Victor Davis Hanson, whose articles for National Review I await every Friday like one thirsting in the desert, now challenges me to vote for Bush. Of course, I can't, even if it means disappointing my mother who knows Bush's support for the anti-gay amendment to our Constitution is playing hardball and no sane person believes, least of all the president, that it will pass. As much as one doesn't want to let down Mom, I can't vote for someone who supports, in theory, such an amendment. I am being queer-baited for votes. I resent that since I too am a citizen and supported the president and still support the war.

That said, Hanson has plenty to say about why a Democrat, meaning Kerry, should not get into office. Though I will not, cannot, vote for Bush, I do hope he wins. Why? Well, you know, the usual, like, uh, the struggle of civilization against barbarism. Hanson enumerates what Bush has accomplished so far:

The Taliban are deposed. Al Queda routed from Afghanistan and fleeing. Saddam and the Saddamites are gone. There will be more cooperation from Europe (Germany and France) despite liberal cries of alienation and American arrogance. Reconsideration of our military bases in Europe. Why should we keep them there? The effect of this reconsideration on the adolescent Old Europe that has to grow up and go it alone. Greater involvement with Japan, South Korea (North, for that matter), Turkey, and the Middle East. America has begun to give up the cynical, Cold War tactic of propping up very bad regimes in that region. Even Saudi Arabia has begun to feel the pressure and begin reform. Arafat has been ostracized for being the goon he is. The Bush Doctrine gave Qaddafi weak knees and now there has been exposed a nuclear proliferation market.

All these accomplishments, and more, will come to nothing if Kerry wins. He has every intention of going back to the Clinton days of appeasement and surrender and apologizing for America, and drooling at the feet of Hans Blix and Kofi Annan.

More likely, if President Bush loses, the war against terror will return, as promised, to the status of a police matter - subpoenas and court trials the more appropriate response to the mass murder of 3,000 at the "crime scene" of the crater in New York. Europe will be assured that our troops will stay while we apologize for the usual litany of purported unilateral sins. North Korea will get more blackmail cash, while pampered South Korean leftists resume their "sunshine" mirage. Iraq will be turned over to the U.N. as we abruptly leave, and could dissolve into something like the Balkans between 1991 and 1998. Iran and Syria will let out a big sigh of relief - as American diplomats once more sit out on the tarmac in vain hopes of an "audience" with despots. The Saudis will smile that smile. Arafat will be assured that he is now once again a legitimate interlocutor. And strangest of all, the American Left will feel that the United States has just barely begun to return to its "moral" bearings - even as its laxity and relativism encourage some pretty immoral things to come.

If the Democrats are angry that Bush, for a split second, makes use of 9/11 in his campaign ads, it only underscores how they don't take the war on terrorism seriously. They claim, hypocritically, that it is shameful to use such a tragedy for political gain. How so? Bush deserves credit for answering that tragedy by giving to the terrorists exactly what they wanted and didn't know they couldn't handle: war. They are hypocrites because they pretend to be ashamed by a reference to 9/11 when they deny that such an atrocity-a declaration of war-deserves to be answered by, well, war. Talk about shame!

Because the Democrats do not believe, nor support, the war on terror they are not able to credit Bush for his war record. Instead of finding his true weakness in fiscal policy and gay bashing (but, after all, Kerry can't seem too pro-gay: hint, a fag's a fag no matter what side of the aisle you're on), the Democrats, in true lemming fashion, fall all over themselves to condemn Bush for referring to his war record in a campaign ad, for referring to his response to 9/11, even as they condemn that very response. Though they don't come out and say so, except for Kucinich or some inane Kerry line like "he didn't get the help and approval of allies."

Hanson has me worried for Bush even as I worry about, and deeply resent, his catering to the far right.

The year continues darkly.