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In reply to the discussion: An open letter to folks like myself who cannot in good conscience vote for Obama [View all]sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Elections are about ISSUES, they are about the the PEOPLE. We do NOT live in a dictatorship.
I agree with the OP. It's a matter of conscience for a lot of people whether they can, in good conscience, vote for anyone who supports indefinite detention, who protects War Criminals from prosecution thus denying their victims any justice. If we were looking at this from outside this country, we would be outraged. Women who were raped, children sodomized, innocent people brutally tortured, some of them, to death. And still no justice for them, but worse, protection.
If your conscience doesn't trouble you at all, then that is your business, but to deny that those who did not lose their conscience once the letter after the name of the President changed, is refusing to face a fact. That this election presents a huge problem for them.
Telling them to shut up and ignore the suffering of other human beings is definitely not helping.
The OP has found a way to assuage his conscience and imo, it is convincing enough for me, who shares his concerns about torture and murder and extraordinary renditions and extra-judicial killings and indefinite detentions, to see a way to stop the Republicans by casting a vote for a President who has continued the horrific policies we were ALL so outraged over during the Bush years. To use the right to vote for those whose right is being taken away from them.
His solution is likely to get votes for this President as people of conscience need a way to be able to feel their vote for someone whose policies on all of the above stated issues, are extremely disturbing to say the least.
I do not wish to go down in history as the German people have, with future generations asking 'but why didn't the American people DO something, why did they not speak out'?
A detainee at Guantanamo Bay died last week. You should read his story which will go into the history books, and then tell us how any decent human being could not be outraged at what this country is doing to other, innocent human beings. And at the fact that not a single War Criminal has been prosecuted.