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America voted and the world celebrated. Well, most of the world. The Week's Susan Caskie says that while there was much global exuberance, editorials in the Muslim world tempered expectations with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This comment should apply to any discussion about the 2008 US Presidential election.
The election is a transformative moment, because of the obvious - the President-elect's race, but also because of the other obvious (to many of us): that the outgoing administration has co-opted our government for the last eight years, with the help, alas, of Congress and the courts. And accomplishing this goal involved the theft of one, and quite possibly two, Presidential elections.
"We" are greatly relieved at the election's outcome, while acknowledging, going forward, how difficult the tasks at hand remain.
The only people who might disagree are the 57 million who voted for McCain and the even larger number of people who weren't concerned enough to even bother to vote.
I am only a Private First Class (PFC) and I do not pretend to speak for the military. However, after being on two deployments I have a reason to celebrate Barack Obama as our president.
He was endorsed by both Jews and Palestinians. Lack of progress was the number one reason for Al Qaida to recruit people to try and kill people like me.
We are now competing in Africa with active Chinese Communists, and the active theocratic neighbors in the middle east. Last week all was lost. Now it is fertile ground for a democracy garden.
Many honorable veterans are suffering with an adversarial VA system. It has become that way because leaders like Gen. Shoomaker (and Donald Rumsfeld) have been twisting their arms to not help soldiers access their benefits. They cynically view every dollar spent on helping injured soldiers as a dollar taken from the war.
A lot of my fellow veterans have not fully processed how wonderful this is for us. As an enlisted assistant to the chaplain, I followed them into bi-lateral meetings with Imams. These meetings help our soldiers and their missions by developing relationships with local leaders. Thankfully, we can mitigate the harm caused by the campaign emails filled with hateful rhetoric. Our job would have been many times more difficult if we had elected McCain in a Post-Bush context.
The Homeland Security Department and, especially, the Secret Service better be up to the task this time. If anyone knocks off this President, the whole world is going into a tailspin that will make '63 and '68 (you know, those years of other assassinations) seem like birthday parties.
If they are in as bad a shape as everything else W touched during these past 8 years...
Chris Gray, you stay classy...
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