Top Ten Reasons Why True Conservatives Should Not Support Bush

A most interesting list by a group that call themselves Classicons (classical conservatives) versus neocons.


10. He abrogated Republican principles that support free, fair trade
and conducted protectionist trade policy by imposing tariffs on steel
in March, 2002 solely to protect the domestic manufacturing base
against foreign imports.

9. He has subrogated long-standing Republican environmental and
conservation policies to private corporate interests by adopting
proposals such as "Clear Skies", ANWR drilling and other programs.
Republicans from Theodore Roosevelt, to Barry Goldwater, to Richard
Nixon had always been at the forefront of environmental policy,
viewing America's environment and natural resources as a special
trust to be preserved for the ages.

8. He has violated Republican principles that have always held that
the defense of the United States was the principal reason for a
central government by neglecting explicit warnings contained in the
President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001 that stated "Osama bin
Laden determined to attack within the United States". He issued no
alerts; he did not raise the national defense condition; he did not
even alert state or local police authorities of the warning. No
president in our history - with the possible exception of FDR - has
been so negligent in his sworn duty to protect the United States in
the face of explicit prior warnings of a possible imminent attack.

7. He has gravely damaged alliances that have been built and advanced
by every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower by diminishing
America's standing within the world community, including America's
relationships with some of our closest and most long-standing allies
in NATO, ASEAN, and the OAS.

6. He has contravened Republican policy to support a strong national
defense by "transforming the military" with his notions of
a "lighter, faster, stronger" force and "network-centric" warfare.
These concepts, and the fashion in which they are being implemented,
diminishes American force readiness and the ability of American
forces to wage warfare successfully in a variety of battle spaces and
against a multitude of enemies. Force redundancies and force
capabilities in multiple specialties that have been built into the
American defense palette since at least the beginning of World War
II, and that permitted America to project force to a variety of
combat environments (e.g., we used an army we built to fight the USSR
in Europe to fight Saddam in the desert in the first Gulf War), have
been put aside in favor of a force that "treats warfare as a
glorified targeting exercise", as one analyst put it. The American
ability to achieve political objectives by means of warfare - as
opposed to simply waging combat - has been greatly diminished by
Pentagon planners that have created a force that can fight only one
centrally controlled conventional opponent, and then only if that
opponent relies on the type of sophisticated electronic weaponry that
only advanced industrialized economies are likely to possess. (We can
beat England, Germany, and Japan, individually or together, but a
conflict with Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, al-Quaeda, FARC or Hamas -
individually or together - may not be winnable because our weaponry
is too sophisticated and our tactics won't work against "lesser"
enemies.)


5. He has abandoned the Republican principle fiscal responsibility
and support for the Middle Class by burying America in a mountain of
debt and tolerating prolonged and exorbitant trade deficits. 40% of
his 2001 tax cuts funded tax cuts for the top 2% of taxpayers and
added $2 Trillion to the national debt. Trade policy has been
ineffective, ill-advised and mostly ad-hoc (a simple fix of an
illegal export subsidy in the Internal Revenue Code was viewed,
instead, as an opportunity to reward lobbyists and contributors with
virtually everything on their corporate tax wish list). Meanwhile,
presidential hubris threatens the economy with the prospect of higher
interest rates, inflation, and a gravely weakened dollar. These
economic conditions endanger the savings and economic well-being of
the Middle Class, a vital Republican constituency.

4. He and Dick Cheney have further weakened the Republican notion of
a strong national defense by creating a civilian defense
establishment that seems more concerned with Israeli political party
Likud's interests than with American interests. (Even Bret Scowcroft,
Bush 41's NSA, says this president is "mesmerized" by Ariel Sharon
and that Sharon has this president "wrapped around his finger".)
Richard Perle, the mentor or confidant to many of the civilian
leaders in the Pentagon has twice been investigated for espionage on
behalf of Israel; and "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas
Feith (to name only a few) are all protégés or confidants of
Perle.
At least one of Feith's Pentagon intelligence subordinates has been
investigated for spying for Israel, and UPI reported that former
Reagan NSC Intelligence Director (and CIA
Counterintelligence/Counterterrorism Chief) Vincent Cannistraro said
that Feith himself was dismissed from his position in the Reagan
National Security Council because the FBI suspected he was passing
classified intelligence to the Israelis.

3. He has undermined traditional Republican support for maintaining
the world's preeminent national intelligence service by politicizing
intelligence to support a preordained Iraq War policy; by selectively
classifying documents so as to prevent political embarrassment; and,
by "outing" intelligence operatives for purposes of political
retribution. In just four years, the Bush Administration and it's
neoconservative operatives in the Pentagon have turned the CIA, the
DIA and NSC into, essentially, political adjuncts of the White House
Office of Political Affairs. Highly respected military officers, like
Anthony Zinni, and undercover intelligence operatives, like Victoria
Plame, have been branded "traitors" or had their cover identities
revealed, respectively, because they dared challenge the White House
in it's rush to war in Iraq. Now, the credibility of American
intelligence -- once the best in the world -- is questioned by our
traditional allies, and our ability to safeguard vital American
interests throughout the world is undermined, because our
intelligence services were blatantly misused and abused by the Bush
Administration to "sell" the Iraq War.

2. He has violated Republican military doctrine of a generation, as
best embodied by the so-called "Powell Doctrine". The Powell Doctrine
actually dates back well before the Gulf War and it's principles go
back to at least the Reagan Administration when Col. Harry Summers of
the Army War College published "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of
the Vietnam War" in 1982. In nearly every phase of the Iraq War, the
Bush Administration violated virtually all of the precepts of the
Powell Doctrine, from failing to use overwhelming force to building a
sufficient and sustainable public support for the war, to failing to
have a clearly defined mission, to failing to have a clear exit
strategy.

1. He has violated traditional Republican and conservative notions of
foreign policy - not to mention internationally recognized foreign
policy principles dating to the Treaty of Westphalia - by engaging in
a radical plan to transform the Middle East into a democratic region
by force of arms without a casus belli.

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