As an American citizen, I'll be voting for the Democrats in the next election, based on their record of fiscal responsibility and clear-eyed pragmatism.

When the Democrats decide to kill hundreds of thousands of people, they do it cheaply and efficiently. Using CIA-funded death squads, "smart sanctions", military aid to dictators, and surgical strikes, the Democrats have perfected the delicate art of global terrorism. The Republican emphasis on overblown budgets, deficit spending, troop-intensive campaigns, and fancy logistics is, by contrast, rather distasteful.

When you want to terrorize multiple populations of millions around the world, you can count on Democratic administrations to come in on time and under-budget.

This is deeply preferable to the spending debacles of Bush II and Reagan (not to mention the unnecessary deaths of fine young Americans). Indeed, there's an argument to be made that Clinton suceeded in killing more people and effectively terrorizing much larger populations than Bush has, at a fraction of the budget.

Most importantly, the likes of Clinton, Carter and Kennedy acheived a degree of subtlety in their killing campaigns. Bush's invasion of Iraq provoked worldwide resistance unprecedented in the history of the planet, but Democrats have managed to kill at least as many people, while maintaining solid reputations as moderates, even humanitarians.

As an example, take the differing approaches to Iraq. GW Bush and his father launched expensive and high-profile invasions that proved to be unsuccessful even granting the most charitable standards available. By contrast, Clinton starved over a million Iraqis to death, kept crucial medical supplies from entering the country, and bombed new targets every three days. Despite the awesome cumulative destructive power of this attack, Clinton's campaign was almost never in the news, spread out as it was over both of his terms.

In other cases, Clinton was even more efficient: by levelling a Sudanese factory that supplied most of Africa (as well as Iraq) with cheap pharmaceuticals with one cruise missile, he was able to lower the quality of life for an entire continent a relatively low cost. Meanwhile, the attack was off the news before its true effects could be felt.

The Democrats: more bang for your buck, and less backlash. After all: what are people going to do, vote Republican?