Monday, October 22, 2007

Dick Cheney's Diktat

Crying Wolf

I resent my current status in life (forced labor) which restricts the time and energy to write my own stuff everyday. There is so much that comes my way, that that would be 'hard work', but rewarding. I am confronted at every turn with the temptation to take the written and spoken words of others and bend them in the direction of objective historical truth. My circumstances encourage me to yield to this temptation since it also saves a ton of time in proofing. It really is a cheap way out, but why re-invent the wheel?


And speaking of wheels. . .

Dick Cheney, our current de facto president who has never stood on his own feet and run in his own presidential primary campaign, yesterday blatantly reprised Bush's doctrine of preventive war. The same ingredients which filled Bush's rationale for the use of force against Iraq announced five years ago (plus a few weeks) were the headliners in Shooter's speech before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. These three paragraphs contained the fighting words heard and read this morning around the world:
The Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power is a matter of record. And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.

Given the nature of Iran's rulers, the declarations of the Iranian President, and the trouble the regime is causing throughout the region -- including direct involvement in the killing of Americans -- our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)
As luck would have it, minutes ago I encountered a real deal response to this unilateral and unconstitutional decree of Cheney's. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, Middle East editor of Foreign Policy In Focus, and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Writing weeks ago, Zunes anticipates Cheney's diktat:
Indeed, the United States is obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program – still many years away from producing an atomic bomb – while we support the neighboring states of Pakistan, India, and Israel, which have already developed nuclear weapons and which are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs. We blame Iran for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq yet 95% of U.S. casualties are from anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents. We focus on Iranian human rights abuses while we continue to support the even more oppressive and theocratic Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia. We attack the Iranian president’s denial of the genocide of European Jews while remaining silent in the face of Turkish leaders’ denial of the genocide of Armenians. One of the most important principles of most faith traditions is moral consistency. Few receive greater wrath in most holy texts than hypocrites.
More's the pity that my countrymen have fallen behind the timeline posted in the upper righthand corner of these pages: a timely impeachment of our two home-grown arch-war criminals would have, by now, provided us with credible national leadership. As it is, we are left with a couple of chickenhawks, crying 'wolf'.

9 comments:

  1. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy - (WINEP) is a pro-Israel, NeoCon-dominated think tank. Once again, Cheney was speaking before one of the warmongers' sheltered workshops.

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  2. The D.F. Prez continues to write checks no one will cash. He can't get the world to line up with him to back another war against alleged nukes. He can't get consent to set up his so-called missile shield in Poland. He can't even get Admiral Fallon to echo his jingoism.

    Our USA has lost all of its street creds with this gang in power.

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  3. Jonathan Freedland, Bush's Amazing Achievement:

    One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve.

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  4. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, is the former managing editor of Foreign Affairs and a Harvard Ph.D. (Yale B.A.), in Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?:

    The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

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  5. Can't go out on a dud war.

    Doesn't do much for the long-term reputation.

    Or, to put it another way:

    Dick's dick is shrinking.

    Time to attack someone else.

    Feel powerful again.

    Wha wha wha.

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  6. Just a short post to let Vigilante (and all of you) know I read here every day (and every essay and every comment).

    I didn't want my lack regular comments to lead any of you to believe I wasn't both interested and enlightened by your writings here.

    Keep up the good work.

    the Wizard...........

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  7. Maureen Dowd has figured out how to pronounce "Ahmadinejad". It's I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket!

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  8. In the column mentioned above, Maureen Dowd quotes Pat Buchanan saying on “Hardball,” that

    "Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how ... Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office."

    This is what I mean about those two war-mongers writing fraudulent checks left and right. Pete Stark was right (for about 36 hours).

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  9. Selective audience, let's hope he can't sell it to the rest of the media and that we've now undermined Faux News.

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