Voting for US President is a choice between two men. This year's choice is between George W. Bush and John Kerry. It is the most important job in the world - in the most literal sense.
 
 With George W. Bush, we know his positions. His positions are plainly stated and ones he consistently keeps - sometimes to a fault. In our post-9/11 world, I think we need to know where a candidate stands on certain issues, especially foreign policy. We know that George W. Bush will aggressively fight global terrorism. We know that because after the attacks of 9/11, the US swiftly and effectively responded by taking out Al Qaeda's main launching pads in Afghanistan. The government that supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban, was removed. And this past month democratic elections, for the first time in history, were held in that country.
 
 Bush also recognized that in our post 9/11 world that open enemies of the United States that significant resources could no longer be tolerated. That we must work towards their overthrow or reform. He identified 3 countries as an axis of "evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Iraq was the obvious first target. With over a dozen UN security council resolutions demanding that Iraq comply with the 1991 UN cease fire terms, Iraq was the easiest of the three to focus first on.
 
 Bush worked with the United Nations to pass a new UN resolution - 1441. In that resolution, Iraq was told that it needed to abide by the 1991 cease fire terms or it would face "serious consequences", diplomatic speak for military action as the world knew from the previous use of the term in Kosovo in the late 90s. Abiding by those cease fire terms means allowing UN weapons inspectors unfettered access throughout Iraq. It means being able to interview Iraqi scientists out of the country. It meant allowing the UN to inspect over the country using U2 planes.
 
 But Iraq, again, failed to comply. Even during this time Iraq fired upon US and British planes patrolling the no fly zone. It obstructed attempts to interview Iraqi scientists about Iraq's WMD programs. It would not permit the use of U2 planes to inspect from the air. In short, Iraq was failing to comply.
 
 Did Iraq have WMDs? No one could know for sure, that was what the inspections were for. What was known is that Iraq had WMDs at one time, had used them previously, and had clearly intended on obtaining them in the future. With Iraq not complying, again, with the United Nations and sanctions unraveling (which we would later discover was to a far greater extent than ever imagined), Bush decided that enough was enough. Iraq was a simmering threat to the United States that, in a post-9/11 world could not be "allowed to materialize". Bush never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. Instead, he argued that Iraq was a threat that could not be permitted to fully materialize.
 
 In essence, Bush made a simple calculation: That we could either allow the status quo in Iraq to continue in which Saddam waited for France, Russia and China to lobby successfully for the end of sanctions on Iraq, something they had been doing since 1998, or we could remove Saddam now with military force while he had the support of the majority of the American people. Bush determined that if we didn't act, Saddam would be in a position to aid terrorists with WMDs that he either had on hand in stockpiles or simply wait out the sanctions and begin a WMD program and become a global menace down the road that would create the specter of something far worse than 9/11 in the future.
 
 So the US military acted. Despite critics claiming that such a war would cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties and cost tens of thousands of American lives, the government of Saddam was removed in around 6 weeks at a cost of only a few hundred American troops and very low Iraqi casualties. Bush did miscalculate though, the planners had anticipated a war that would take months. They also expected more of its opponents to stand and fight. Instead, faced by American military power, much of Iraq's military simply melted away.
 
 This led to the single biggest mistake by the Bush administration. Bush's military planners had intended on converting the Iraqi military into a stabilizing force after the war ended. To that end, senior Iraqi commanders were even bribed to stand down and wait for a new regime put in place by the United States. Paul Bremer, by contrast, disbanded the entire Iraqi military, relying instead completely on the relatively small US force to occupy a country of 25 million people that is the size of California until a new Iraqi force could be created from scratch.
 
 The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military personnel, now without a job, had to find new things to do. This helped lead to the current insurgency in Iraq. While largely foreign sponsored from Syria and Iran and with plenty of volunteers from throughout the Middle East, these jobless soldiers served as a huge reservoir of man power for the new insurgency. Bremer, not having experience in creating a replacement force, vastly underestimated the time it would take to replace that Iraqi military with a new, "Bathist-free" one.
 
 Meanwhile, in the United States, a relatively obscure Senator with longstanding political ambitions was preparing to run for President. John Kerry, a career senate Dove began to take on more mainstream positions. He voted for military action in Iraq. He did NOT vote merely for the President to have the authorization to use force to get the UN in line. By that line of reasoning, he should have voted for the 1991 force authorization. But he did not. If Kerry had had his way in 1991, Saddam would be in control of Kuwait today and possibly Saudi Arabia as well and 9/11 would have still happened except that the US would have been in a much weaker position to respond.
 
 Kerry's senate record was born from his experiences in Vietnam. An outspoken critic of the Vietnam war, he had made a career of having taken both sides on that issue. He turned his 4 week stint in Vietnam in which he used his political connections and own lobbying to secure a remarkable 3 purple hearts in 4 months of action (none requiring a hospital stay which any soldier will tell you is basically impossible to do legitimately). He also wrote up his own citation and recommended himself for a silver star and bronze star as captain of a US Navy swift boat. By being able to play both sides on the Vietnam issue, Kerry had been able to secure a 20 year career as a Senator.
 
 In the Senate Kerry wasn't particularly active. His main efforts were in voting against US military programs. His long distrust of US military might coupled with his belief that the best way to deal with the Soviet Union was peaceful coexistence were the halmarks of his tenure.
 
 But since he was planning for running for President, the life long political opportunist couldn't help but vote for the war in Iraq.
 
 Meanwhile, Bush also pursued an aggressive economic recovery policy. The Dot-Com bubble of the 90s, which gave us such wonders as Pets.com and numerous other over inflated but doomed companies came to an end. The market lost several trillion dollars and left many investors, including many retirees, bankrupt. This sent the economy into a recession that made its presence felt at the start of 2001 when Bush was elected. The attacks of 9/11, which essentially shut down US business for the month of September of that year, put the US into a deep recession and combined cost the United States millions of jobs.
 
 Bush's economic recovery policy was to try to soften the blow of the dot-com collapse. The belief was that if Americans could get capital back into their hands they could jump-start the economy. So Bush got passed a across the board tax cut. All Americans who paid taxes got a tax cut. As a percentage cut, those who made less money actually did better and the 15% tax rate was lowered to a 10% tax rate.
 
 But Democrats seized on the ignorance of many Americans. The public education system, something heavily supported by Democrats, had not done a very good job in teaching Americans basic math skills. If you give a 10% tax cut to someone who pays a million dollars in taxes, they are going to get a lot more back than somebody who pays only $1,000 in taxes. A family of 3 with an income of $40,000 can only get so much back in taxes. By contrast, your local restaurant owner, filing under his own personal S chapter corporation $930,000 per year is going to get a lot more back in taxes. It's basic math. So the Democrats seized on this to claim that the tax cuts were "for the rich" and may gullible people bought into this.
 
 Bush also got passed the first significant public education reform in many years. Called the "No Child Left Behind" act, it was designed to force schools to conduct a standardized test once per year to measure their effectiveness. If the school was not doing well, the act provided extra federal funds to help the school out. If the school continued to fail, students would eventually have the right to go to different schools. To his credit, Kerry voted for this but, like he would on many issues, he would later behave as if this were a bad idea which would lead to him being accurately described as a "Flip flopper".
 
 Unlike most federal programs, No Child Left Behind was even largely funded. It's not commonly known but many programs of this nature, such as Clinton's infamous 10,000 new policemen program, or the Brady Bill, are not federally funded - just federally mandated. Bush didn't just get No Child Left Behind passed, but he got it mostly funded. Unfortunately, large spending increases (such as the 43% increase in federal education spending) has led to a very large budget deficit. One that Kerry criticizes even as he complains that No Child Left Behind is not funded enough.
 
 Bush also co-opted the concept of a Homeland security department. After 9/11, it became apparent that the US needed to better coordinate its various branches (particularly law enforcement). This would be done via a new department. Taking what was originally a Democratic concept and converting it to his own vision, the Department of Homeland Security was passed and implemented in Bush's first term.
 
 Bush also favored the passage of a temporary act called the Patriot Act - that Kerry also voted for but, like many other things, has pretended to be against it when convenient. The Patriot Act, like many such hastily passed acts in American history, has problems in some parts. It's a very large bill. But it has allowed law enforcement to more effectively deal with terrorism. Both Bush and Kerry support adjusting it in the future (though you wouldn't know that from the press that makes it sound like the Patriot act is essentially an act of martial law foisted upon the public by a fascist Republican administration).
 
 Amazingly enough, these are all things that were done in a single term. When one considers the 8 years that Bill Clinton was in office and how little actually got done in those 8 years when compared to the 4 years Bush has been in office one cannot help but conclude that Bush is an effective leader. Even if you disagree with Bush's policies, he has certainly gotten a lot accomplished.
 
 In a single term so far Bush has moved to overthrow a hostile regime in Afghanistan and replace it with a democratically elected one. Iraq has been removed as a state sponsor or terrorism and Saddam, long defiant, now sits in US custody in a prison cell. A huge tax cut was passed and its benefits turned what should have been a depression level recession into a rapid economic recovery (3.4% economic growth for last fiscal quarter) with unemployment reaching a very low point.
 
 His opponent, far from being specific on an issue, has continued his trend of trying to have it all ways. What will he do in Iraq? Nobody knows for sure. What will he do to continue the fight on global terror? No one really knows. He talks about plans but they aren't plans, they're platitudes. "I will find and kill terrorists" is not a plan, it's just rhetoric. "I will bring our allies together" is not a plan, it's a wish. "I will make us no longer be dependent on foreign energy sources" is not a plan, it's an empty dream. Plans require specific proposals of action. But Kerry, whose record in the Senate indicates he's not a man of action, simply doesn't want to get pinned down on any given plan. Even his health care plan is pointlessly vague.
 
 Bush, for example, has put forward a plan to pass a law that will enable small businesses to group together to buy health care plans from insurance companies in bulk. While there is room to criticize this plan, that's only because it's specific enough that people know that this can be done. Kerry, however, wanting to raise taxes on "the rich" to give free health care to other people isn't a plan, it's a give-away whose costs are largely unknown and politically unfeasible. Not that Bush is totally innocent from such empty rhetoric such as Bush's vague hope to have private social security accounts. But while Bush does have a few politically unfeasible wishes such as the private social security accounts, most of Bush's plans are politically viable and can actually be implemented. Not a single Kerry proposal that has been named on JohnKerry.com is specific enough to figure out whether it can even be done or not.
 
 More troubling is Kerry's stance on foreign policy. Because we don't know what he'll do in Iraq because he won't get specific except where he says he'll do pretty much what Bush does "but better", we only have Kerry's record to go by which is the record of a life-time dove and political opportunist.
 
 John Kerry is not a serious man. Men of empty and mindless ambition are not the type of men we want at this time. Serious times call for serious men. And Bush, even with his negatives, is a serious man with serious plans. John Kerry is not a serious man and does not deserve to be elected as President of the United States.