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Five Months From Today — The World Could Change |
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Five months from today, November 5th, 2008, as we wake up, we should know who has won the Presidential election of 2008.
Five months from today we will learn whether the country has decided to turn the page on the Bush years, or embrace the proverbial third term of “W.”
Five months from today we will learn whether we will stay mired in the quagmire of the Iraq conflict or whether we can start bringing American troops home to the lives they deserve.
Five months from today we will know whether the executive and legislative branches will begin work on real health care reform, or just the proverbial Band-Aid to cover their political rhetoric.
Five months from today we will find out whether the U.S. will continue a confrontational “You are with us or against us” cowboy foreign policy, or whether our allies will be respected, our enemies addressed, and the citizens of the world will look upon America as the beacon of hope that it had been during the 20th century.
Five months from today we will determine whether will continue an economic policy that benefits the well-off at the expense of those with the least, that sees low taxes for the rich as more important than the 10 trillion dollar debt being left to the next generation, that has industry insiders writing their own government regulations, that gives benefits to companies that move their jobs overseas; or whether we will have a government that will be responsive to the needs of working people, the poor, the unemployed and the next generations.
Five months from today we will find out whether future nominees to the Supreme Court will slowly erode individual liberties and cede more power to the executive branch, or whether the Constitution will be respected and the balance of power between the executive and legislature will be restored.
Five months from today we will find out whether environmental protection is merely a campaign talking point, or is actually something that our government believes should be accomplished.
Five months from today will we wake up and see the sun rise believing in a bright future for the USA, or will we not even want to get out of bed?
Five months from today we should know whether John McCain or Barack Obama will have been elected President of the United States. A lot is at stake.
As Barack Obama explained himself Tuesday evening:
It’s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.
It’s not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college - policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.
And it’s not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians - a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn’t making the American people any safer.
So I’ll say this - there are many words to describe John McCain’s attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush’s policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.
Change is a foreign policy that doesn’t begin and end with a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what’s not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years - especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.
We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It’s time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It’s time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda’s leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century - terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That’s what change is.
That is what is at stake five months from now.
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