Politics

I was raised in a very small town in Indiana – Covington, situated near the Illinois border and with a population of around 2400 people. My entire county held less than eighteen thousand people. Indiana is an interesting state – it has a few large population centers (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Gary, and Evansville) and then some larger towns (Bloomington, Terre Haute, Lafayette, and others). It other words, it’s a fairly small state, and it acts like one.

The Indiana Legislature still meets part time – they have a simple criminal code – and I enjoyed the simplicity of life there. I prefer where I live today, mind you, but I enjoyed living in Indiana as well – it was a great place to grow up – and I learned much while living there.

One of the principles that I learned – from Indiana as well as my parents – was accountability. One should be held responsible for their actions.

This was played out in my home in the same way that it is in millions of homes around the world – when I did something that I should not have done, I was punished. I learned quite quickly that for all actions there were consequences.

I saw this close-up and personal in dealing with my father’s family – with the exception of my father and I believe one of his half-brothers – his entire family was in and out of the criminal justice system for much of their lives. I saw what happened when one went astray.

Indeed, small town justice was played out as well in the local courts. Being my county was so small, we had one judge, who was highly respected around town. He gave one many chances, but was unafraid to drop the hammer on someone when needed – and those stories reverberated around the county rapidly.

It wasn’t just in the criminal justice system though that things were played out. For all that people talk about the directness of folks who live in the Northeast – you haven’t seen direct until you’ve been on the receiving end of feedback from someone from the midwest who realizes that some things just need to be said.

My employer as well encourages an environment of accountability – we’re held strictly accountable for our results, leadership, and behaviors, and I would have it no other way. It encourages an environment of meritocracy – of directness – and of performance – and I love them for it.

Which brings me to my point.

I’ve long been a supporter of President Bush. I did not vote for him in the 2000 elections – haven’t supported the Libertarian Candidate Harry Browne. But 9/11 changed all of that – and I saw a strong leader emerge – and he did exactly what I would hope I would have the courage to do in his shoes.

I was a supporter as well of our efforts in Iraq. I fully buy into the theories advanced by Victor Davis Hanson and others that we must confront evil wherever it may be – and Iraq was certainly evil – no need to repeat those crimes here.

And I believed that they had or were working on the capabilities to have – Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

And then we found that they did not – or at least that seems to be the conventional wisdom in the world right now.

I still believe we did the right thing – but there’s a huge piece to this that troubles me.

Someone fucked up.

If the President acted in good faith and received bad intelligence – then there’s a serious problem with the intelligence community – or staffers that “sexed up” the intelligence – but clearly there’s someone or many people at fault.

I can understand this. I often make to make decisions based upon a few seconds of information from someone in the thick of a crisis – and I have to trust them explicitly – and the decisions that I make based on what they tell me could cost me my job. If I can trust someone, they can’t be on my team – just for this reason.

So I ask – where’s the accountability.

If the President acted in good faith – and the intelligence was wrong – then George Tenet needs to be fired.

Not asked to resign – fired.

If someone else was at fault – or many people – then they need to be fired too.

This is truly the highest stakes poker game in the world – there’s no room to hang a curveball — but that’s exactly what has happened here. And there has to be accountability.

In my world, when a leader fails to hold their team accountable when they need to do so, then the leader becomes the performance problem. This situation is no different.

Without accountability, I will not vote for George Bush in 2004. I won’t vote for John Kerry either, mind you, but I’m not going to support the President.

Hold someone accountable – or be held accountable.

The Washington Post has 28 questions for John Kerry, written by George Will.

My favorite:

You say the rich do not pay enough taxes. In 1979 the top 1 percent of earners paid 19.75 percent of income taxes. Today they pay 36.3 percent. How much is enough?

Once again, Neptunus Lex spells it out far better than I ever could.

I’ve been in my country’s service, man and boy, for nearly 26 years now. I stood watch and sailed the seas and flew the heights with death flying on my wing when the two great superpowers locked wills and fought by proxy in a contest between personal freedom and democratic choice versus dehumanizing socialist utopianism. I’ve lost far too many friend along the way, both during the cold war and after, to hear someone try to tell me that I’ve been duped by plutocrats and oligarchs.

Don’t you dare.

I’ve dealt with a couple individuals recently on some forums that I participate on that insist that my political views make me nothing short of a fascist nazi and that I should admit the error of my ways. Lex’s answer is far better than anything than I could come up with.

Hat tip to you, Commander.

Via Neptunus Lex, one of my more favorite bloggers, you must read this Letter written by a blogger’s daughter after being censored by her fellow college students for being in support of the Gulf War.

And one wonder’s why the left irritates me. Read on.

As usual, Citizen Smash outlines the real issues involved in this election.

I read through Bush’s records from the national guard today on calpundit and other sites, I don’t see the issue here. Smash outlines it quite well in his post about this issue.

Are we going to have yet another election as usual or a real debate about real issues. He’s got some good ones listed below… Read on..

I’d like both candidates to address the over-utilization of the Guard and Reserves. I’ve already spent eight months in the Sandbox – are they going to send me back? Why are some reserve units serving fifteen month tours, while the active duty guys spend a year or less in Iraq? What gives?

These are real issues – forget that 1970s crap.

An excellent summary of Bush’s appearance on Meet the Press from Wonkette, courtesy of Citizen Smash:

[W]ar against the terrorists . . . war against terrorists . . . war against terror. . . Yeah. . . Yeah. . . . this war on terror. . . fight the war on terror. . . . Yeah. . . . this is all in the context of war. . . war against terror. . . . this war on terror. . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . the war on terror.  . . . the war is against terrorists . . . Yeah . . . Um hmm. . . . war against these terrorists. . . the war against terror. . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . Yeah.  . . . Yeah.  . . . Yeah. . . Um hmm. . . Um hmm. . . . we are at war. . . Yeah. . . Yeah. . . . I want to lead this great country to work with others to change the world in positive ways, particularly as we fight the war on terror. . . . Thank you, Tim.

Citizen Smash lays out clearly what it will take to win his vote.

And I agree with him.

HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE: If you’re running for President and you want my support, you have to first convince me that you have the guts to make the very difficult decision to order the US military into action when the critical moment comes.

If you can’t pass that test, don’t even bother asking for my vote.

Amen, brother.