It seems unlikely an anarchist like myself would step into a voting booth and vote a straight Democratic ticket. A lot of unlikely things have happened the last few years. The World Trade Center came tumbling down, the world's only superpower was brought to its knees by nineteen suicidal maniacs armed with nothing more than scissors and boxcutters, and otherwise rational Americans began to think that maybe we did have something to fear more than fear itself. After several months of watching Americans whipped into a jingoistic frenzy by an unscrupulous media and opportunistic politicians, I was beginning to feel like the spaceman character in the cold war era science fiction movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still". The humanoid spaceman was observing undercover how people reacted to seeing his spaceship. A radio announcer was conducting random interviews, and one after another expressed the same fear and hostility at being invaded. When the interviewer approached the spaceman and asked him if he was afraid the spaceman responded, "I am afraid, but not for the same reason. I am afraid when I see people substitute fear for reason . . . ." The interviewer politely cuts him off, evidently because rational analysis does not attract an audience as much as fear and hostility.

With Rush Limbaugh's Chickenhawk Brigade leading the charge, and Fox News cheerleading on the sidelines, America's Heroes invaded Iraq in a futile search for weapons of mass destruction. Like King Kong stomping on the native village in a desperate attempt to find his blonde beauty, our Heroes subsequently plunged Iraq into a bloody civil war that cost the lives of more than 150,000 people. At the same time their actions have engendered so much hatred and hostility as to make me feel less secure about the safety of my family. I believe in democracy there are no innocent civilians. Even the ones that don't vote and don't pay taxes can suffer the same fate as those who do. For example, hundreds of people killed at the World Trade Center were citizens of other nations.

My disinclination to participate in a corrupt political process was overcome by evidence that a majority of the ruling political party was supportive of war, and the erosion of civil liberties, that was opposed by a majority of the opposition party. I had a choice between nonvoting, or choosing to vote for the lesser of two evils. I decided that the Republican warfare state was sufficiently more evil than the Democratic welfare state to justify my vote for the latter.

There were two reasons that motivated me to change my mind about voting. One was the humane imperative of saving lives. I don't expect a Democratic-controlled Congress to have any immediate impact on casualties in Iraq, but it may be an incentive for the Bush administration to withdraw troops sooner rather than later. I also expect Bush to come under increasing pressure from leaders within his own party to clean up the mess he made in Iraq before the next presidential election.

I have not deluded myself into thinking that Democrats are pacifists. With the exception of the Cold War and Vietnam, Democrats often supported military intervention in other nations while Republicans tended toward isolation. Bill Clinton's disastrous Somalian campaign, and the air war in the Balkans a few years later, are examples. However, Bill Clinton had sense enough to get out of Somalia, rather than "stay the course", when it became apparent events were not going according to plan. In the Balkans the US played a supportive role behind other European countries. Though Serbians suffered significant casualties, they were small compared to the bloodbath in Iraq. I am also well aware that a large number of Democrats initially supported the war in Iraq, obviously trying to have it both ways politically. However, as Ned Lamont's victory over "Fighting Joe" Lieberman in the Connecticut primary illustrates, the antiwar Democrats have more clout than the isolationist Republicans within their respective parties.

I also believe that if Al Gore was president there would be no war in Iraq. Al Gore could not have prevented the attacks on September 11, but there would not have been a neoconservative cabal in his administration which exploited the tragedy to advance their own imperialist agenda. To put this in perspective, I voted in this year's election because of my belief that if a few hundred "alte cockers" in Palm Beach County had kept their wits when they voted in the 2000 election, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and elsewhere would be alive today.

Another compelling reason to vote for Democrats was punitive. I strongly believe that the party which started and promoted the war should be made to suffer for its actions. This will also have a deterrent effect throughout the world. Leaders in democratic societies will have to think twice before embarking on imperialistic adventures. Elections in Spain, Italy and England have put politicians in other countries on notice that they cannot shed their nation's blood and squander their treasure with impunity. In this country neoconservative chickenhawks have been so thoroughly discredited that even Republican presidential aspirants would be loath to associate with them or their policies. Ironically, a magazine called The American Conservative contains an article