Indian Country newspaper picks Kerry

[fishface]

John Kerry is conservative choice for President
Posted: October 22, 2004


Election night, 2004, is upon us in days and following a rough and tumble campaign it has become clear that Indian country favors Sen. John Kerry to be voted in as president of the United States. In the tightest of contests, where polls suggest a virtual dead heat, both the Democrats and Republicans are pulling out all stops in huge registration and Get Out The Vote drives.

Democrats have unified as rarely seen before and thrown their full support behind John Kerry. They should. They have a very decent, thoughtful and personally conservative man for a candidate: reasonable, patient, experienced man in the tempest of a chaotic, complex and unpredictable world. In the face of an opponent who has perhaps done his best, but whose resoluteness is marred by clearly unexamined decision making, Kerry looks like a man who could help pull the country from its present malaise.

The ''instinctual,'' ''from the gut,'' ''faith-based,'' ''always resolute'' policy leadership practiced by President Bush, we submit, has raised a serious wall of ill will against America around the globe, one that augurs badly for positive American leadership on the international stage. Stretching the national treasury while ensnaring the country's best men and women in a costly and unnecessary war, we face a bloody and unfocused struggle with no end in sight.

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Even though this newspaper did not endorse George W. Bush in the 2000 election, we wished the best for his administration at the start of its term. Following the heinous attacks on this country on 9/11 Indian country rallied behind and supported the President's actions to attack and eliminate the enemy al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan. And while we agreed that Saddam Hussein was a bad man and weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands could manifest a global catastrophe, our primary message was that America needed to lead for peace and that it needed to proceed with an informed deliberation built upon international consensus that strengthened the world's connections to the American people. But that is not what happened. Now with over 1,000 dead American soldiers and over 20,000 dead Iraqis (who among them al Qaeda?), and a chaotic spiral of violence passing for ''liberation,'' we have much difficulty with this war, its now discredited justifications, its epic mismanagement and its current results that include hundreds if not thousands of dead innocents, including women and children. Indian country agrees with Kerry's assessment: The Bush war strategy is a colossal error in judgment and much must be done, urgently, to correct its mistakes.

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096409729&CFID=164395&CFTOKEN=69116519