“In The Name Of All That’s Good”: Why Can’t The Media Just Ignore Dick Cheney?
It is said that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Unfortunately in politics one of the oldest tricks in the book is to say and do something so insulting to the common sense and intelligence of the opposition that they completely abandon reason and strike back in an irrational and ultimately self-defeating manner. Dick Cheney is an old dog and is up to his usual dirty tricks, but I will not allow him or the bile that exits his mouth to incite me to irrational words or actions. Imagine a world without Dick Cheney in it. What a better place it would be. Well, at least can we just ignore him while he is here?
I have written pieces on several occasions decrying his inane ramblings on affairs domestic and international. The latest incendiary barrage leveled against the president, defending Dick’s War in Iraq. This ill-conceived and grossly mismanaged plan is universally acknowledged to be the deadliest miscalculation in modern history except by those who created it. The natural inclination in response to its continued defense is a sharp rebuke filled with profane invectives. But we will not go there; it only humors those who are immensely frustrated with the enormity of their failure.
Going to war is without a doubt the most serious decision that a leader must confront. It requires every ounce of intellect, reasoning, factual examination, political dexterity, diplomatic consideration, compassion, and strength of conviction that a mere mortal possesses. The Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was strong on conviction and marketing and short on all other counts. It was a bad decision that has seriously put this nation in a position of weakness and suspicion internationally, has shortchanged the American people by redirecting considerable financial resources away from investment in them and to wartime profiteers, has created a class of military veterans who struggle with deep wounds that have not been and may never be adequately treated, has energized a worldwide jihadist movement, and has left the millennial generation with no conception of a world without war.
Imagine a surgeon who removes the wrong limb, then picture the patient continuing to consult the doctor for additional surgical advice. Absurd you say, who in their right mind would do such a thing? The answer is the news media. That’s right, our information outlets. I don’t care what qualifications or credentials the doctor possesses or claims to possess — would you take your child back to this quack? Of course you wouldn’t, yet here we are being buffeted by the likes of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Kristol and other architects and apologists of a policy so fraught with miscalculation that in another setting it would qualify for criminal prosecution.
Dick Cheney has not the least amount of credibility on the Iraq situation, either this one or the one 11 years ago. He has audaciously illustrated time and again that he has no capacity for self-reflection, introspection, analysis or questioning on issues that involve life and death on a large-scale. These qualities are important to human growth; Dick’s growth was stunted at a very early age.
He has every right to speak his mind, which is the hallmark of a free democratic society. But he also has a responsibility as both a leader and a former leader in such a society to evolve, to contribute to the betterment of society by examining his actions and thoughts, and correcting his mistakes. Refusal to admit mistakes and challenge one’s own assumptions is the most selfish, irresponsible, and immature behavior that any leader, whether of a nation or a family, can exhibit and is reflective of insufficient capacity to lead.
No human is infallible; everyone makes mistakes, true leaders own up to them. Dick Cheney’s childishness does not deserve the print either he or his co-conspirators regularly receive. The only way to shut him down is to pay him no attention. That would be far more devastating to him than hurling verbal jousts that are richly deserved and instinctual to the well-adjusted and reasonable among us.
So I offer this plea that in the name of all that is good, can we please refrain from giving Dick and his droogies a platform? The world would be a better place.
By: Lance Simmens, The Huffington Post Blog, June 19, 2014
“Another New Low”: Dick And Liz Cheney Return To Trash Obama Foreign Policy
The neoconservative campaign to discredit President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in Iraq — despite the fact that the critics themselves started, and bungled, America’s military involvement in the country in the first place — hit another new low on Tuesday evening, in the form of an op-ed and accompanying video from former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz.
“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” the Cheneys write in The Wall Street Journal, apparently unacquainted with the concepts of irony or shame.
“Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War. Defeating them will require a strategy – not a fantasy. It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts – not empty misleading rhetoric,” they continue.
In fairness, if anyone knows about the dangers of substituting strategy for fantasy, it would be the vice president who promised that Americans would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq. And if anyone knows about misleading rhetoric, it would be the failed U.S. Senate candidate who can hardly go two sentences without uttering a crazy lie.
In addition to the op-ed, the Cheneys also released a video announcing the formation of their new 501(c)(4) “dark money” group, The Alliance for a Strong America.
“Threats to America’s security are on the rise. Iran is marching towards a nuclear weapon. Al Qaeda is resurgent, establishing new safe havens across the Middle East, including in Iraq where President Obama withdrew all American forces with no stay-behind agreement,” Dick Cheney says in the video, ignoring the fact that President George W. Bush was the one who signed the Status of Forces Agreement mandating that all U.S. forces depart the country by January 1, 2012.
Despite the Cheneys’ bluster, they are unlikely to sway the public back toward a neoconservative foreign policy; both polls and elections have shown that that bridge is burned. And Democrats certainly don’t seem too concerned with the Cheneys’ re-emergence on the national stage. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) put it on Wednesday: “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history.”
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, June 18, 2014
“Their Own Genre Of Stupidity”: On Iraq, Let’s Ignore Those Who Got It All Wrong
At noon today, President Obama issued his first statement on the deteriorating situation on Iraq. “This is not solely or even primarily a military challenge,” he said. “The United States will do our part, but understand that ultimately it’s up to the Iraqis as a sovereign nation to solve their problems.”
Obama left the door open to unspecified “actions,” but repeated that the Iraqis themselves had to seize the opportunity that the years of American effort gave them.
This will no doubt be greeted by the President’s opponents with something akin to apoplexy. They will be arguing that in fact the problem does have a military solution, that the U.S. can solve it, and that whatever is happening, everything would be better if we applied more force.
We have now reached the rather ironic situation in Iraq where we find ourselves allied with Iran in an effort to save the corrupt and thuggish government of Nouri al-Maliki, while the army we spent eight years training falls apart. I’m not going to pretend to have unique insight into Iraqi politics (I’d suggest reading Marc Lynch, for starters, as a way of getting up to speed on what has led to this point).
But there are few people who understand Iraq less than the Republican politicians and pundits who are being sought out for their comments on the current situation.
As you watch the debate on this issue, you should remind yourself that the most prominent voices being heard are the very ones who brought us the Iraq War in the first place, who promised that everything was simple and the only question was whether we’d be “strong” and “decisive” enough — the same thing they’re saying today. They’re the ones who swore that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda, that he had a terrifying arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that the war would be quick, easy and cheap, that since Iraq was a largely secular country we wouldn’t have to worry about sectarian conflict, and that democracy would spread throughout the region in short order, bringing peace and prosperity along with it.
We can start with the man on every TV producer and print reporter’s speed dial, John McCain. McCain does provide something important to journalists: whatever the issue of the moment is, he can be counted on to offer angry, bitter criticism of the Obama administration, giving the “balance” every story needs. The fact that he has never demonstrated the slightest bit of understanding of Iraq is no bar at all to being the most quoted person on the topic.
For context, here’s a nice roundup of some of the things McCain said when he was pushing to invade Iraq in the first place. When asked if Iraqis were going to greet us as liberators, he answered, “Absolutely.” He said, “Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is going to be paid for by the Iraqis” with their oil wealth (the war ended up costing the American taxpayer upwards of $2 trillion). And my favorite: “There is not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias, so I think they can probably get along.”
The conflict between Sunnis and Shiites is the central dynamic of the Iraq conflict, of course. Yet today, the media once again seek out John McCain’s wisdom and insight on Iraq, which is kind of like saying, “Jeez, it looks like we might be lost — we really need to ask Mr. Magoo for directions.”
Of late, he has a habit of walking out in the middle of briefings where he might actually learn what’s going on so he can head to the cameras and express his dudgeon. His current genius idea is for the administration to rehire David Petraeus and send him to Iraq, where he’ll…do something or other. He showed his deep knowledge yesterday by saying “Al Qaeda is now the richest terrorist organization in history,” apparently unaware that ISIS, the group sweeping through Iraq, is not in fact the same thing as Al Qaeda.
And the rest of the neocon gang is getting back together. Here’s Lindsey Graham advocating for American airstrikes — and I promise you that if the administration does in fact launch them, Graham will say they weren’t “strong” enough. Here’s Max Boot saying that what we need is just short of another invasion of Iraq: “U.S. military advisers, intelligence personnel, Predators, and Special Operations Forces, along with enhanced military aid, in return for political reforms designed to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.” Former Bush administration official and torture advocate Marc Thiessen is appalled that Barack Obama squandered George W. Bush’s glorious Iraq victory.
And Bill Kristol, who may have done more than any single person outside the Bush administration to make the war a reality, and whose predictions and assessments about the war were so spectacularly wrong they constituted their own genre of stupidity? He’ll be on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, so he can enlighten us about what’s really going on.
We’re facing yet another awful and complex situation in the Middle East where we have a limited set of options, and none of them are good. But whenever you hear anyone say that the answer is simple and that being “strong” is the key — as one conservative after another will no doubt be saying in the coming days — don’t forget what happened the last time the country listened to them.
By: Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, June 13, 2014
“The $6 Trillion Dollar Mistake”: The Iraq War, An Immoral Waste
A new study says the Iraq War has cost the United States $2 trillion. By the time all the veterans’ bills are paid, it will likely cost us up to $6 trillion.
Let that sink in for a moment. Per National Priorities, here’s an estimate of how much money is allocated for various programs in President Obama’s 2015 federal fiscal year budget:
Education: ~ $70 billion
Health: ~ $58 billion
Unemployment and labor: ~ $58 billion
Energy and Environment: ~ $35 billion
International Affairs: ~ $35 billion
Science: ~ $35 billion
Transportation: ~ $23 billion
Food and Agriculture: ~$11 billion
Think about what we could have done with $6 trillion. With a “t”. As in, one thousand billions.
Almost eight years ago David Leonhardt wrote about what $1.2 trillion could have bought, which was the estimated cost of the Iraq War at the time:
For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.
Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.
Next time a politician or pundit tells you that we don’t have the money to pay for cancer research or climate change abatement or housing for the homeless or extended unemployment benefits, always remember that most of these Very Serious People gladly cheered on and still refuse to apologize for a $6 trillion pointless blunder.
And that doesn’t even get into the lives stupidly thrown into the fire on both sides, when that money could have been used saving lives instead. What an immoral waste.
By: David Atkins, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 1, 2014
“This From A Trained, Known Failure”: Rumsfeld Thinks “A Trained Ape” Could Do What Obama Can’t
Donald Rumsfeld, whose mastery of foreign policy was amply displayed in Iraq, thinks that “a trained ape” could have done a better job handling Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, than President Obama and his team have. The problem, Rumsfeld told Greta Van Susteren, of Fox, on Monday night, is that Obama has not been deferential enough to Karzai: “The President has been unpleasant to him.” His entire Administration has dealt with Karzai “repeatedly and publicly in an abusive, unpleasant manner.” Is that perhaps what Rumsfeld considers untrained?
What is it about Obama that bothers people like Rumsfeld? He might ask himself, for a moment, why the idea of Obama—the President of the United States—speaking out of turn bothers him so much, and why the word “ape” sprung to mind. Rumsfeld worked for George W. Bush, who made something of a fetish out of talking like a cowboy; he spent a lot of time in office trying to out-preen Dick Cheney; and yet he just doesn’t like Obama’s tone. What’s particularly odd is that Van Susteren was asking Rumsfeld about, of all things, Karzai’s statement of support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea. (Rumsfeld called it “understandable.”) Haven’t we been hearing from Republicans that Obama is too passive when it comes to Ukraine—that he’s too pleasant with Putin, and doesn’t talk tough in the way that they imagine they would? Just a few weeks ago, Rumsfeld told Van Susteren that “it is U.S. weakness that has shaken the world.” He has also railed against the President’s supposed “apologies” for America.
Van Susteren asked Rumsfeld why it was so hard to get Karzai to sign a status-of-forces agreement—a memorandum that would clarify the legal position of American troops in Afghanistan. Karzai has withheld his agreement for months, despite warnings that it won’t be possible to keep even a residual American force in Afghanistan without one, and despite the approval of Afghanistan’s loya jirga. (He may want to insure he has a card to play after the upcoming Presidential elections.) Rumsfeld scoffed at the idea that Karzai had been difficult—this is where he talked about how “a trained ape can get a status-of-forces agreement. It does not take a genius.”
By that, perhaps, Rumsfeld meant that it does not take a genius to put American troops in another country. Indeed, it does not—Rumsfeld proved that himself, by getting our forces over to Iraq. The hard part can be getting them out.
“I realize these are tough jobs, being President or Secretary of State. But, by golly, they have trashed Karzai publicly over and over and over,” Rumsfeld said. This when Karzai had been so “friendly” during the Bush Administration; under Obama, it had all “gone downhill like a toboggan.” And so, as far as Rumsfeld is concerned, Karzai, a man whose country was invaded by the Soviet Union, was left “feeling he has to defend himself” against a United States government now in the process of withdrawing from his territory by supporting Russia’s invasion of a third country. And, Rumsfeld said, “I personally sympathize with him.” The Obama Administration has certainly made mistakes in Afghanistan, but the most questionable moves, like doubling down on troop levels early on, have tended to be hawkish—and, Rumsfeld style, they didn’t really work. A bitterness toward Obama that would be rich enough to evoke Rumsfeldian warmth toward aspiring Russian proxies is quite a thing. (It seems likely that Karzai is hoping that Putin can be a source of replacement cash, a process that has already begun.)
Rumsfeld may be right that it’s easier than it looks to make Karzai happy, as long as one doesn’t mind losing a good deal of taxpayer money to Afghan graft, and American lives in opaque standoffs in villages where we have no idea who is paying whom for a drug route or a piece of a construction project two provinces over. When Van Susteren suggested that Karzai’s support for Putin on Crimea was “a poke in the eye” to the Americans who had fought and died in Afghanistan to keep his government safe, Rumsfeld brushed her off. Karzai, he said, might have conveyed “his extreme anger” to the American government, but “he also said to the American people give them my best wishes and my gratitude.” How very pleasant of him.
By: Amy Davidson, The New Yorker, March 25, 2014
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