Obama

I can't imagine anything more traitorous than to lie ones country into war - war!! Yes, all the reasons we were given for invading Iraq have since proven to be lies.

I didn't believe them at the time, having already, beforehand, read all about the proposal to invade Iraq. It had been developed around the time President Clinton came into office. September 11th was just an excuse to execute the plan that had been proposed years before.

On the whole, the rest of the world knew better, too. But too many Americans, traumatized, bombarded with propaganda (with the news media conniving), and bullied, did believe those lies. And far too many people of various nationalities died as a result, and are still dying.

This probably doesn't fit the rather narrow legal definition of treason, but in a more usual sense, what could possibly be more treasonous? What betrayal of country could possibly be greater than this? And with it, so much horror, so much death, our reputation in the world in tatters, our economy wrecked.

(And since the reasons given us for fighting in Iraq were all lies, what was the real reason it was so important to somebody? What was it all for? Especially at a time when we needed to be going after actual terrorists? Nobody of either party has ever told us why we really went into Iraq. Nobody.)

And Senator McCain made himself the nation's number one cheerleader for this deception, distraction, and, yes, treason. And he knew better. If I did, an ordinary citizen, a housewife, then certainly he did, a senior senator.

I can't vote for him. With or without Governor Palin. Eight years ago, when he really was a maverick, I would have voted for him, was hoping to, had he been nominated. But not now.

Moreover, neither he nor Mrs. Palin strikes me as very much exemplifying "family values," except that in her case, her family has put its pro-life stance into action, for which I honor them. On the other hand, family values include being faithful to one's wife, which Sen. McCain admits to not having been. In fact the current Mrs. McCain is one of several women with whom he had affairs while married to his first wife. Family values also, to me, include a mother spending a LOT of time with her five children, especially a disabled one.

On top of that, I am old enough to remember Sen. McCain's involvement in the infamous Keating affair. He was eventually cleared of actual illegality, but it all smelled very bad.

So, I've been voting since 1968, and for the first time in my life - wait, no, the second time - I'm voting for the Democrat for President.

Senator Obama has been copiously smeared, but none of the really frightening allegations about him has turned out to be true or to have substance or to amount to much. They're scare tactics. Sometimes they are thinly disguised racism. (Racists ought to remember that Senator Obama is only half black, and was raised in a white culture.) I believe him to be a man of good character (rare among politicians) who is competent and intelligent, cultured and well-spoken, who really can reach out to most sorts of people. I do not think he is Messiah or any such thing, and I don't know a single other person who does, either. That's a red herring, an attempt to turn his enormous popularity into a liability. Like anyone else, Sen. Obama has his flaws and everybody knows them, because they have been made much of.

The main qualm I've had about voting for Obama is of course his stance on abortion. However, as Pastor Beane has noted, presidents have never had, nor can have, much influence upon that issue. Even if they do, their political influence is subject to reversal later. It's a mistaken and failed stategy to try to correct abortion through a president. I think the solution is to try to evangelize the people of America, to encourage in them higher values and better morals. The problem has to be solved from the bottom up, one heart at a time, not from the top down. Voting for a pro-life candidate, while good in itself, is a minor and relatively ineffectual action among the many we need to take against abortion; and because it is so minor, it can and should be weighed against other factors. I do not think we ought to let a president or a party get by with horrific things just because they say they're pro-life (and prove in so many ways they are not).

Treason, on the other hand, is something a president can deal directly with, can end, can turn around. Or at least perhaps he can, providing our country isn't yet a crypto-dictatorship, as Fr. Beane also suggests - and he may be right. (Look at the U.K., for example. At the start of the Iraq war, some 80-90% of Brits were firmly against involvment in it, yet their government took them into Iraq anyway. How is that supposed to be democracy at work?) Perhaps it is too late and Obama, too, will be coerced or co-opted into doing someone else's bidding. Perhaps he will turn out to be a big disappointment. I really hesitate to lend my support to anyone these days!

But I still have a little hope. And if the president can't or won't reverse the treason, end the bloodshed honorably, restore America's moral standing in the world, and begin to mend our economy, we aren't going to have to worry about abortion, because we aren't going to have much of a country left to purify of that curse. The terrorists will have won.