Dick Cheney

3-2-1 Beck: Another Bin Laden Attack Is America’s Only Hope

Posted by on July 1, 2009 at 9:01 am. 15 Comments :

It’s come to this…Glenn Beck and his guest Michael Scheuer have finally admitted their deepest yearnings. The ticking clock at the beginning of Beck’s show takes on a whole new meaning. It is a suggestion for a remedy for our diseased nation that is so far gone now that there is only one solution: Another 9/11.

BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won’t see the error of their ways?

SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not — the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only — it’s an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

BECK: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

I’m sure Bin Laden appreciates Beck’s advice. But isn’t it a bit shocking that Beck’s counsel to Bin Laden is to refrain from attacking the U.S. because it would benefit the country by motivating Americans to demand protection against such an attack? So he is saying that, while it is contrary to Bin Laden’s interests to attack us, it is in accord with America’s (and Beck’s) interests. He actually believes that the slaughter of untold thousands of innocent Americans is not only beneficial, but is “the only chance we have.”

Beck is now adding his voice to those of The Republican Advance Team For Terrorism. This is a group led by Dick Cheney who has been busily promoting the notion that America is “less safe” under the Obama administration so it would be a good time to attack. With Beck’s participation, it is now not only a good time to attack, it is also good policy.

And this guy is still on the air because…..???

[Update] The professional journalists of television news, whose contributions to the public store of knowledge are so indispensable, failed to cover this story. A former CIA terrorism specialist and a prominent cable news host agree that the U.S. needs to be attacked, and not one TV newsroom finds this newsworthy. The only place a television viewer would have seen this story is on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I don’t ever want to hear anyone complain again about The Daily Show being regarded as superior to the conventional media.

The Republican Advance Team For Terrorism

Posted by on May 25, 2009 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

In the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people. They have been blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama’s policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, torture, etc.) will result in another 9/11. It is a persistent chorus from those who brought us the first 9/11, insisting that Obama is making the country less safe.

On the surface, these panicky critiques could be characterized as warnings to the administration to change course. However, the underlying purpose of this rhetoric is actually to set themselves up to blame Obama should the unthinkable occur. But, in effect, and by their own words, they seem to be up to something even worse. They seem to be signaling to Al Qaeda that now is the time to strike. Take note of what Dick Cheney said on this five years ago:

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

That quote always made me wonder if Cheney was admitting that Al Qaeda perceived weakness in the Bush administration nine months after it had assumed power and, thus, took it as an invitation to attack. However, that would presume a greater degree of honesty and self-reflection than Cheney has ever been known to exhibit. No, he was doing the same thing then that he is doing now. Stoking fear that Democrats are leading us down a path of doom. This time, with Democrats actually in power, Cheney is accelerating the rhetoric, and is bringing along reinforcements to alert the terrorists that America is “less safe” and therefore vulnerable.

Cheney: “It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe.”

Mitt Romney: “It’s the very kind of thinking that left America vulnerable to the attacks of Sept. 11th.”

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC): “I knew by the second day that America was less safe.

Laura Ingraham (Fox News): “I think you can make a pretty compelling case that we’re less safe today.”

John Boehner: “I think this is a pre-9/11 mentality, and I think it’ll make our nation less safe.”

Karl Rove: “They’re doing the wrong thing for our country, they’re doing the wrong thing for our men and women in uniform, and they’re making us less safe.

David Gregory (Meet the Press): But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?
Newt Gingrich: Absolutely.

Speaking of Newt Gingrich, in 2002, he castigated Al Gore for making a speech that criticized George W. Bush. Gingrich said that it was “well outside the mark of an appropriate debate” for a former vice-president to allege that the current president is making the country less safe. Today, of course, Gingrich is heralding Cheney for doing just that.

The questions we need to ask are these: If you were a terrorist, what would you make of all of this talk? Would it embolden you? Would you view it as an invitation? What point are Republicans trying to make? If they really believe that America’s defenses are weakening, is there a strategic purpose to broadcasting that to our enemies?

The dueling speeches from Obama and Cheney last Thursday presented a stark contrast between the two approaches. Obama offered a strong, fact-based defense of his national security agenda. Cheney reiterated the same old innuendo and fear mongering for which he is so well known. McClatchy’s Washington bureau published a point-by-point article highlighting Cheney’s departure from reality.

On the other hand, the New York Daily News published a hilariously stupid column asserting that Cheney mopped the floor with Obama. The author, Michael Goodwin, praised Cheney’s use of what Goodwin called the “most compelling” fact: “no successful attacks on America since 9/11.” There were also no Bigfoot sightings or asteroid collisions, but I’m not sure that Bush gets credit for that either. And, of course, Goodwin concluded his tripe with the approved message of the day: Obama has “been warned his policies will make it more likely we will be hit again.”

This is the dominant theme of the Republican Party today. This is a party and a philosophy that has told us that our enemies hate us for our freedom and our principles. It’s a party whose actions then led to constraining our freedom and violating our principles via the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, torture, etc. It is as if they concluded that, since the terrorists hate us for our freedom, all we have to do is to be less free and they won’t hate us anymore.

The thread that runs through the Republican messaging is that America is less safe under Obama’s leadership. They are hammering the point that he has made the nation weaker and more susceptible to attack. They are broadcasting this message to the world as they advocate for policies that the world detests. So I still have to ask: What on earth are they trying to do?

How does announcing to the terrorists that they believe our nation is becoming weaker make us safer? Do they even care? Are they just pasting a big bulls eye on America and hoping for an “I told you so” moment? I desperately hope that that’s not the case, but there aren’t many other plausible explanations.

The New Face Of The Republican Party

Posted by on February 4, 2009 at 2:03 pm. 1 Comments :

It is now all of two weeks into the administration of Barack Obama, and already the media is heralding the end of the honeymoon. Considering that on the day of the inauguration, Chris Wallace of Fox News suggested that Obama wasn’t actually president at all because of the mis-articulation of Chief Justice Roberts during the oath, I’m not certain that the honeymoon didn’t end before it ever began.

The failure of the Obama presidency should be welcome news to some of his critics. Rush Limbaugh confessed to hoping for such an outcome. That admission created something of a stir, but the result seems to be that Limbaugh has emerged as the new leader of the Republican Party. He has taken his place at the top of the Party’s hierarchy and even allows members of Congress an audience wherein they can profess their allegiance and kiss his ass ring.

Obama recently told a gathering of Congress critters that “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Obama was criticized by some Democrats because these remarks just serve to elevate Limbaugh by taking him on. I agree with that analysis, but not that it deserves criticism. It can only help Democrats to elevate Limbaugh and make him the logo of the Republican brand.

The rest of the field isn’t much better than Limbaugh. Sarah Palin still pokes her perky head up every few days to keep her name in the news. And Joe the Plumber … er … journalist … er … political strategist just seems to keep finding new ways to embarrass himself and the Party he has come to represent.

GOP alums aren’t helping either. George Bush has moved into Dick Cheney’s secret, undisclosed location and has not been seen or heard since just after Obama’s inauguration (on second thought, maybe that’s how he’s helping). Cheney, on the other hand, has emerged from his lair wearing a sandwich board that says “REPENT! The end is NEAR!”

And, as always, Fox News remains the Public Relations arm of the Republican Party. Glenn Beck has arrived and is settling in comfortably with daily derision directed at Obama and his still forming team. Bill O’Reilly has declared war on the New York Times, presumably because he can’t keep waging his war on Christmas in February – and he must have a war raging at all times. And Chris Wallace, given a brief ten minutes with the President, uses part of it to ask if he is too thin-skinned because he told a joke about Fox News. Obama responded by stating the obvious:

“I think it’s fair to say that I don’t always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but that’s part of how a democracy is supposed to work. We’re not all supposed to be in lock step here.”

The rightist echo chamber has already seized on these remarks asserting that Obama has insinuated that all of the media, other than Fox News, are in lock-step with the White House. Of course that is not what he said at all, and just watching the various news networks would reveal how shallow that analysis is. What is inescapable is the fact that Fox alone has a lock-step ideology. Despite false claims of liberal bias, other networks have much more diverse programming and personalities. CNN has Lou Dobbs, MSNBC has Joe Scarborough.

Only Fox has a 100% ideologically pure schedule. And it is Fox that is home to the Limbaughs, Palins, Wurzlebachers, Becks, Hannitys, O’Reillys, etc., who, due to the absence of real political leadership, are the new faces of the Republican Party.

Sarah Palin: Beauty Queen At The Debate

Posted by on October 3, 2008 at 12:42 pm. NO Comments :

With a brilliant smile and a confident swagger, Sarah Palin faced Joe Biden, and America, in the first and only vice presidential debate. But the face she presented was that of shallow Pollyanna with a woefully insufficient grasp of issues and facts.

Let’s set aside for the moment that she was flatly wrong when she said that there were fewer troops in Iraq than before the Surge. And never mind that she doesn’t know the name of the American commander in Afghanistan. Palin’s big problem was that she outright refused to answer the questions that were asked. Now, that is a venerable debate tactic and, when used skillfully, can be quite effective and undetectable. However, when Palin did it she clumsily announced that she was changing the subject, and then proceeded to deliver her memorized talking points.

What might have been an enlightening exchange between the candidates was severely constrained by a format and a moderator that discouraged direct interaction. The question arises as to whether Gwen Ifill was cowed by allegations that she would be partial due to the upcoming publication of her book on race in American politics. We may never know if that’s the case, but we do know that Ifill was a virtual non-entity on the stage and failed to ask probing follow-ups of either candidate. That could explain why Palin expressed such satisfaction with the event in her closing remarks:

“I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.”

First of all, she wasn’t asked any tough questions and I suspect that that is what she really liked. Secondly, the Mainstream Media to which she refers doesn’t apply filters to her interviews. The Gibson and Couric affairs simply allowed her to speak on her own, and any resultant embarrassment was of her own doing. Thirdly, her impression of speaking to the American people appears to rely heavily on the help she receives from her speech writers and a teleprompter.

Her statement above is a thinly veiled declaration that she intends to have no further association with the media for which she is so dismissive. I predict that she will have maybe one more interview with a reputable national journalist (probably Brian Williams), then will scurry off to the more comforting embrace of comrades like Hannity and Limbaugh and the Washington Times. By November 4th, she will not have had a single open press conference for the entire election cycle.

The fact that she relates so closely to Dick Cheney, whose warped and unconstitutional view of the Vice Presidency she shares, alarmingly foreshadows the sort of secretive cabal she seems even now to be shaping. The last thing this country needs is another administration that aspires to conceal itself and its actions at every turn and reside outside of public view in a secret undisclosed location.

In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset: Reprise

Posted by on September 11, 2008 at 8:55 am. 2 Comments :

[On September 11, 2006, I wrote an essay about how the American perception of its place in the world supposedly shifted after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I reprint it here today because, sadly, it’s still true.]

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it.

The Next American Fuhrer

Posted by on July 23, 2007 at 4:43 pm. 9 Comments :

Befitting a nation that prides itself on its entrepreneurial creativity, the United States is preparing the way for a uniquely American innovation in governance: a democratically elected dictator. And neither politicians, nor judges, nor journalists, are rising to oppose the coming tyranny.

This ominous prophecy of political thralldom is not a product of party or partisanship. Personalities are irrelevant. The threat hovers over the office of the presidency as it has been defined by the current occupant.

George Bush, aided by puppet master, Dick Cheney, has blazed a trail of executive power that is unprecedented. Together they have reshaped the presidency into a virtual monarchy. The founding fathers strove mightily to craft an executive that was accountable and vulnerable to the counterbalancing of coequal branches of government. They would certainly not approve of the measures that Bush has employed to demolish their long enduring work.

By consolidating power in the White House, BushCo is advancing an interpretation of American government that is openly hostile to the Constitution. This is more than a theoretical exercise. The principles advocated by all the President’s men and women have already been put into practice and their issue reads like a draft for Articles of Impeachment. As the founding fathers might say…

“Let Facts Be Submitted To A Candid World.”

  • Falsifying evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify an unlawful war of aggression.
  • Directing the exposure of a covert CIA agent in time of war.
  • Using presidential signing statements to circumvent laws passed by Congress.
  • Illegal wiretapping and surveillance conducted against American citizens.
  • Extraordinary rendition and torture of detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
  • Illegal suspension of the right of habeas corpus.
  • Destruction of executive branch records whose preservation is required by law.
  • Unlawfully terminating U.S. attorneys for political purposes.
  • Employing executive privilege for the purpose of obstructing justice.
  • Suborning perjury by administration officials.
  • Threatening to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act for reporting government wrongdoing.
  • Dereliction of duty and failure to faithfully execute the office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This administration behaves as if there are no other branches of government, and no public opinion either. They espouse a philosophy that views the President as a “unitary executive.” In this view the President is not subject to Congressional oversight; laws are complied with on a voluntary basis; every act or document produced by the executive branch is regarded as privileged and secret; and the courts function as rubber stamps for the de facto despot.

This behavior is contrary to the values of a free, democratic society. Left unchecked it will lower the bar of governance and serve as a precedent for future administrations. The one sure way to vacate that precedent is to vacate the president – that is, to impeach Bush and/or Cheney. Many people may consider that to be a fanciful pipe dream. Congressional leaders have all but rejected the notion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is “off the table.” Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate, says that even a censure would be a waste of time.

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?
7/5/07 Favor Oppose Undecided
All Adults 45% 46% 9%
Voters 46% 44% 10%
Democrats 69% 22% 9%
Republicans 13% 86% 1%
Independents 50% 30% 20%

The American people, however, have a completely different take on the matter, as reported in a new poll by the American Research Group. When asked if they favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush, 45% are in favor, 46% oppose. Those numbers include wide majorities of Democrats and Independents. The results are even worse for Cheney for whom there is an outright majority in favor of impeachment (54%/40%). In either case, there is clearly a sufficient measure of dissatisfaction to warrant the commencement of committee hearings to ascertain whether credible grounds for impeachment exist. Not to do so would be a dereliction of duty and failure of representative government.

The foregoing notwithstanding, Congress may well neglect their duty, ignore the public will, and decline to initiate hearings. Should that occur, the injury to the Constitution would still be an open and festering wound. While remedies like censure would be better than nothing, there is another path that ought to be explored which, as yet, has not been discussed in broad-based media.
Contine reading →

Meet The (Message Control) Press

Posted by on January 26, 2007 at 12:01 pm. NO Comments :

The trial of Scooter Libby, for lying about outing an undercover CIA agent, has always promised to deliver long held secrets of intrigue and deceit from the White House. And with the participation of so many figures from the media (i.e. Judith Miller, Matt Cooper, Bob Novak, Tim Russert, etc.), there has also been the tantalizing prospect of embarrassing divulgences from that arena as well. Now the first of those promises is being kept.

When former Cheney communications director, Cathie Martin, testified yesterday, she outlined the options that the vice-president should consider in response to allegations that the White House was manipulating intelligence to promote its case against Iraq. Her testimony included the following:

Option 1: “MTP-VP”, she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

I can’t wait to hear Tim Russert’s response to this revelation that his program was a preferred dumping ground for administration propaganda. Martin detailed practices designed to bury bad news and otherwise distract the press. Then she complained that reporters didn’t accept her word and even stopped calling. That speaks well of certain members of the press, but also reveals how transparent her machinations must have been.

In addition to cracking the door a bit on the VP’s media connivances, it was also disclosed that Cathie Martin is the wife of FCC chairman, Kevin Martin. In an administration rife with cronyism, it seems a little too convenient that the VP’s director of communications is sleeping with the head of the federal agency responsible for regulating the media companies she has been lying to.

In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset

Posted by on September 11, 2006 at 12:52 am. NO Comments :

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile.

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

Burying The Lede

Posted by on November 27, 2005 at 4:03 pm. NO Comments :

The The Los Angeles Times should pay my doctor bills for the heart attack they gave me by publishing an insightful, well-reasoned, and hard-hitting opinion column yesterday. Tim Rutten’s article, Cheney’s History Needs A Revise, is one of the best deconstructions of the Vice President’s hysterical hypocrisy I’ve read to date. In case you missed it, Cheney, after an insincere stab at advocating the right to dissent, immediately blasted dissenters as aiding and abetting the terrorists. He accused critics of the war of lying when they said Bush lied about pre-war intelligence. Even though that has been, in Cheney’s words, “…pretty well confirmed.” He went on to say:

Administration critics were engaging in “…revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety.”

“Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.”

And that critics were “dishonest” and “reprehensible.”

Rutten mercilessly pounds on Cheney’s own revisionism, hitting him with Curveball, torture, and his own desparation as the only BushCo rep with lower public ratings than Bush. And he wraps it up beautifully with this conclusion:

That’s why Cheney is right about at least one thing: Deliberately falsifying history for mere political advantage is a particularly noxious social perversion. It is, to borrow, his stingingly apt adjective, “reprehensible.”

But candid recollection and sober reflection do not amount to revisionism – unless, of course, you’re already committed to self-deception and determined to convince others to live with your lie.

So how then is the lede buried, as my headline states? You might expect that this thoughtful portrayal of current events by a significant newsmaker would have appeared in the opinion section, or in the news pages properly identified as analysis. You would be wrong. Tim Rutten is a media columnist and his articles appear in the Calendar section that contains the Times’ entertainment reporting.

This means I may have to radically alter my reading habits. Perhaps I should turn first to the Calendar for insight into the news, then pick up the opinion pages for entertainment, where their newest columnist, Jonah Goldberg, is best known for his fiction.

Cheney – Fear Mongrel

Posted by on September 8, 2004 at 8:15 am. NO Comments :

Vice-President Dick Cheney is warning Americans that if they “make the wrong choice” this November it will result in more terrorist attacks. This shockingly transparent attempt at fear-mongering does nothing to advance the campaign dialogue and, in fact, insults all Americans by suggesting that they cannot make a free decision without assuming responsibility for catastrophe if they are wrong. And, of course, there is only one “wrong.”

Cheney is not foreign to making such over-the-top allegations. He is, perhaps, the most strident purveyor of the universally rejected theory that Saddam and bin Laden were collaborators. He also frequently says that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

This view always prompts me to ask myself just what he means. Is he saying that in September 2001, with the Bush administration in office for 9 months, the terrorists perceived weakness and were, thus, invited to attack?

The sad thing is that, while I may ask myself these questions, no one in the media is asking them of the vice-president or the administration he serves.