Attacks on Obama ignore facts

In response to a letter of Sept. 15, “Obama unqualified on all fronts” (The Daily Progress, Sept. 15): I agree with the author that there are radical differences between the candidates, and that voters should decide based on the truth. However, the author resorts to using hackneyed attacks that have been levied against Democrats, and distractions from the real issues of this presidential campaign in arguing his case.
The truth is that Sen. John McCain supported the idea of invading Iraq soon after 9/11 and Sen. Barack Obama op-posed the war consistently, and public opinion on the war supports Obama.

The surge has worked in large part because the United States has paid, armed and turned Sunni militia that were fighting the Americans into a force that fights al-Qaida in their communities instead. This willingness to engage potential enemies strategically is what Obama has advocated, and it has been used successfully in negotiating the dismantling of nuclear weapons facilities by North Korea.
On the economy, the truth is that the Bush administration’s tax cuts turned a surplus from the Clinton years into a record deficit and did not help the economy grow. McCain’s economic plan is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and give them mainly to the wealthy, which would yield the same results.
Obama would cut taxes of low- and moderate-income families, who need the break, and raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for his initiatives to develop alternative energy and universal health care.

The allegation that Obama is a “quintessential liberal” is the same old attack employed by Republicans on Democratic candidates, regardless of the facts, for a generation. By raising trivial issues like wearing lapel pins, making allegations about Obama as a radical because of tenuous associations with William Ayers and falsely pinning Jeremiah Wright’s extreme positions on Obama, the Republicans hope to draw attention away from their disastrous record and from the issues that really challenge Americans.

I appeal to voters to really learn the facts, and avoid the empty rhetoric and scare tactics that some people will continue to masquerade as “facts” during this presidential campaign.