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Cheney’s Daughter Attacks War Critics
January 23,
2007
By Keith Crane @ 4:40 p.m.
Although most of this has been said by columnists and reporters, I
thought perhaps it might help if just an ordinary person took
issue with the statements made by Liz Cheney in her
Op Ed piece in the Washington Post. It must be comforting
to Vice President Cheney to know that “the acorn does not fall far
from the tree.” While it is not comforting for the rest of us to
know that the Cheney family arrogance and willingness to deceive
is being passed to another generation, it is important to examine
Ms. Cheney’s assertions for what they really are.
“We are at war”:
We are in a war of choice that was started based on information
that was either made up out of whole cloth (African Yellowcake) or
mostly known to be false by the promoters of the invasion of Iraq.
We abandoned the war against those who actually attacked us on
9/11, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, in the rush to invade Iraq,
a country that was a threat to us only in the minds of those who
were looking for any excuse, no matter how trumped up, to invade.
If we are at war, where is the
“sacrifice” that the President says is necessary to win the
“Global War on Terror”? The only sacrifice has been made by those
who serve in the military and their families. We ordinary citizens
have been asked to do nothing but sit back and enjoy the tax
breaks while the contributors and friends of Bush-Cheney, Inc.
have grown even wealthier and more powerful. Actually, I may have
misspoken. We have been required to make a sacrifice: our civil
liberties under the Constitution the President believes no longer
is applicable.
“Quitting helps the terrorists”:
This ignores the fact that staying in
Iraq
may help the terrorists even more. We have provided the terrorists
with an ideal recruiting tool to convince young Arab men that we
are at war with the Islamic faith and that we intend to occupy
Iraq for the foreseeable
future. She also ignores the fact that our allowing
Iraq
to descend into chaos and lawlessness enabled al-Qaeda to
establish a presence and base of operation in
Iraq that the al-Qaeda leadership
could have only dreamed of prior to our invasion.
“Beware the Polls”:
No, the polls do not say that the people want us to lose this war.
But it is a recognition that those who have been in charge of the
war have been misleading and incompetent and that there must be a
different way the same old version of “Stay the Course,” now
repackaged by the President as a “New Way Forward”.
“Retreat from Iraq hurts us in the
broader war”: Having
the entire fighting capability of our military tied down in Iraq
does not help us in the broader war. We have neglected Afghanistan
to the point where there is a danger of losing that war. There is
mounting evidence that the Pakistani military is allowing,
if not actually supporting, the resurgence of the Taliban from
bases in Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf is not only the head of state but
is in direct command of the army in that country.
What about Iran? Ms. Cheney’s
argument that an American retreat will embolden the Iranian
President ignores how much our current policies have already
emboldened him. Is there anything we have done in Iraq or
elsewhere in the region, (think Lebanon) that has not made him
even more willing to thumb his nose at us? And what happened to
Papa Cheney’s prediction of August 26, 2002 when he said “Regime
change in
Iraq would bring about a number of benefits for the region.
…Extremists
in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad.
Moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability
to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be
enhanced.” Well, we
changed the regime. What happened to rest of the scenario?
We are already abandoning those
“brave activists” in Egypt, which Secretary of State Rice praised
for being a one of the moderate states in the
Middle East
that is a strategic partner against extremism. At the same time,
Egypt continues to
arrest and
torture anyone who opposes the current regime.
“Our soldiers will win if we let
them”: Why didn’t the
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld brain trust let the troops win before now? We
have been fighting this war longer than World War II and there is
no end in sight. Why did we commit too few troops to secure the
country? Why have we continually been told that victory was either
1) already accomplished, as in “Mission
Accomplished” (May 1, 2003); 2) in progress, as in Scott
McClellan’s statement “We are on the path to Victory” (May 1,
2006); or 3) “We are winning the war in Iraq”, George Bush,
December 18, 2005.
Ms. Cheney would have us believe
that if we will only show some courage now that all will be well
and the good guys, being us, will prevail. What we really need is
honesty, competence and true leadership that can move us away from
the terrible situation that we have created and envision a way out
that will inflict the least amount of additional harm to the Iraqi
people, preserve some semblance of stability in the region and
begin to reclaim some of the moral leadership that we have so
willingly squandered as a result of this misbegotten war.
I have lived through every
president since FDR. I have never seen the office so misused by
any of Mr. Bush’s predecessors, even Mr. Nixon. Now the
preparations are apparently being made to blame whoever succeeds
him for his failures. We should expect no more, or less. The
willingness to let other people clean up his messes has been a
hallmark of Mr. Bush’s character for a long time.
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