Just Flip a Coin

The American Conservative has a special feature with endorsements of every presidential possibility, including not voting. The weakest is the endorsement of President Bush from Pat Buchanan. It is weak primarily because one must ignore the fact that Buchanan ran against Bush in the last election, and has strongly criticized the build up to the Iraq war for more than two years. I will ignore most of his positive statements about the president; except to note that a vote for Bush is a vote for higher taxes--implemented at some future date by a less dishonest politician.
However, Buchanan makes one very compelling argument:

"If Kerry wins, leading a party that detests this war, he will be forced to execute an early withdrawal. Should that bring about a debacle, neocons will indict Democrats for losing Iraq. The cakewalk crowd cannot be permitted to get out from under this disaster that easily. They steered Bush into this war and should be made to see it through to the end and to preside over the withdrawal or retreat. Only thus can they be held accountable. Only thus can this neo-Jacobin ideology be discredited in America's eyes. It is essential for the country and our cause that it be repudiated by the Republican Party formally and finally. The neocons must clean up the mess they have made, themselves, in full public view."

Buchanan is right about this. If Bush loses, the crowd that brought us the war is off the hook. It is for the best that they be forced to clean up the mess they made. They should have to decide how to maintain 130,000 troops in Iraq for the next four years; or how to increase troop strength if military commanders say it must be increased. They should have to suffer the conseqences if mutiny becomes a common occurrence.
This is intended as an endorsement of Bush--I early voted for one of the nut candidates--just my belief of what is best for the country