Bush strays from conservatives

To the editor:

Before the election, many thoughtful conservatives rejected the Bush candidacy. The American Conservative even endorsed John Kerry hoping that a Kerry victory would bring sanity back to conservatism.

It is instructive to read what led the magazine to this judgment: invading a country that posed no threat to the U.S.; granting war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations; financing the war with a deficit that will be passed on to future generations; cutting taxes primarily for the wealthy; developing immigration proposals that would import immigrants to fill any job that no American wants; degrading the image of the United States around the world so we are despised by people who used to be friends; and forcing foreign governments to disdain Washington to their own electorates in order to survive politically. In Europe, Bush is liked by about 7 percent of the populace. Throughout the Middle East some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States.

Bush did not think up pre-emptive war on his own, the American Conservative argues. The record, from published administration memoirs and investigative reporting, reveals an administration that was taken for a ride by half a dozen neoconservative decision-makers who were committed to war before 9-11 and who took great pains to shut out arguments from informed professionals. "George W. Bush" the magazine concludes, "has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism."

JANICE HAYS CHADHA, Cape Girardeau