Remember 9/11, Cheney style

Sheesh. I go away for a few days and y’all let all hell break loose. Can’t a News Writer catch a little break around here?

But no. I come back to find out that Darth Cheney’s ratings are on the rise? What the????

OK, so it’s still only 37 percent of Americans with a favorable view of the former vice president, who spent the last eight years hidden away in some undisclosed location but whom we now cannot seem to be rid of.

Meanwhile, GW, who never missed a chance to smirk at a camera, is nowhere to be seen. I repeat, WTF? And the Republican Party can’t get its shit together.

The Republican National Committee, which I think is still led by Michael Steele, seems almost irrelevant, while Rush, Newt and Cheney are all over the place calling for Nancy Pelosi’s resignation and claiming that torture is a good thing.

That, of course, is the basis for Cheney’s popularity rising -- he’s attracting the attention of the bloodthirsty on the right, the ones he and GW worked their magic on for eight years, scaring the bejesus out of ‘em so that now they’re absolutely petrified that the pansy-assed liberals in charge are gonna sell us all out to the terrorists.

It’s the same reason that Fox “News” has seen its ratings skyrocket since a liberal black guy became president. That’s pretty damn scary to certain segments of our population.

So anyway, Cheney was out there Thursday using that old tactic that worked so well for so many years for the GOP -- insert “9/11” every 14th or 15th word, just like Rudy Giuliani -- in a speech that could only be called preaching to the converted, the very conservative American Enterprise Institute.

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

What that means is that as long as Obama agrees with what we did, he’s on the right track and we’ll support him. But it’s the same old same old if he disagrees -- after all, we all know that the previous administration never ever ever made a mistake. Except I think for boasting about smoking Osama bin Laden out of his cave. Yeah, that didn’t turn out so good.

It's the Cheney battle cry: Remember 9/11! But that's kinda like the Texan battle cry Remember the Alamo, which was also based on a fanciful retelling of the truth.

And the rest of Cheney’s speech is just more of the same, accusing Democrats of “distorting the truth” and therefore being “in no position to lecture anyone about ‘values.’” We prevented attacks and saved lives by torturing people and spying on Americans with illegal wiretaps, we had “universal support back then” because everybody knew what was at stake, blah blah blah.

Well, no. Everybody knew what the Bush administration told them, which, we now know, was a stack of lies. The justification for illegally torturing and spying on people is that “we saved lives,” but that’s not exactly true either, as plenty of other people have pointed out.

But old Darth, he just keeps on going, just like he kept making that non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda way back when. Kinda like publishing photographs of them using the same gesture side by side.

And we do know this, if nothing else: When somebody keeps repeating the same shit day after day, and my colleagues keep reporting as if it actually means something, then the people who already believe the bullshit have no reason to think and those who might be unsure have no choice to consider that the lies are actually truth.

They are not.

The whole Nancy Pelosi thing -- please. What a blatant distraction, but then, some of our fellow citizens have not been known for their ability to see through obfuscation.

And on it goes. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again -- if Nancy Pelosi knew we were torturing people and did nothing, then she is culpable. But now is not the time to be arguing that part of the story. Now we need to get to the bottom of what we did, to understand that what we did was morally, ethically and legally wrong and then to punish first those who actively made it happen. After that, we can get to what member of what committee may or may not have been briefed on waterboarding.

And besides, where Pelosi’s concerned, the GOP has been after her for years. I’m not quite sure why they’re so afraid of her, except that she is a woman and she is right behind Joe Biden -- and before that Cheney himself -- in line for the presidency, but they are absolutely terrified of the California congresswoman.

Meanwhile, Cheney -- who appeared to be salivating on the idea of a fresh terrorist attack on the United States, which could then be blamed on Obama and all thought of that August 2001 daily briefing saying that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States and might use airliners to do it could be done away with forever.

And the Rush-Newt-Cheney cabal keeps pushing the horrible idea of actually imprisoning suspected terrorists -- most of whom are not terrorists -- in the United States and trying them in American courts. And some of them actually have the nerve to say that they don’t want them tried in American courts because then they’d have constitutional rights. Hello? Isn’t that what this country was founded on? But that doesn’t really count if your Muslim, I mean a terrorist, I guess.

Obama, also speaking on Thursday, saw things a different way.

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era - that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out. Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that - too often - our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us - Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens - fell silent. In other words, we went off course.

On the Guantanamo debate, the president was just as clear.

Now, over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans. And we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I've heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country.

So, here's the choice: Follow Cheney, and return to the fearful days of the Bush administration, where bogeys are around every corner and your neighbor could be a Muslim, I mean, terrorist.

Or, stick with Obama. Yeah, so he’s going back to the military commissions -- but do you really believe those commissions under Obama would be conducted with the same disregard for the rule of law as they were under Bush-Cheney? Um, no.

All right then. Here’s the deal. Don’t let my colleagues continue to act as if Darth Cheney has anything new to say. Well, yeah, for him it is new since he never said much before, but what he’s saying is the same crap they force-fed us after they failed to protect us on 9/11. Don’t let ‘em do it again.Don’t let my colleagues help them. Challenge them. Often. Loudly.

And never, ever back down. That’s how we win. That’s how we keep the real forces of darkness away.

AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!


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Peace Y'all