from when he was a governor. Can our country afford another President who says one thing and does another; I for one do not think so. Courage is not something you get from your relatives, either you have it or you don’t and Mr. Romney does not seem to have it. If he does he has not shown it, which in my opinion makes him not qualified to be President.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/politics/15romney.html?pagewanted=3&hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/politics/15romney.html?pagewanted=3&hp

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Peace Begins With Me

I recently began to wonder if so many Americans are against the war, why a larger peace movement isn’t sweeping this nation. I guess after the Vietnam experience I am somewhat spoiled by what the power of the people can do. I began thinking about the differences between then and now and I was able to come up with a few. The first is that during Vietnam there was never a direct assault against America. There was that whole Tonkin Gulf incident, but that again was over there. The times were different; there was more of an activist spirit then. There was so much that seemed wrong with America and the government. But in the end I finally settled on something that has been troubling me for a long time.

I believe there will be no peace in Iraq, Iran, or anyplace else in the world from us or for us. The problem is not the terrorist threat, the Bush administrations false justifications for war, or our fascists’ tendencies. No, the answer is much deeper and therefore much more difficult to express. The answer in my opinion is that we (Americans) are not at peace with ourselves. We do not understand peace and in some ways I think it frightens us. The peace that I am speaking of is the internal peace that allows one to sit quietly and be ok being who the person is. Too many of us despise peace; we mistake it for boredom and try to quench it with activity or mindless entertainment. We constantly bombard it with noise and images, anything to make it go away. We are not a peaceful nation right now.

We are at war with ourselves. We are at war with our children, our neighbors, and each other. For months I have watched the blogosphere explode into a war zone of competing ideas, philosophies, and belief systems. These conflicts in and of themselves are a normal part of give and take in a democracy, but what is transpiring is a viciousness that is not. Simple misunderstandings are elevated to the level of personal vendettas. There has developed a gang mentality where groups descend down on anyone who has the gall to question their interpretation of the facts.

How can we expect to have peace in the world, in our homes, or anywhere else if we do not have peace within ourselves? Peace is not some ideal that we are able to give and take like so much merchandise, it is an internal calm that permeates one’s life and becomes that life. I heard that the Dalai Lama was visiting and when asked what he wanted most it was peace. Many believed it to mean in Tibet or in the world in general, but what he really means is this.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.[1]

I think the attacks on 9/11 opened a fissure within our nation and within ourselves. For many it was the first time they had been confronted in such a catastrophic way with those who don’t like America much. For many we were torn between trying to understand why and wanting to extract revenge. I think to this day we are still conflicted by the attack and our response to it. Would it have been more palpable had the war and occupation of Iraq gone better? Yes, but would that have removed the illegitimacy of it? The evidence of this is the relative ease that this country was led into war. Oh yeah, we complain now of how we were tricked, but what I know about being tricked is that no one can trick me if I don’t want to be tricked.

The thing I remember about the Vietnam era was that despite our many differences, there was an unnatural peace that permeated the movement. It’s hard to describe to anyone who was not there or a part of it, but inside we knew that our cause was just and it gave us a peace. Even though there was smoke and tear gas all around and cops with clubs and guns, there was peace. It was also in our civil rights movement. Our purpose gave us peace.

In today’s hurry up, got to do more world, it seems strange to hear these things I’m sure, but it was there and today it is not there. I shouldn’t say it is not there, it isn’t there in sufficient enough strength to overcome the forces of conflict that afflict us all. I suggest we all take a moment to search inside ourselves and see what conflicts we are fighting. You will find them in the silence of your mind and in the quiet of your heart, begin to resolve and make peace with them. We must begin to turn down the noise within us and choose peace.

I know for me I had a very difficult time coming back to peace. It was difficult learning how to once again accept peace. For some reason my nature preferred conflict to peace, activity to rest. I believe as more and more of us find our own peace we will be able to bring peace to the world. It is impossible for someone in conflict with themselves to give out peace. Let us begin to find peace and then allow that peace to flow out from us to the world. Remember hearing and believing all these things about peace, where did they go? We allowed them to be taken from us by the world. The world of commerce, the world of busyness, the world of conflict has stolen these things from us and it is time we took them back.

Peace, yes it begins with me and with you. If you want a peaceful world, learn to live in peace with yourself.

[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dalai_lama.html

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Total Recall

At the VFW convention, Mr. Bush proved once again why reading and studying is overrated. In a desperate attempt to build support for his Iraq War policy in front of a friendly crowd, Mr. Bush drew comparisons between the Iraq War and other wars of the past. Remember, this is the administration that lambasted anyone that had previously tried to compare this quagmire with the one in Vietnam just months ago. Now, this war has parallels to the Korean, WWII, and the Vietnam Wars. Not only did this president not serve in Vietnam, he obviously didn’t study it either. This just shows how desperate this administration is for reasons to continue this debacle.

In reminding Americans that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of bloody upheaval in Southeast Asia, Mr. Bush argued in a speech on Wednesday that Vietnam’s lessons provide a reason for persevering in Iraq, rather than for leaving any time soon. Mr. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and the mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.[1]

It is interesting how some people can take bits of history and weave them together to make anything look good. Mr. Bush in invoking the SE Asia analogy failed to mention some significant points that led to the upheaval there. Many of the people who were killed or imprisoned in Vietnam were people who were allied to us and who we left behind, similar to what we are doing today in Iraq. I guess Mr. Bush is suggesting that our staying in Vietnam was not long enough and that victory there was also just around the corner. As far as Cambodia is concerned, it was precisely our involvement in the region that created the despot, Pol Pot and the subsequent Khmer Rouge that created the killing fields that he speaks of. We destabilized the region in our pursuit of the communist menace. To use one catastrophe to justify another one is amazing. And if that wasn’t bad enough, our history buff added a reference to the occupations of WWII. However, according to real historians this reference is dubious at best for the following reasons.

But historians note that Germany and Japan were homogenous nation-states with clear national identities and no internal feuding among factions or sects, in stark contrast to Iraq today.
The comparison of Iraq to Germany and Japan “is fanciful,” said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted that the American and allied militaries had eliminated the governments of Japan and Germany, and any lingering opposition, and assembled occupation forces that were, proportionally, more than three times as large as the current American presence of more than 160,000 troops in Iraq.

“That’s the kind of troop level you need to control the situation,” Mr. Simon said. “The occupation of Germany and Japan lasted for years — and not a single American solider was killed by insurgents.”[2]

So it is disingenuous to compare our current situation to that of WWII, this administration will stop at nothing (even rewriting history) to try to gain support for this failed policy. They continue to claim that success is just around the corner but as more intelligence reports come in, they refute this rosy scenario. Iraq is a bottomless pit with no end in sight. We can continue to delude ourselves, but eventually the reality on the ground will dictate our awakening. The surge is a short-term fix to a long-term problem; its results will be short-term. Unlike us Americans, the Iraqis do not have the luxury of living from one election cycle to the next, this is there reality. Instead of providing them with these “band-aids” we should be putting in place long-term solutions that will provide them the tools to one day be independent and self-governing.

Vietnam today is a unified and stable nation whose Communist government poses little threat to its neighbors and is developing healthy ties with the United States. Mr. Bush visited Vietnam last November; a return visit to the White House this summer by Nguyen Minh Triet was the first visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the war.

“The Vietnam comparison should invite us to think harder about how to minimize the consequences of our military failure,” Mr. Bacevich added. “If one is really concerned about the Iraqi people, and the fate that may be awaiting them as this war winds down, then we ought to get serious about opening our doors, and to welcoming to the United States those Iraqis who have supported us and have put themselves and their families in danger.”[3]

It is time to allow the international community to come in and help the Iraqis to build the institutions that lead to stability. Our presence as much as we would like to think otherwise, is not adding to the stability of this country. All of the historic references in the world cannot change that reality. We can continue to lay the groundwork for more strife upon our departure through sectarianism and division as we did in Vietnam or we can provide our support for the unification of all Iraqi citizens. Continuing to support the current government will not unite this country; they are proving incapable of doing so. It is time we use our considerable influence to bring all parties together in an international peace conference to negotiate a true unified peace for the safety of all Iraqis. That is of course if we were serious about the welfare of the Iraqi people.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/washington/23history.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/washington/23history.html

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