Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Ever since Ronald Reagan posed it to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election campaign, this question has been the measuring stick by which candidates for president take stock of the incumbent. It is as relevant and worth asking today as it was then.

The terrible events of 9-11 have made this question a troubling one for many of us. And while it is certainly unfair to lay the blame for those tragic acts on President Bush, it is appropriate to evaluate his presidency in response to that moment in history.

Not long after 9-11, Bush responded appropriately and in America’s best interest by moving troops into Afghanistan and destroying much of the al-Qaida infrastructure and removing their hosts, the Taliban. Using an aggressive ground assault, U.S. military forces were able, with the help of the northern alliance, to largely dismantle the al-Qaida leadership. World favor was still on our side and a primary terrorist threat was in disarray. The war on terrorism was off to a favorable start.

It was at this point that Bush and his foreign policy team went wrong. Instead of pressing the advantage in Afghanistan and securing the fragile toehold of democracy there, Bush pulled much-needed troop strength away and launched his incursion into Iraq.

Only time will reveal the real reasoning behind our attack of Iraq. Certainly it was a career-long goal of a number of Bush advisers and there was also the residual angst toward Saddam Hussein by Bush the son, but calling it a continuation of the war on terror is now ringing less and less true. Turning from our success in Afghanistan, Bush was convinced that Saddam represented a clear and present danger despite a U.N.-sanctioned oversight stranglehold and the United States-imposed no fly zones.

Instead of diplomacy and statesmanship, the Bush team, which had long ago chosen to use Iraq as its neo-conservative Petri dish, convinced itself that, with a little shock, a lot of awe and a healthy dose of corporate America, Iraq would soon evolve into a credit card-carrying democratic example for all of the Middle East to follow.

The tragedy of this rapidly failing experiment in Iraq is that it has been conducted under false pretenses. There were no weapons of mass destruction and, more importantly to the war on terror, there were no links to al-Qaida and 9-11. At a cost to date of thousands of lives and broken dreams, the Republican Party that purports to hold the sanctity of life near to its heart has created a travesty of misplaced judgment and values.

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President Bush has turned his back on the war on terror and taken instead to nation building of the worst sort, in the heart of Islam. Bush’s simplified good vs. evil world and “bring it on” bravado now has even managed to obscure the struggle for real causes and lasting solutions in the Middle East. The tension in Israel and Palestine remains the source of grief for much of the Arab world as is our oil-stained footprint on the holy soil of Mecca. The war in Iraq has now added yet another reason for them to hate and fear us.

Are we better off now than four years ago? Can anyone reasonably question whether the deepening sinkhole in Iraq has reduced the threat of terrorism to us or acted to incite new converts to their horrific cause? Our occupation of Iraq is now the source of genuine fury for much of the Arab world and has become the latest rallying cry for new recruits to the terrorist cause.

Now the Bush team is turning its attention toward Iran, in their view, another seat of worldwide terrorism. Iran with its 70 million citizens under a repressive clerical form of tyranny is about to go nuclear. This president seems bent on conducting a foreign policy in the Middle East that is chasing the symptoms of anger throughout Islamic homelands while ignoring the causes of that anger. Bush’s ignorance of history and his arrogance toward his role in creating it has not made our lives safer or better. Our invasion and occupation of Iraq now threatens to escalate the danger to our young men and women in arms while tipping the United States into a spiral of budget deficits and a diminishing world opinion of us. We can and should lay the results of these mistakes at the feet of this administration and use it to measure our president by.

I, like many, have been disheartened by the Democrats’ fawning ineptitude in the two years following 9-11. Their unwillingness to challenge this self-proclaimed war president has given this administration free rein, under the camouflage of terrorism alerts, to wage their far-right mission at home to dismantle our valued environmental inheritance and pad the pockets of the rich elite.

Some, as a result, are better off but many more of us are not. The Bush administration’s need to paint the world in their color pallet of black and white and to call us God’s chosen few denies the world’s complex realities and its demanding solutions. John Kerry has been spun by the Republican machine as indecisive when in reality he is experienced enough to realize that real solutions require listening and informed opinions.

In the end, I’m convinced that a decisive leader who continues to make the bad decisions that Bush does should not be re-elected. This November I’m voting for Sen. Kerry because, when I take stock of how much better I am now than I was four years ago, Bush fails the test.

Des FitzGerald is a resident of Camden.