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From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left'))
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
Subject: Vice President Cheney
There are so many topics to talk about in politics at the moment – the war in Iraq, a myriad of political scandals, Supreme Court nominee Alito, just to name three – but one question keeps coming up for me again and again:
What's up with Vice President Cheney?
For all extents and purposes, Cheney is the head of a once powerful force in Republican circles known as the neoconservatives (or neocons), or those who wish to use American military power to transform the world into a place that is both safer and more secure for the United States. The war in Iraq, of course, was the first big test of this worldview and strategy. 9/11 provided the impetus for the neocons to really take the helm at the White House, driven by Cheney's close proximity to President Bush's ear and a Karl Rove-led PR machine that drove home the message that went something like the following:
Terrorists = bad.
Saddam Hussein = bad.
We must fight terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here.
Ergo…
Saddam's gotta go.
Cut to 2005 and we're still in Iraq and American soldiers are giving up their lives to increasingly sophisticated insurgent attacks. Recent developments have also brought us back to the run-up to the war, particularly the PR machine that was run out of the Vice President's office. Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, is under indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice in the matter of revealing CIA operative Valery Plame's identity in an effort to destroy the reputation of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who, lo and behold, tried to put the brakes on the Let's Go War! dance by refuting claims that Saddam Hussein tried to purchase from Niger materials that could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons. (Full disclosure: the British claim that Hussein actually did try to purchase these materials, so who knows what the truth is?)
So, Cheney is at the center of a war policy that, by the best of estimates, is not going very well, and is perilously close to a political scandal that is toxic to an already floundering administration. So what does he do? Go to Disney Land?
Nope, he's a sole voice in the wilderness in support of torturing detainees.
Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.
So I ask you, Phillip, old buddy:
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Berlin
Anyone want to chime in with their take on Cheney, the neocons, Iraq, and the Bush administration?
I *know* y'all got opinions out there!
2 - Eric Berlin
Really interesting editorial by Pat Buchanan called "Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis" really hits on many of the points made here:
3 - Matthew T. Sussman
Jonah Goldberg has a column on compassionate conservatism, but his patented metatangent is on what neoconservatism was all about in the first place.
Having said that, Cheney is just, plain, simple and bar-none scary lookin'.
4 - Aaman
From this week's Nation:
Scooter Libby: A Republican Nursery Rhyme by Calvin Trillin
Scooter Libby told a fib. He
Shouldn't have told at all.
Though not slimy all the time, he
Has to take the fall.
Permaslimer all-the-timer
Rove has got away.
Naught to plea to, he's now free to
Slime another day.
5 - Natalie Davis
The sneer, the sneer!!!
6 - G. Oren
Remember when we republicans thought that Cheney brought some gravitas to Bush's candidacy in 2000. We didn't know then that Cheney would be the Svengali or Rasputin (maybe Rove is the Rasputin?) for this administration. Cheney seemed so solid - remembering his performance as Sec. of Defense in the Bush I administration.
Pat Buchanan is right, and Cheney has turned out to be the intellectual power behind the administrations neo-con postions.
7 - Eric Berlin
As a solid Democrat, I was actually very pleased with Bush's foreign policy team in 2000, particularly with Powell at State.
8 - Hal Pawluk
The invasion of Iraq is definitely from the neocon agenda, and it was started in 1992, long before 9/11/2001.
At that time, our friends "Scooter" Libby and Paul Wolfowitz came up with a plan for their boss, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, to use military force to dominate the world: U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop March 8, 1992.
The neocons are real and proudly took the label themselves.
What the Heck is a "Neocon"? - Part I 03/01/04
9 - Eric Berlin
Interesting timing there -- you could see how the Clinton years were merely an eight-year block of time in which the neocon agenda got interrupted.
10 - Nancy
I haven't enough room to elaborate, but Cheney strikes me as one of the most evil, cold, & duplicitous men I've ever read about, and I know very little about him, really. Just that, like a snake, he's always in the background of where evil is. Maybe it's instinct. I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear someone has such a good (in his estimation) opinion of him.
11 - Chris
Evil is the word for it raising 2 filthy queers for daughters and approving of that devilish lifestyle. One engages in that filthy lifestyle the other flaunts her perverse fantasies about it. Absolutely disgusting!
12 - Phillip Winn
Nancy, lots of people in this world are varying degrees of evil, cold, or duplicitous. The question for most is whether knowing more about them leads one to think that they are more evil or less evil than at first blush.
As it happens, I think that a man who puts other men into plastic shredders, or a man who orders the execution of dozens of other men in order to send a message to others, or a man who uses poison gas on his countrymen, I think that guy is pretty darned evil, cold, and duplicitious.
Political machinations rarely rise to the level of "evil."
13 - Matthew T. Sussman
A man who stays in the background quite often, has a kink in his smile and is pro-war can come off as cold and evil.
He's just a classic Republican politican. Nothing more, nothing less. He is the first one, however, of his kind to be scrutinized in the unforgiving blogosphere.
14 - Phillip Winn
Most politicians seem cold and evil to me, actually, but I try to make allowances for the role.
Indeed, Suss! You've hit upon something there, I think. I've talked a bit about Iraq as a "media war" and I think that this administration is running into a bit of "blogging politics." It'll definitely be different from here on out. Better in some ways, and worse in others.
15 - Eric Berlin
I think it's too easy of a lable to say Cheney is "just another conservative." He's an extremely bright and capable politician and back-room operative and, as I've pointed out in the piece, he became the de factor head of the neocons when we became elected as Vice President. Not only that, but he transformed an already growing VP role into the most powerful its ever been in U.S. history.
He's also an unabashed hard-line conservative in every meaning of the word. I think Iraq is a classic example of ideological overreach, and Cheney will take a large portion of the credit, or the blame.
16 - Chris
I suppose an evil monster who thinks he's Hitler reincarnated and who launches a terrorist attack on a sovereign state, invades it based on a pack of viscious lies and goes on a murdering rampage killing spree in which over 100,000 civilians were brutally slaughtered is any better? Wasn't ruining his only countries economy not enough?! If that wasn't bad enough his deputy is a sick pervert (whose raised 2 sick perverts) who thinks lesbianism, incest and pedophillia are acceptable lifestyles. Time bush, cheney and the other murdering thugs of the bush regime went on trial for their crimes against humanity!
17 - Eric Berlin
Chris, that kind of hyperbole (and, in some cases, bigotry: there's no place for demeaning sexual orientation in civilized discourse) might make you feel good but it solves nothing.
18 - Scott Butki
He's not just a typical conservative.
He's the most powerful VP ever, one who by many accounts has been calling the shots for some time.
You can't say that's true of all past VPs.
(Or at least I hope Quayle wasn't calling the shots.)
19 - Dave Nalle
You know Chris, until the last sentence I had absolutely no idea what th ehell you were talking about, since nothing you said in the first part of that paragraph applied to any country I know of - certainly not the US.
Dave
20 - Dave Nalle
I just wanted to bring up the issue of whether Cheney really is an arch-neocon or even the leader or leading neocon as Eric suggests. The fact that he signed off on their Statement of Principles doesn't make him in charge. There's no question that William Kristol is their hereditary monarch.
When it comes to people associated with PNAC, you'll find their various position statements signed by all sorts of people who are clearly and definitively NOT in the Neocon camp in general. Their statement on Taiwan was signed by Caspar Weinberger and William F. Buckley who certainly aren't Neocons. William Howard Taft IV signed their letter to the president on Milosevic and he's as traditional a non-neo conservative there is. Others including Dick Thornburgh, Connie Mack, John McCain all associated briefly with the PNAC when they had an issue in common, but that doesn't make them Neocons. Cheney was involved in government before the Neocons rose to prominence, and during that period he was NOT associated with the Committee on the Present Danger or other precursor organizations to PNAC.
There is an irritating inclination to label anyone who is at all hawkish or a bit of a cold warrior or anti-soviet or in favor of an active foreign policy or the military as a Neocon, but it's just not correct in a lot of these cases. Cheney is an old style, hard-line hawk, but that doesn't mean he signs on for the imperialism and other dubious ideas which the PNAC promotes.
If you want die-hard Neocons in the administration, the first pick would be Richard Perle who's as Neocon as they come - and he had a major and very public falling out with Bush and his crew.
Dave
21 - Eric Berlin
Cheney's not the intellectual leader of the neocons, but he's certainly the operational leader in that he's the Vice President and has exercised enormous influence over his administration's foreign policy.
22 - Dave Nalle
Being highly placed in the administration doesn't make you the leader of the Neocons and being associated with the Neocons at one time doesn't make you a Neocon activist. A lot of people share some ideas in common with the Neocons and may have even signed on with them at one time, but that doesn't mean they're pushing the full Neocon agenda.
Hell, people keep calling ME a Neocon just because I don't support immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq. To the left anyone who doesn't agree with them must be a Neocon.
Dave
23 - Hal Pawluk
Just to counterbalance the "nobody's a neocon" in this thread, here's a list of signatories to a 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton, once again asking for an attack on Iraq:
Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense)
Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense, now head of the World Bank),
John R. Bolton (Undersecretary of State, now ambassador to the UN)
William Schneider, Jr. (Chairman of the Defense Science Board in the U.S. Department of Defense)
Elliott Abrams (National Security Council, Middle East and North Africa portfolio)
Zalmay Khalilzad (Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan, now to Iraq)
R. James Woolsey (not in the current administration)
William Kristol
William Bennett
Vin Weber
Richard Perle
They're real and they're still dangerous to America.
24 - Dave Nalle
A list which doesn't include Cheney.
But I might add that I never said that nobody is a Neocon. There certainly are a few of them in the administration.
But like any position group, there are people associated with it who aren't along for the whole ride. Not everyone is a koolaid guzzling nutcase.
And the organization isn't monolithic. Look at how Perle split off from the administration while others stayed.
Dave
25 - Eric Berlin
Dave, are you trying to say that Cheney's not a neocon? If so, how?
Cheney's pushed the hardest line of any senior level White House official since he took office in January 2001. He's a neocon because he's always pushed an aggressive foreign policy with the aim of regime change, transforming the Middle East into a cradle of democracy, siding with Israel (something I almost always support, by the way), etc.
I called Cheney the de facto leader of the neocons because he strongly supports their agenda and helped to implement it from the highest levels of power.