Let's take back our party

The track George W. Bush has taken the Republican Party down is the exact opposite of the one I embraced when I became a Republican 15 years ago in high school.

Just to say a bit about myself, I have worked for Republican legislators, worked on several Republican campaigns, attended the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego as part of the Young Voters Program. I have not voted for the president once, but twice.

First of all, I became a Republican because I thought the party stood for fiscal responsibility and it opposed the concept of nation building. Yet, I have watched the same party grow non-defense spending astronomically, creating prescription drug entitlements for seniors, expand the Education Department that Reagan wished to abolish, neglect illegal immigration to give his friends cheap labor, etc.

In the 1990s, Republicans such as myself condemned the Clinton administration for its nation-building activities in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet, the president started an adventerous war in Iraq on the idealistic notion of recreating Iraq in our image: nation building, in other words. Sure Saddam was a butcher, a tyrant and all of the above, but in the war on terror he was a second-rate player. The war in Iraq is also unconstitutional as were the wars in Korea and Vietnam because Congress has the constitutional power to declare war.

We had far more cause to declare war on Iran, which has served as the terrorist kingdom since 1979: especially because Iran has given safe harbor to Al-Qaeda's top brass.

We little people need to force George W. Bush and the Republican congressional leadership to return to the principles of the 1994 Contract With America or face certain defeat in the mid-terms.

Let's start putting country ahead of party and get our party to stop acting like 1950s Democrats.

Perhaps people don't really recall Reagan as President, and his administration has become some conservative dream that it was not. He knew he had to compromise and he did. So does Bush.

When you have the White House & both houses of Congress, "compromise" should mean moving more slowly to the right than we'd like, or at worst, holding steady. Instead, we are steadily going leftward. Why?

I believe, go for the jugular and think strategically. Knowing off, which country would give you the most utility in ending global terror.

Even if this democratic experiment in Iraq works, there isn't any telling if a terror regime worse than Saddam could come to power and establish an Islamic state. It almost happened in Algeria, but the military intervened to ensure that didn't happen.

I also think Iraq is a false analogy with Germany and Japan because both countries were rather homogeneous. Iraq is not.

The Japanese and Germans both had authoritarian cultures that submitted in the face of power. Also, don't forget MacArthur obtained the sanction of the Japanese emperor to act as a sort of Shogun while the government was reorganized.

We don't have an Iraqi Hirohito to tell all of the Muslims to lay down their arms, save for Ayatollah Sistani for the Shia.

In Vietnam, the U.S. tried and failed to Vietnamize the war by unsuccessfully propping up South Vietnam. The ARVN only fought well fighting with American soldiers, but alone, they were no match for the VC and the North Vietmamese regulars.

The only problem with many of the same arguments used by the pro-Iraq interventionists is they were used before: 40-year-ago in the jungles of Vietnam.

Let me just say this, I opposed the initial intervention and have had mixed feelings about the war subesequently, but I support fighting this war until the mission is finished.

The sooner we make the other guy die for his country/religion, the sooner we can make them go home.

To the troops in Iraq, make sure you grease your bullets with a little pork fat so they can't get the virgins.

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