1 Boring Old Man

Liz Cheney’s group ‘Keep America Safe’ takes on ‘radical’ White House
Politico
By BEN SMITH
10/13/09

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation’s security. The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama’s moves to wrench America away from Bush era foreign policy on issues from detaining alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to building a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

“The policies being proposed by the Obama administration are so radical across the board,” Cheney said. “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you want the nation to be strong and so many steps this president is taking are making the nation weaker.”

The new group will add institutional heft to a scathing critique of Obama articulated first and loudest by Liz Cheney’s father, and fills a void left by a Republican Party made skittish by the Iraq War, and apparently more eager to engage the president on domestic issues like health care. Its formation marks the end of an unusual partisan truce on America’s central national security challenge, Afghanistan, and after a presidential campaign in which Obama and Republican John McCain agreed on many security issues from Central Asia to Guantanamo Bay.

Keep America Safe will focus on issues like troop levels, missile defense, detainees, and interrogation, according to Liz Cheney, who is heading the group along with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Debra Burlingame, the hawkish sister of an American Airlines pilot killed in the September 11 attacks…

The Maginot Line [maÊ’i’no]: The Ligne Maginot, named after French Minister of Defense André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defenses, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the light of experience from World War I, and in the run-up to World War II. Generally the term describes only the defenses facing Germany, while the term Alpine Line is used for the Franco-Italian defenses. The French established the fortification to provide time for their army to mobilize in the event of attack and/or to entice Germany to attack neutral Belgium to avoid a direct assault on the line. The success of static, defensive combat in World War I was a key influence on French thinking. The fortification system successfully dissuaded a direct attack. However, it was an ineffective strategic gambit, as the Germans did indeed invade Belgium, flanked the Maginot Line, and proceeded relatively unobstructed. It is a myth however that the Maginot line ended at the Belgian border and was easy to circumvent. The fortifications were connected to the Belgian fortification system, of which the strongest point was Fort Eben-Emael. The Germans broke through exactly at this fortified point with a unique assault that incorporated gliders and shaped explosive charges. The surrender of the fort, in less than two days, allowed the invasion of France.

Dick Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense in 1989 and immediately began slashing the Defense budget [after the build-up by Ronald Reagan]. That’s quite a paradox in that a couple of years later, he was instructing Wolfowitz and Libby to write the Defense Guidance that basically escalated our military and its role in the world. By 1997, he was part of the Project for the New American Century that issued a report in early 2000 criticizing Clinton’s cuts in Defense spending and advocated a slew of new weapons [Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century]. That document advocated a vast outlay for weaponry that would never have prevented 9/11. And none of those weapons would have been of use to us in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the failed search for Bin Laden. They were weapons for defending against the then defunct Soviet Union. Likewise, Cheney’s PNAC and the Administration he was part of were hypervigilant about attacks from "rogue nations," but ignored clear warnings about the unaffiliated al Qaeda.

Now, his clone-daughter has taken up his cross to keep us safe by advocating increased "troop levels, missile defense, detainees, and interrogation." These are likewise anachronistic measures aimed at a previous enemy [or enemies] to prevent previous attacks or threats – a modern Maginot Line. Liz Cheney’s Keep America Safe campaign will be labeled as ways of justifying her father’s prior failures, or his cahoots with the military industrial complex, or preemption of his prosecution for war crimes, or his narcissism. I would agree with all of those possibilities. But there’s a driven quality to his fear and fear mongering [Keep America Safe Scared] that again suggests another explanation to me. Dick Cheney is scared in the "plaid shirt" way. He’s still in the Bunker from the morning of 9/11, and Liz is going down to join him – touching loyalty, but the wrong treatment…

… shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: … and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
from the Will of Alfred Nobel

… and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.
from the Will of Alfred Nobel

 

So we are still involved in two leftover wars and closing our torture center in Cuba is going slowly. So what? At least, the world doesn’t have to watch our every move to be sure we don’t go off half cocked for the flimsiest of reasons. The world doesn’t have to deal with the fact that our Ambassador to the U.N. didn’t even believe in the U.N. In one single day [January 20, 2009], the world regained a member of the family of nations – having lost that valued member for almost a decade.

^{Bearfoot – posted by Eureka Springs on FDL}

^{Carolina Chocolate Drops}

Beck-backing protesters raise ruckus outside much-publicized elementary school
Raw Story
October 12th, 2009

A group of protesters have taken it upon themselves to gather outside the school made famous by conservative media after a group of children were filmed singing the praises of President Barack Obama.

A collection of about 60 or 70 protesters, reportedly affiliated with Glenn Beck’s "9/12 Project" and the "tea party" groups, stood in front of New Jersey’s B. Bernice Young Elementary School on Monday morning. "The protesters sang patriotic anthems and chanted slogans such as ‘Free children, free minds,’" the Associated Press noted.

The South Jersey Courier Post Online added: "The school district, in a statement, said that it ‘does not believe that protesting in front of an elementary school in session with four to seven year old children is appropriate.’" Nevertheless, the group’s event went off without incident. They kept off school grounds and were observed by about a half-dozen local police…

Dark Passage: PNAC’s Blueprint for Empire
^{(Original version published Sept. 20, 2002 in the Moscow Times. This is the expanded version from the book, Empire Burlesque.)}
March 27, 2005

The Unipolar Moment: Not surprisingly, the roots of PNAC go back to the first Bush Administration. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz [now assistant secretary of Defense] and Lewis Libby [now Cheney’s chief of staff)] to draw up a "Defense Guidance Plan" to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Military intervention would be "a constant fixture" of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a "new order" which the United States – not the United Nations – would "establish and protect."

The goal was to seize the opportunity offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – which left the United States without a serious international rival – and extend this "unipolar moment" of American dominance for decades to come; indeed, into a "New American Century."

The report was leaked in the midst of the 1992 presidential campaign, sparking controversy over its "imperial ambitions," and was publicly disowned by President George H.W. Bush. After the Bush team was defeated by Bill Clinton, a lame-duck Cheney finally issued a watered-down version of the paper as official policy. The Clinton Administration then scrapped it upon taking office.

But the unipolar vision of American dominance was not forgotten. During the 1990s, it was refined and expanded in a number of conservative think tanks – the American Enterprise Institute [AEI] the Hudson Institute, the Center for Security Policy and others – whose memberships often overlapped. And now that they were out of office, the advocates of dominance could speak more freely.

One former member of Cheney’s Defense Department team, Zalmay Khalilzad [now Bush’s special emissary to Afghanistan], wrote openly that the U.S. must "be willing to use force" to express its "global leadership" and preclude the rise of potential rivals. Others, such as former Reagan official and AEI stalwart Richard Perle [now head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board] and Douglas Feith [now assistant secretary of Defense], worked with Israel’s Likud Party, drawing up plans calling for American-led "regime change" efforts in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, in 1997, Project for the New American Century was formed as a focal point for disseminating the dominance ideal. It was a "big tent" of Great Power adherents: Beltway players like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, former Vice President Dan Quayle, and former Reagan education secretary turned public scold, William Bennett; Christian "social conservatives" like Gary Bauer; and the so-called "neoconservatives" [often former Democrats whose staunch anti-communism had led them to the Reagan Right], including Elliot Abrams, who’d been convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned by George Bush Sr. [and now serves on the White House director of Middle East policy]. Other notable figures joining PNAC included the Afghan-born Khalilzad, publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and Jeb Bush, younger brother of the president-to-be.

They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Military intervention would be "a constant fixture" of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a "new order" which the United States – not the United Nations – would "establish and protect." The goal was to seize the opportunity offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – which left the United States without a serious international rival – and extend this "unipolar moment" of American dominance for decades to come; indeed, into a "New American Century."

I think what the committee believes is they’d like to live in a world in which America is not dominant. And I think if you look at the language of the citation, you can see that they talk about President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to the majority of the people of the world. Americans don’t elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. And so I think that they may believe that President Obama also doesn’t agree with American dominance, and they may have been trying to affirm that belief with the prize. I think, unfortunately, they may be right, and I think it’s a concern.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities. Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership. Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

^{It’s close to child abuse to teach something like that to your child. That’s what Dick Cheney must’ve done.}

Sunday afternoon, Professor David Cole from Georgetown Law School hosted a book salon on FDL on his collection of the key torture documents with commentary [The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable]. It was a thoughtful discussion of a thoughtless topic. As it continued, I found myself wondering why it’s only a hot topic for a few of us rather than a source of far-reaching outrage. I suppose that there’s always a danger of questioning why everybody else isn’t thinking what I am thinking, since the question can be turned around – what’s wrong with me that I’m so stuck on this torture thing?

^{VICE PRES. CHENEY: … they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy. We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.}

^{States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.}

The forward to Cole’s book was written by Phillipe Sands, author of Torture Team, and it’s titled The Embrace of Cruelty. Is that too dramatic? I don’t think so. As these memos trickled out, it became clear that Abu Ghraib wasn’t the work of "bad apples" in our ranks. Any of you who have been in the military know that such things don’t happen in the military unless they come from the top. I’m sure that atrocities occur in the heat of battle and always will, but not in a non-combat command like Abu Ghraib. So, in spite of the White House denials, this whole thing was part of a secret grand plan involving the DoD, the CIA, the DoJ, and the White House – negotiated by the lawyers hired to prevent this very kind of thing.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in the Georgia mountains. It was sunny, slightly cool, and the leaves are just giving off those signs that they’re about to turn. I found myself sitting inside at a computer reading and writing comments in the book salon on FDL about this book. It seemed like an odd thing to be doing. I opened some of the Memos in question, and could feel my head trying to turn away, even though I’ve read them all before. I feel some of that same guilt I mentioned above about the intensity of my feelings towards the people involved in this sordid business – specifically Dick Cheney, David Addington, and Douglas Feith. I wonder sometimes if I’m as crazed as they were – rationalizing vengeful feelings or political leanings as they did when they constructed and used these absurd documents. So I take heart that others are as outraged by all of this as I am.

^{Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.}

CHRIS WALLACE: Do you agree with the widespread analysis that the Nobel Committee was sending a repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies?

LIZ CHENEY: Well, I think what the committee believes is they’d like to live in a world in which America is not dominant. And I think if you look at the language of the citation, you can see that they talk about, you know, President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to the majority of the people of the world. You know, Americans don’t elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. And so I think that, you know, they may believe that President Obama also doesn’t agree with American dominance, and they may have been trying to affirm that belief with the prize. I think, unfortunately, they may be right, and I think it’s a concern.

And then You know, Americans don’t elect a president to do that. We elect a president to defend our national interests. How does defending our national interests translate to American dominance? I can think of a zillion places where that’s not the case. It’s such a foreign thought to me, LIZ CHENEY’s notion of American dominance. I can imagine that the world would really like for us to get over such an idea. As a matter of fact, I want us to get over such an idea. But the real piece in the piece is President Obama ruling. Ruling? Do American Presidents rule? American Presidents serve. They don’t rule. We do have the concept rule – as in the rule of law. That’s another area where her beloved father dropped the ball.