Dick Cheney’s Interests: Not Ours
In Salon today, I’ve joined the chorus of people objecting to PapaDick Cheney and his spawn Liz BabyDick’s op-ed claiming of Obama that, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
In addition to reviewing some of the so wrong things Cheney said 12 years ago to get us into Iraq, I look closely at two things few others have, both suggesting certain things about whose interests Cheney claims to represent.
First, while claiming to speak for America’s interests in Iraq, he actually cites the leaders of Middle Eastern countries.
Clearly, his temper tantrum serves, in part, to distract from his own culpability.
But note who else’s views Cheney cites? He claims he heard “a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel,” complaining about Obama’s actions. He describes a senior official in an Arab capital laying out ISIS’ aspirations on a map. He portrays those same figures in the Middle East demanding, “Why is he abandoning your friends?” “Why is he doing deals with your enemies?”
And he does so even while he mocks the notion of actually doing something about climate change, a threat that (in the form of extreme weather events) more immediately threatens Americans today.
Even while Cheney parrots the interests of Middle Eastern leaders and conflates their interests with America’s, he scoffs at Obama’s (belated) efforts to address a far more immediate risk for America, climate change. “Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change,” Cheney complains.
ISIS may be overrunning Iraqi cities, but extreme weather events are endangering cities in the United States and across the world. Much of the American West is struggling with extreme drought. Cheney, however, would have the president ignore this threat and instead prioritize the concerns he heard from his friends in the Middle East.
ISIS’ actions in Iraq are troubling — though it’s not clear that the US can do anything to fix it, certainly not now.
But the US has real problems here at home that threaten American lives and well-being. We really need to spend time working on our own governance before we decide to re-govern another country on the other side of the world.
The Dickster is a disgrace, beyond disgrace.
I love the headline of your Salon article. Congratulations on pointing out the effort to distract from the real problems facing the country.
The idea that Cheney all by his lonesome brought on the Iraq war is incorrect. It was a joint Washington political effort which may be said to have started with Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act. The idea later had the full support of not only R’s but also D’s, including Gore, Biden, H. Clinton and Obama when he was in the Senate.
Is the map put out by The Institute for the Study of War, the group funded by the State Department and other DOD contractors and whose 26-year old terrrorism expert was exposed for falsifying her credentials? I’ve seen their maps all over the media. Apparently, the ISIS offensive was known by the Kurds to be in the works for almost two years, roughly about the time the US was exposed for setting up training in Jordan and Turkey for same group. Sen. John McCain made a trip to ISIS-held territory in Northern Syria and posed with the rebels as part of his lobbying for more overt military aid.
dick cheney tries the BIG LIE propaganda technique on americans one more time.
when cheney and his clan attack president obama like this it means they are trying to pressure the president into doing or not doing some they are frightened of, something that could get cheney in more trouble legally or damage his reputation even more.
what might that be? i’d guess cheney is freightened of the release of the ssci report on torture which cheney championed, indeed demanded, of american forces.
It’s an allusion that they like to promote that it makes any difference who sits in the president’s chair, that elections matter. The evidence indicates otherwise.
To date, I haven’t seen a lot of big corporations making big money off climate change. Also, it’s a lot more fun to blow something up than to work on reducing carbon emissions from a power plant. Also, you can get immediate results with bombs, while you can’t do that with a seawall. So, there are lots of reason why Cheney acts the way he does. He is a complicated man, folks! Go easy on him!
Good point. But WHY does Cheney prioritize Arab interests over ours? And does he really? Or is he just looking for stability in the oil market?
You’re right on Cheney, but this is apparently where Obama wants to be.
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This is the predictable “forward” to which O looked in 2009. Trials for war crimes, Sedition and Treason might have quieted Bush, Cheney et al (like at Nuremberg). But oh, no, couldn’t do that, would not have been bipartisan and would have meant “looking back” at what they did.
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We all continue to stew in the pot Bush/Cheney put us in. All that has changed is the temperature where O has turned up the heat instead of putting out the fire. Climate change, sure, that too, but O has done precious little more on that front than Dick & Duhbya.
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On last night’s Rachel Maddow she labeled the rollout of the Cheney’s new organization – Alliance for a Strong America – as kind of a “minor league” effort. Now, that should not necessarily lessen pointing out the fallacies, flaws, and potential risks of this latest Cheney endeavor.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/cheneys-shock-with-lack-of-self-awareness-284058691736
Skip to 16:45 for more on-point, but the whole 22-23 minutes is kind of interesting. And note, I am not generally promoting Maddow – we all have our plusses or minuses.
They do not seem to have have secured allianceforastrongamerica.org, allianceforastrongamerica.net (Maddow got that one and re-directs), but allianceforastrongamerica.com which appears to be a chronicle of things Papa Dick got wrong about Iraq, etc.
Their site is: strongeramerica.com (but don’t try .org or .net – no, go ahead and try them).
David Petraeus has recently, and correctly, remarked that the US shouldn’t fly air cover for Shia militias supported by not only Iraq but also its neighbor Iran.
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Operation Iraqi Freedom gave Iraqis the freedom to readjust their international political status, and so they exercised their freedom and Iraq became an ally primarily of Iran.
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That should have put Iraq in the US enemy box, along with Syria, but that would have meant admitting that the whole eight-years exercise supported by both political parties, and a large segment of the American people, was a foolish waste of blood and treasure (which it was). The US converted an arch-enemy of Iran into an Iran ally — thanks so much, Uncle Sam.
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Washington pols are too stupid to see what even David Petraeus sees. So the US charade continues for many, that Iraq is a US ally worthy of support. Hey, let Iran handle it, I say.
Apparently Megyn Kelly destroyed Cheney and his spawn on FOX. Seriously.