In response to Dick Cheney's idiotic attack on Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy, newly minted progressive hero Alan Grayson said what many of us have often thought: "When he was done speaking, did he just then turn into a bat and fly away?"
If only it were so easy to get rid of the former vice president. While Cheney may disappear into an undisclosed location for a period of time, before you know it he slinks on back, more excruciating than ever.
Look, there's Dick the guy who had absolutely no clue or care about Afghanistan for eight years attacking Obama for supposedly employing the Bush administration's strategy there, or at least one "bearing a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them".
Really? Does that mean Obama will appropriate other groundbreaking national security stratagems too? Should we expect to see Obama outing covert CIA agents working on stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? Hiring felons as his top advisers? Talking tough because he's perhaps just a bit insecure about dodging the draft five times?
And if only we were cursed with just one Cheney on the scene. The vice president's daughter Liz has also been popping up to defend that patented assault on our founding fathers' vision of our republic called ‘harsh interrogation techniques', also known by their maiden name: torture.
She would obviously know more about this issue than members of the CIA and five-star generals who have pointed out how wrong she is ad nauseam, because, after all, she was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. And this was obviously an opportunity she didn't get because of her last name, a job so important it had been vacant for over a year before she was installed and a position where her portfolio included ‘a mandate to promote economic liberalisation and American trade and investment in the region'.
Frequent TV appearances
With that job description, I'm quite sure she was charged with making decisions about how to treat enemy combatants day in and day out. I guess her background in ‘trade liberalisation' was why she was invited to appear on television over 20 times in a month to discuss war policy and give her ‘expert' opinion on how to treat prisoners of war and innocent bystanders caught up in the US' Guantnamo gulag.
Now Liz has even launched a new group, Keep America Safe, to oppose Obama's foreign policy. "The current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests", the group says in its mission statement.
Not to be outdone, Mary Cheney, the vice president's other daughter, has just started her own political consulting firm, which her dad and sister may eventually join, to solidify the Cheney dynasty.
All this might be comical if the arrogance and ignorance of the Cheneys hadn't ruined so many lives, including those of many members of the US armed forces abroad. I think the large majority of Americans who expressed their displeasure with Dick Cheney in poll after poll would be happy to see this clique of corruption, cronyism and cockeyed thinking just go away.
Bagram, perhaps? At least Liz seems to really like how things work there.
I'll sum up my feelings about the Cheneys by allowing retired General Paul Eaton do the talking. The description of the former US vice president by this 30-plus year army man, charged from 2003-2004 with overseeing the training of the Iraqi army, can pretty much be applied to the entire Cheney clan:
The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for seven years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1) Deny it. 2) Ignore it. 3) Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11. The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy ‘experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy.
Cliff Schecter is the author of The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him And Why Independents Shouldn't.
