Posted on 05/13/2009 1:01:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Dick Cheney is out there. He is defending torture, dissing Colin Powell, and genuflecting before radio personality Rush Limbaugh as the high priest of what's left of conservatism. His refusal to go quietly, unlike his much-reviled boss, is risky. He was a laugh line more than once at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner.
But the media's focus on the sheer spectacle of the ex-veep's antics, and on the Republican vs. Democrat feud he's stoking, underestimates the way Cheney's principles still inform many of the country's most crucial policies. Like the creatures in the "Alien" films, Cheney has planted some vicious spores in the bellies of his successors, which threaten to tear them apart as they mature. Can the new administration truly reverse Cheney's transformation of the United States into a 21st century empire, with the president an imperial figure above the law?
The former vice-president is now a more reliable laugh-getter than vote-getter. At the correspondents' dinner, President Obama quipped, "Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he's very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled 'How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.'" Guest comedian Wanda Sykes went further, saying she found Cheney positively terrifying. "He scares me to death. I tell my kids, I say, 'Look, if two cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney, you get in the car with the stranger.'"
This week's news is about the grand old pit bull's struggle to continue to define his own party. Cheney emerged last Friday to warn on a North Dakota radio program that it would be a mistake for the Republican Party to moderate its message. (Does that mean it is now radical?) Then on Sunday Cheney told Bob Schieffer of "Face the Nation" that it was a mistake to stop using waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation, and that they did not constitute torture. He also poked fun at Colin Powell, questioning his credentials as a Republican and expressing a preference for the waspish Limbaugh as the party's leader.
But don't dismiss Dick Cheney as a fading punch line, or as tragedy reprised as comedy. While the Obama administration has adopted large numbers of policies that directly contradict Cheney's positions, it would be a mistake to overlook Cheney's continued influence on the executive branch through the precedents set by the Bush administration. Among the former vice-president's most important legacies is increased government secrecy. Obama's Department of Justice continues to rely on an alleged "state secrets" privilege. It has thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing, on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state secrets doctrine was used by Obama's DOJ in an attempt to block investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing before a judge to challenge their imprisonment.
Although the Obama administration is pledged to withdraw from Iraq militarily in a way that Cheney would never have contemplated, it is just as committed as Bush-Cheney to spreading good cheer about the new government in Baghdad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the bombings by Iraqi guerrillas this spring the "last gasp" of "rejectionists," seeming to channel Cheney's allegation in 2005 that we were seeing the "last throes" of the insurgency. Red Washington and blue Washington both want to tell us stories about how Iraq will be OK and is just bedeviled by a few unreasoning malcontents who are on their last legs.
On a trip to Afghanistan in 2004, Cheney told U.S. troops, "Your children and my grandchildren will live in freedom tomorrow because of what you're doing today." He warned them of continuing threats there, however, saying, "Our coalition still has important work to do." He added, "Freedom still has enemies here in Afghanistan. And you are here to make those enemies miserable." Obama has, likewise, tied the establishment of a stable government in Afghanistan to U.S. national security, and pledged to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida (even though there does not appear to be any significant al-Qaida in Afghanistan anymore). Both Cheney and Obama tend to amalgamate al-Qaida (a small, mainly Arab, international terrorist organization) to the Taliban (a form of Pushtun fundamentalist nationalism with local concerns). Cheney's war in Afghanistan envisaged no end, and neither, apparently, does Obama's.
Many of Cheney's harshest policies were rooted in a conviction that small terrorist groups might well get hold of nuclear weapons or other very dangerous armaments, and that all necessary steps must be taken to forestall that eventuality, even if it has only slight probability of occurring. (Journalist Ron Suskind called this notion the "one percent" doctrine.) The Obama administration just forced the Pakistani military to invade the Malakand region and to displace hundreds of thousands of civilians in the course of shelling and bombing a few thousand Taliban tribesmen. Among its rationales for this massive application of force was that the Taliban had advanced too close to Islamabad, and, apparently too close to that country's nuclear warheads. (In fact, the idea that a small force of rural Taliban could take over the Pakistani government or get access to its closely guarded arsenal is fantastic.)
In the government's commitment to a doctrine of "state secrets" that protect the executive from the scrutiny of other branches of government, in the continued attempt to block lawsuits and release of important documents, and in the shielding of secret programs of torture, unlawful kidnapping and warrantless wiretapping, Obama is preserving policies to which Cheney is deeply committed. In configuring Pushtun fundamentalists in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as a mortal threat to the U.S. and potentially even a nuclear power, the Obama administration is picking up themes from Cheney's old speeches and running with them. Cheney may or may not win his struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. If we are not careful, he will win the struggle for the soul of the country as a whole.
I’m loving the liberals’ sheer terror of this man!
Thanks for the heads up.
It was the egomaniacal personality of Saddam that allowed me and hubby to correctly predict
1. the invasion of Kuwait
2. the first bombing of the WTC, and belief that NYC, D.C. and maybe L.A. were in his sights as payback for his humiliation in the Gulf War.
LESSON from ENDER'S GAME. If you are going to challenge a rat, you have to plan on killing it.
If we had let Saddam stay out there, he would have continued to foster attacks on the U.S. abroad and at home. Don't give me the line that al Qaeda was solely responsible for all the attacks. Saddam helped. Basic psychology of the pathological personality he had. We don't know yet exactly how he helped, but the magnitude of the 9/11 plan needed some state sponsorship or assistance to work.
“If we had let Saddam stay out there, he would have continued to foster attacks on the U.S. abroad and at home. Don’t give me the line that al Qaeda was solely responsible for all the attacks. Saddam helped. Basic psychology of the pathological personality he had. We don’t know yet exactly how he helped, but the magnitude of the 9/11 plan needed some state sponsorship or assistance to work.”
+++++++++++++
I would recommend if you haven’t, to read The Connection. The fact that Saddam’s IIA had diplomatic privileges all over the world, allowed that ROGUE state to officially aid terror units whenever and where ever they found that to be convenient for themselves. Gee, do you suppose Saddam found it convenient to oppose the USA and support the ‘arab street?’ We know that he funded homocide bombers inside Israel by giving $25,000 to the homocide bombers’ families. That is an undisputed fact.
Does anyone know how well or poorly Daily Kos is doing (apparently that is a media company also)? It is interesting to look up Daily Kos, Huffington and Free Republic on http://www.Alexa.com.
For instance Huffington is ranked in the top 500, FR in top 4,100 and Daily Kos in the top 5,300..
RealClear Politics is 7,174
Drudge is 837
Have read The Connection, and sent copies to our troops.
But the evidence in it is circumstantial, and not enough to convince those who believe Iraq War has been difficult and therefore should never have been started.
We faced then and still face a terrible dilemma when it comes to fighting wars. The military experts told us we needed much more force going in to prevent anarchy and supress insurgency more effectively at the outset. But to get more force we need a draft. A draft leads to factions that protest and riot and force withdrawal from the war, causing anarchy to occur later and insurgency to win.
Therefore, if you are going to win, you have to make do with the army you’ve got, no matter how hard and chaotic that is.
H.W. fought the Gulf War with Reagan’s army, and W. fought the Iraq War with Clinton’s army. As W.’s army gained materiel and expertise necessary for fighting a nonconventional war, their effectiveness increased; but now we have Obama leading our armed forces, and I doubt he can handle it.
W. had to lead the armed forces with a lot of people (most of the Dems and some of the independents and conservatives) trying to stab him in the back. Obama will have people on the far left trying to get him to quit.
On the plus side we have Resko and Fitzgerald providing Clinton with leverage over Obama, and that may provide some counterbalance so that he doesn’t commit some of the worst mistakes.
He will nail them with the truth! That is if the powers to be actually allow the truth to be told!
I have no faith in the Republicans to do the right thing. Who then but someone who actually has the balls to tell the truth. “The truth will set you free!”
Meanwhile, the rest of the GOP is looking for their gonads with both hands and a mirror and coming up empty! Eunuchs; one and all. In the 1800’s they would be hung for treason.
The Left knows Dick Cheney is telling the truth and that he has the best interests of our country at heart.
They are just hoping against hope that they can prevent the American people from hearing what he has to say.
At the least, they want to scream loudly enough to distract and divert attention from what Dick Cheney says to what they have to say about what he says.
God bless VP Cheney, and God bless our country.
Geez, a conservative Republican with stones who actually “speaks truth to power”! Somebody check the Hades weather forecast!
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