ROMNEY'S WISE DECISION

Maybe it was my blog. Maybe I jinxed the guy.

Anyway, after Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney sat down and looked at the numbers. When I saw the Primary results, I said that if Romney is as good a businessman as he claims, he will consider the ROI on his campaign expenditures and get out of the race. I suspect that's just what he did.

With Romney out of the race, this will be a difficult year for me. He was an easy pick. I knew and admired his father. I didn't have to spend much thought or time studying his positions on issues.

Now it will be different. There's a lot of talk about what the Republican conservatives will do this year. Nobody talks about my dilemma. Where are the Repuiblican doves supposed to go? Indeed are there any other Republican doves out there?

In my last posting, I talked about having a debate on our national purpose. The best statement of it is in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. Our nation was organized:

1) to form a more perfect union
2) to establish justice
3) to insure domestic tranquility
4) to provide for the common defense
5) to promote the general welfare
6) to secure the blessings of liberty to us and to our posterity

Nothing there about being the leader of the free world. Nothing there about bringing democracy to the third world. Nothing there about a manifest destiny to Westernize the East. And nothing about establishing a Pax Americana all over the planet Earth.

I was a caboose to the "Greatest Generation." But I do remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And I remember San Francisco where the war weary nations of the world gathered to create the United Nations. This is what we agreed to:

PREAMBLE
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

How do these goals and aspirations stack up against the notion of pre-emptive strikes?

The election year of 2008 is a good time to think about it.

Enough for now.

Thomas E.Brennan