I don’t want to waste your time by outlining exactly how bad President George W. Bush has been… I don’t want to waste your time by outlining exactly how bad President George W. Bush has been for this country. Truth be told, I’d rather be funny, like when I wrote about being brown. That was good, wasn’t it?

But I feel responsible to use this space and your time for the good of my country. Melodramatic? Perhaps.

If you weren’t aware, the United States has suspended all operations in Iraq and is holding them off until after “the date,” today, according to The Washington Post, presumably because more of our beleaguered troops dying would be bad press for good ol’ W’s reelection.

That would be like walking down the street and seeing someone being attacked by muggers, and walking by because I have a date later and I don’t want to be bloodied. Clearly, the right thing to do is help, since I’m able and lucky enough to be there in time to help, but, because I want to get lucky tonight, I won’t, because I want to look my best.

Just in case I am being unclear, the person is Iraq and I was playing our hallowed president. Getting lucky ironically translates as four more years of George Bush. This country cannot afford it.

And when my fellow columnist Rhajiv Ratnatunga said things like “If Kerry is elected, I can almost guarantee this country will be in store for another attack on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or worse,” I was compelled to respond. I have to restrain myself from sounding condescending to conservatives like him, because his simplistic analyses of Kerry and what Kerry stands for — and the world in general — are so off the mark and wrong.

If you want to talk about what Kerry said, first get the context. When he says he wants to “get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry means he hopes to combat terrorism effectively so that it ceases to be the focus of every American’s worries, because if the threat of terrorism continues to consume the lives of Americans, then the terrorists have won. Rhajiv is completely wrong in implying that Kerry is pretending terrorism is not an important and pressing problem. He has promised to “find and kill the terrorists,” and that is a promise he will keep.

If you really want to read a scary quotation here are some:

“Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations,” President Bush, in the debate, Oct. 13, 2004

“I don’t know where [Osama bin Laden] is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him … I truly am not that concerned about him,” President Bush, in a press conference, March 13, 2002

These statements contain no nuance. Statements like that lay bare Bush’s continued politicization of the war on terrorism. If you haven’t noticed, whenever Kerry gains in the polls, the terror alert rises by one color. This happened after the Democratic National Convention and after each presidential debate — the polls showed Kerry was 3-0 in the debates.

Vote for Kerry to tell this administration that doing a horrible job has consequences. It won’t learn if we let it have four more years. This election is not about the rhetoric that is being thrown around by both sides; it’s about making a choice.

In the last four years, do you feel safer than you did before? No. In the last four years,have your or your parents’ lives improved economically? All but a few of you are saying “no” once again. Who was in charge the last four years? George Bush.

Even if Kerry does not provide all of us with health care, even if he doesn’t increase educational opportunities for our nation’s youth, and even if he isn’t able to rally the world’s support and rebuild our alliances, it doesn’t matter.

Kerry will not continue to abandon nuclear non-proliferation treaties for newer nukes, leave this nation’s children behind with empty promises of opportunity, make the government more deceptive and secretive, appoint the person who wrote a legal defense of torture and people like him to federal and Supreme Court benches, blur the line between the church and state, and rely on a fake cowboy machismo instead of good, sane policy.

This election is about taking America back.

Arun Butcher loves the United States, no matter what Ann Coulter thinks. E-mail him at [email protected].