In which I agree with Liz Cheney
When former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz, said yesterday that Democrats would only hurt themselves by persecuting her father, liberal bloggers responded with outrage. How dare she say something like that? She’s just playing the fear card, to protect her father!
Sadly for them, that is not the case. If Democrats do indeed go after Dick Cheney, they will suffer in the polls. How do I know? Because when Cheney declared war on Democrats over torture / enhanced interrogation techniques, his own favorability ratings went up fast, and those of his opponents down. It only took him two weeks or so to convince Americans that certain enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary to protect national security.
The same will happen if / when Eric Holder et al. organize hearings about secret CIA projects to arrest or kill Al Qaeda members; Cheney believed the CIA should do what it saw fit, and that it did not need to ask Congress permission. Although many would undoubtedly disagree with that, it is extremely easy to convince the public that asking Congress for permission would endanger the project and, therefore, national security.
In other words: Democrats are wise to back off from this one.
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“It only took him two weeks or so to convince Americans that certain enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary to protect national security.”
So reasoneth all the torturers and oppressors throughout history. When will the right remember it is supposed to suspect governments and remain skeptical towards extension of power? Seeing as they are no better than their political opponents, never.
Assassinating terrorists is definitely an acceptable course of action, provided it is conducted by a person of high ethics, awareness and competence. Cheney simply doesn’t deserve good faith.
There are cases where one can skirt laws or bend them if one shows extreme humility and an understanding of the importance of discipline. Under no circumstance is it intellectually or morally rigorous to extend any trust to the previous administration.
Noun, verb, 9/11 isn’t a viable rationale when it comes to people’s lives.
Assassinating terrorists is definitely an acceptable course of action, provided it is conducted by a person of high ethics, awareness and competence. Cheney simply doesn’t deserve good faith.
I really cant believe you would say this. Its okay to murder as long as you have good intentions?
Is there a nice way to blow some one up? Fill them full of holes? Cut their head off?
This is why the left cannot fight a war. They are too busy trying to find the GOD they dont believe in to run the war and recruit righteous angels to conduct its course.
“Its okay to murder as long as you have good intentions?”
Terrorists are simply an unprecedentedly random and dangerous enemy. Once the world becomes dangerous and violent enough there is no completely decent and pure course of action (torturing people, and then making legal and semantic loopholes to protect yourself, will only increase the chances of a descent into such a state). The bombings of Dresden etc. were no doubt horrible and immoral, despite the evils of the third reich no doubt promoted by some citizens of these cities. But what was the alternative?
The people behind the bombings of Dresden weren’t cheered on by think-tanks or vicious pundits, and none of the people involved were sprained enough to be proud of their actions. There acts weren’t politicized. The previous administration is asking for the treatment given to the allied commanders from WWII without sharing any of their circumstances, qualities or horrible dilemmas. That lacks humility and I must say most of the people who demand it is to be exempt from scrutiny, despite the nature of its actions, do so as well. Their political biases prevent them from seeing that they are asking for a suspension of criticism or skepticism that they won’t, and probably can’t, solidly argue for. They want to get off the hook but they won’t really do the hard work necessary to allay the reasonable concerns from people like me. The onus is still on them, and as long as they refuse to try and shift it and instead insult and smear those pointing out the existence of the onus – in an obvious example of projection – I will not only see them as stupid, but even dangerous.
“This is why the left cannot fight a war.”
The right, meanwhile, caused the death of about a million Iraqis, tried to justify a war in front of the UN by reading a grade-school paper stolen randomly from the internet, and started two land wars in Asia, one of which was – diplomatically speaking – pants-on-head insane.
And they also were not exaggerated, distorted, demonized, and/or targeted for criminal prosecution by an opposing network of think-tanks and activists.
Here once again, your penchant for ONLY focusing on one side of a politicized issue makes you appear biased and even dishonest, Kastanj. And your consistent refusal to acknowledge or accommodate even moderate criticisms of your method like this one makes it appear that your approach is intentional and calls into question whether it is worthwhile to either respond to you or even to continue to publish your comments on this site at all.
The right, meanwhile, caused the death of about a million Iraqis,
Wrong. The left and right went to war together cheered on by the MSM with about a 76 percent approval rating. Get your fact straight. It was only after the democrats realized that they were being marginalized and that if they did not do something radical they would be out of power for a long time…..hence they teamed up with a rather WEAK and powerless antiwar and made fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq a crime.
Now of course were hearing it might be forever before we leave there now that they are in power and Im still trying to figure out what two wars the right started in Asia.
“And they also were not exaggerated, distorted, demonized, and/or targeted for criminal prosecution by an opposing network of think-tanks and activists.”
The political responses from these groups were in themselves responses to the politicization of the foreign policy and warfare of the previous administration. The previous administration placed its actions in a political context both in order to profit in the polls and to hide any flaws in its conduct behind the noise of an epic struggle. The BS definitely proliferated on the left, but it started with the administration. They didn’t even bother to get a declaration of war, which – apart from being a repetition of the same mistake from the second Indochina war – is an obvious mistake and a sign that they weren’t ready to act responsibly. It was an imposition of violence on another people that originated strictly from intra-American political concerns and conflicts.
Strictly responsible or unavoidable violent actions that are proportionate to the need for self-defense are outside of the political sphere, at least for a while. But the invasion of Iraq was so unjustified it was by default political.
This is a distortion of the facts, in that a declaration “authorizing the use of force” was obtained from Congress IAW with the same practice of all previous recent administrations.