The joy of watching American common sense rear its head

[gottaB]

A series of recent developments in Iraq and the United States has suddenly propelled the war in Iraq into a more prominent place within the current American presidential election. The likely impact of this trend, as the situation appears today, would be to improve the prospects of the Democratic candidate John Kerry and weaken the position of U.S. President George W. Bush, in relative terms. More importantly, it signals the awakening of a slumbering giant - the common sense of ordinary Americans who resent being taken for a ride.

The reasons for the greater prominence of the Iraq war in the minds of the American electorate revolve around both Kerry's recent performance and events on the ground in Iraq. The former include such factors as Kerry's going on the attack against Bush on the issue of the president's handling of the whole Iraq matter, and particularly making of this a litmus test of the president's judgment and character. This reversed the trend of the previous month, when Bush's attacks succeeded in making Kerry's conduct in the Vietnam War over three decades ago the big issue of the moment. Kerry has also prompted many Americans to associate the $200 billion Bush spent on the Iraq war with massive amounts of money that otherwise were not spent on domestic American needs, including health care and education.

The ongoing change in Iraq's place in the presidential election has also reflected the continued deaths of American soldiers almost on a daily basis, and the large-scale assaults by thousands of American troops in places like Samarra. Scenes of daily car bombings that kill scores of Iraqis, along with the recent beheadings of two kidnapped Americans in Iraq, serve to raise new questions about the effectiveness of Washington's Iraq policy among segments of American society.

All of this was accentuated by the first of the three presidential debates last Thursday, which focused on foreign policy issues. Opinion polls released in the past few days indicate that the American public generally saw Kerry as having done a better job in the debate than Bush. The cumulative evidence suggests that more and more Americans are questioning whether their country's military involvement in Iraq is sustainable in the long run, given the rising tide of anti-American attacks in Iraq and the more focused political attacks against Bush at home on the issue of his handling of the war and its aftermath.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=9005">The joy of watching American common sense rear its head....

[Kolesar]

1. Good thesis

Note that the link does not execute.

[gottaB]

2. fixed link

The joy of watching American common sense rear its head