By Neil Lewis, Contributor 
Neil Lewis
I HAVE watched with deep dismay the universally negative tone of the articles and commentaries carried in the Jamaican media regarding the re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States of America.
I have been distressed at the disappointment expressed by many here, even strongly evangelical Christians. I have listened to and read the vitriolic commentary on him and his first presidency, which commentary has implied, or stated that every step of this presidency was a failure; the war in Iraq, the reduction of taxes, his stand for high societal morals and against abortion and homosexual marriage.
I have been disappointed at the voracity with which we have uncritically imbibed patent rubbish such as Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.
My observations are even more distressing when weighed against clear Biblical standards. Even for a non-believer the Bible should at worst represent several thousand years of social history.
Further, the lessons of secular history are more available to our civilisation than any other in history, unlike our predecessor civilisations we are able to see and measure with great clarity, the terminal impact of these very same ills on past civilisations as moral values were eroded by disorderliness, permissiveness and perversion.
Our civilisation has watched the world descend, as recently as World War II and the Cold War, into chauvinistic political and social anarchy while the silent majority 'dressed back' for the virulent and perverse to 'run things'.
I am more horrified by the implied acceptance, for the sake of an impossible religious tolerance, that instead of democracy we must condone the oppressive and suffocating political and social system of Islam while we condemn the 'narrow-mindedness and intolerance' of evangelical Christianity.
MYOPIA
I am disgusted by our myopia in failing to see that there has always been a blood price to pay for freedom, starting with the blood of Jesus Christ and that the Iraq war is a blood price for our freedom and that of the whole Arab world.
The same myopia that fails to recognise that, since the Iraq war, Libya has capitulated without another shot being fired in its direction but that Iran and North Korea have been emboldened by the chorus of media condemnation and European vacillation and their traditional political flaccidity over the war in Iraq and have, therefore, snubbed their noses at the international community's demand that they back down from the pursuit of nuclear weapons development.
One of the weaknesses of democracy as we practice it, is that it is by nature shortsighted and short range and tends to breed politicians who exist from election to election, who for the sake of re-election fail to make decisions in the longer term interest of the state.
I have observed this president implement tax cuts which he knew had little hope of bearing fruit in one term, unflinchingly weathering the impact of a costly war to stay the course knowing that economically it is the right course and that the deficit would yield surplus given sufficient time and stability.
I have watched as he took up a war which his father failed to pursue at a more opportune time to its strategically correct outcome. I know that he has saved the lives of countless Americans that would have to die in a future war or
terrorist attack.
I have been mildly amazed as he refused to succumb to the temptation to make a scapegoat of an innovative but overly bold defence secretary, understanding clearly the implications of 'the fog of war'.
I have noticed that even here we have failed to applaud this man for including in his Cabinet a black American of Jamaican descent in one of the most coveted posts in the Government, in addition to having a black woman as his second closest adviser and new secretary of state designate.
We would on the other hand raise hardly a whimper of criticism of a Bill Clinton whose Oval Office service from women was at a wholly different level.
GODLY HERITAGE
I have watched this courageous statesman seek a constitutional amendment an act unprecedented in modern times to preserve a basic no brainer tenet in society, heterosexual marriage.
I have watched as he has swum against the loud, bitterish, frothy, spectacular tide of media and vocal minority opinion and tap the pulse of righteousness and morality to stand firmly and unequivocally against the modern holocaust of abortion at its root by banning stem cell research. I see a president unashamedly committed to God, wife, family and the future integrity of his nation, re-elected by the normally silent and reticent moral majority and I thank God that the world's most powerful nation is run by such a man as this, at such a time as this, because I wish to leave a godly heritage for my children and their children's children here in Jamaica.
Neil Lewis is a retired major from the Jamaica Defence Force and a director of Operation Save Jamaica.
