January 28, 2004

I have long been upset with John Kerry and others for their vote authorizing military action in Iraq. I recently had a new insight into this, however.

I single out Senator Kerry here because it seems he is now the front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but this really applies to all those who voted for the resolution. Despite this vote, I consider any of the Democratic candidates to be a huge improvement over President Bush.

I opposed the Iraq resolution for two reasons. First, it was clear at the time that we were still months away from war. There was no rush to make such a big move. Second, if our intelligence was really so good, why couldn't we convince many of our closest allies? Surely, we wanted them to come aboard and give us their vote in the U.N. We must have been sharing our intelligence with such close allies. If we could not convince them with the secret evidence, could the evidence really have been so good?

I got my new insight from a rather unexpected place. I was watching this stupid TV show called The Apprentice.

On the show, billionaire Donald Trump narrows down a field of candidates to be his new apprentice. One team of candidates keeps losing; and they have come to hate one particular guy, Sam. So what do they do? They elect him to be their leader!

Why in the world would they do that? They did it to put Sam in a "put up or shut up" situation. They did not want to hear any more of him saying that they would have won if they had just used his ideas. Either he would succeed, and they would win for a change; or he would fail, and there would be a good chance that Mr. Trump would get rid of Sam. Either way, the team improves its situation.

It is important to note that Mr. Trump looks at both individual failures of team members and failure of the leadership. He might get rid of a team member for a really bad decision, but he is more likely to sack the leader. He certainly won't put up with a leader trying to make a scapegoat of a team member. The leader is ultimately responsible for the actions of his team.

My new insight into the vote is to look at it as the same kind of "put up or shut up" move. Senator Kerry gave the Apprentice his chance to either do something great or to foul everything up. The Apprentice has proceeded to make a mess of it. The Apprentice did not eliminate any weapons of mass destruction. The Apprentice has blamed this on the failures of his CIA team and his inspection team. The Apprentice destabilized Iraq, allowing terrorists to establish a new base. The Apprentice increased hatred for the U.S. and support for al Qaeda throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world. The Apprentice killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis. The Apprentice has committed our troops to a quagmire we dare not leave, leaving us unprepared for any other battles including the real war on terror. The Apprentice has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this (and counting) that could have been used to relieve the economy back home by creating jobs.

It is now time for Senator Kerry to tell Apprentice Bush, "you're fired!"

Richard M. Mathews

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