What I'd Like to See...

[jamesq]

...From the next POTUS.

1. No more torture, and an assurance that anyone who does will be prosecuted, regardless of what level of government or the military they're in.
   
2. Give Guantanamo back to the Cubans. You're in violation of the treaty anyway.
   
3. While we're on the topic of Cuba, could you normalize relations with them - at least reopen the embassy and start talking again.
   
4. Leave Iraq. Do it in a controlled fashion with a short time frame (less then a year). Iraq will still collapse into a civil war, but staying there for another 1/5/10 years is not going to prevent that.
   
5. Ditto Afganistan.
   
6. It's tedious policy-wonk stuff, but clean up the banking industry. A good start would be stomping on anything that even smells like a Ponzi scheme.
   
7. The environment? It says a lot about how bad things are in general that this is so far down the list.
   
8. Healthcare. Lots you can do here, but making it a single-payer system would probably be biggest bang for your buck.

The next POTUS will probably also be appointing at least three Supreme Court Judges. Could you make then moderates with experience in human rights and constitutional law?

Of course, I'd like this from either of the two candidates. I suspect odds of getting any of it are much higher for one then the other.

Aside: Wikipedia's two featured articles today are on John McCain and Barrack Obama. Kudos to the Wiki Gnomes.

Comments

[garething.livejournal.com]

About 2 and 3 above... they really need to open talks with Cuba, start trading with them, and get the hell out of Guantanamo, shutting down the prison and base and returning the land to Cuba. Having a trade embargo against Cuba, while trading fairly freely with China just smacks of hypocrisy, especially when the USA claims the embargo is because the Cuban government is Communist!

[ladyerwyn.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I think Education needs to be on that list also, because we have a lot of really dumb and ignorant people here who haven't learned things that they should have. Thinking critically is one of them.

[tyroticon.livejournal.com]

Forget Afghanistan. They've still got at least as much reason for staying there as they've had for staying in Korea for the last half century.

[jamesq]

I think the end result of our occupation of Afghanistan is that the country will go back to sectarian violence the minute we leave. I think this will happen if we leave today or if we leave in 10 years. The only difference will be in how much we've spent in terms of lives, time and money. If I thought we had a chance of achieving some sort of good result, I might change my mind. I don't think that.

Additional point against staying: Every X Canadian troops we devote to the Afghanistan campaign is X American troops that the USA can repurpose for Iraq.

Possible, slim chance reason to stay: If the UN decides that ethnic cleansing is likely and creates a task force to prevent it, as they did in Cypress. I don't think that's likely either.

[bungle-lord.livejournal.com]

One of the major problems with the Afghanistan campaign was that the Americans pulled a lot of their resources out of there in order to devote those resources to the Iraq campaign, leaving a vacuum for the various warlords. If even a fraction of the resources currently in Iraq were redirected to Afghanistan, a lot of good could result.