Last night on Fox News, Sean Hannity welcomed Dick Cheney to the program by accusing President Obama of “apologizing for America” during a speech at West Point where the President repeatedly extolled our nation’s exceptionalism. Having set a decidedly negative tone, Hannity commenced the interview with a question that was merely a set up for Cheney to agree with Hannity’s oh-so-patriotic opinion that “America is in decline.” Cheney obliged with an opening rant that included his judgment that Obama is “a very, very weak president. Maybe the weakest, certainly in my lifetime.”
This represents the unique brand of pseudo-patriotism practiced by rightist hacks like Hannity and Cheney who regard the acknowledgement of past mistakes, and the lessons learned from them, as sacrilege, but are comfortable maligning the country and its leaders as being mired in weakness and decline. And Cheney doesn’t mince words either. The man who openly lied in order to wage a phony war in Iraq that cost the lives of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, is now calling Obama’s foreign policy “stupid” and “unwise.”
Cheney went on to criticize Obama for pulling out of Afghanistan with the peculiar charge that “he hates to use military power.” Is that supposed to be in contrast to Cheney’s infatuation with it? Clearly, he believes that the United States should remain eternally deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and any other country he feels like dominating. And he seems to have no perspective over time of the consequences of his war mongering. In fact, the lessons he believes we should have learned from pre-war Afghanistan are sharply removed from historical reality.
“Remember there was a time back in the eighties when the United States was supporting the Afghan Mujaheddin against the Soviets. We had help from others doing that. We ultimately succeeded and then everybody turned around and walked away from Afghanistan. And, of course, then they had a civil war, the Taliban came to power. Ultimately Osama Bin Laden found safe haven there.”
Is it possible that Dick Cheney is so irredeemably delusional that he’s forgotten that Osama Bin Laden was the Mujaheddin leader that the U.S. was supporting in the fight against the Soviets? Bin Laden didn’t just find safe haven in Afghanistan, as if he stumbled over it. He was instrumental in toppling the previous government and installing a friendly new regime (the Taliban), with aid from the Reagan administration. But perhaps the most stupifyingly brain-dead remark in the whole bitch session with Hannity, was Cheney’s assessment of Obama’s grasp of history:
“It’s as though he wasn’t even around when 9/11 happened.”
Seriously? This is coming from the de facto head of an administration that, both literally and figuratively, was not around when 9/11 happened. They ignored an intelligence report with the actual headline “Bin Laden Determined to Strike In U.S.” This arrived a month before 9/11, while President Bush was on a month-long vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Then, while allowing Bin Laden and other Taliban leaders to escape, they started another war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Shameless self-promotion…
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Finally, it is also important to note that the president that Cheney regards as the weakest in his lifetime is the one who had to clean up the failures of the Bush/Cheney administration. That included disposing of Bin Laden (and dozens of other Al Qaeda operatives), who evaded Cheney’s reach for eight long years. And now that Obama is committed to ending the wars that Cheney and Bush started without having an exit plan, he is being criticized by Cheney as weak? That’s a little like setting your house on fire and then shouting epithets at the firefighters who show up to put it out.
Obama is “a very, very weak president. Maybe the weakest, certainly in my lifetime,” sez Dickie. Oh, my Lord Emperor — surely you were around when Franklin Pierce was president? I think you must have been ten.
Actually, Pierce should be able to rest easily — it took a hundred and fifty years, but someone finally dropped lower than Pierce. After all, Pierce was just a do-nothing who let all of his advisers tell him what to do, and he never had the guts to assert his own will. Hey, wait a minute…
Someday a grad student in either history or political science will sit down to do a PhD dissertation in Cheney’s public life. Based on what we know today, as the public record, it won’t be a pretty sight. Between Cheney and Rumsfeld, they pretty well destroyed the presidency of George W. Bush.
Cheney probably will be see by history as the Republican Party’s Rasputin, or Cardinal Richleau.
Gene
Well, Dick 5 Deferments Cheney never had a Soul and his Heart was stolen from another so it’s the trifecta of Inhumanity.
I don’t think he actually heard the speech, in fact it’s obvious he wasn’t paying attention at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/us/politics/transcript-of-president-obamas-commencement-address-at-west-point.html?_r=0
I think that was one of the best speeches he’s ever given. That was probably one of the best speeches written in several years. Re-reading the transcript there, vindication in voting for him never felt so good. I guarantee this is a speech that’ll be in the history books, this is going to be the manual for 21st century leadership in this country. If you missed it I strongly urge you to read it, you’ll know why he’s a great leader and why the bullshit just doesn’t hold water. It’s worth the read, exceptional speech and exceptional reasoning-this is why he merits the office. No joke, this is the stuff history is made of.
Of course, none of the FoxPods will pay attention to the speech. Unless Obama clearly says (in baby talk, naturally, so Sean Hannity can understand it without having to depend on his four-year-old expert), that (1) he was born in Kenya and really is an illegal immigrant, (2) that he was personally responsible for every single death that took place since the dawn of the 21st century, (3) ObamaCare was the worst idea that ever came down the pike, and, oh yes, (4) Benghazi was his idea from the get-go and he planned for it to take place exactly on September 11, then, the FoxPods will refuse to hear any of it. Which won’t stop the FoxPods from claiming that the speech included just this language. Pathetic, really…
“Irredeemably delusional” was worth the price of admission. Thanks, Mark.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/29/bush-counterterrorism-czar-bush-cheney-rumsfeld-all-committed-war-crimes/
Mr Cheney obviously missed the part of the speech where the President said “Just because you have the biggest hammer doesn’t mean every problem is a nail”. He would have loved that.
I know! How about a Jeb Bush/ Liz Cheney ticket?
ow about a Ted Cruz Sarah Palin ticket? That should get the blood flowing, people jumping up and down.
Oh God why Mr. Vice President why don’t you just die, already.