Nothing demonstrates how strong an advocate former VP Dick Cheney was for the Bush Administration’s universally condemned tactics in the war on terror than the fact that he seems more determined than George W. Bush himself to defend them until the day he dies.
Indeed, unlike Bush – who had the decency to return to his home in Texas, Cheney has not only stayed on in Washington but has wasted little time planting cynical seeds in the editorial boardroom of influential news organizations for the inevitable vindication of these tactics.
Specifically, in an interview with Politico on Tuesday, he reiterated the looming specter of nuclear or biological attack, which the Bush Administration used to justify all of its anti-terror tactics. More to the point, however, he warned that the probability of such a catastrophic attack will increase in direct proportion to the extent to which the Obama Administration discontinues them.
When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry… Protecting the country’s security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business…
These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek… [I]instead of sitting down and carefully evaluating the policies … Obama officials are unwisely following campaign rhetoric…
The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.
If it hadn’t been for what we did – with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees [including waterboarding, which Obama says is torture), the Patriot Act, and so forth – then we would have been attacked again.
(Former VP Dick Cheney)
Yet, as patently self-serving as Cheney’s PR agenda is, I fear the seeds he’s planting now will sprout at some point during Obama’s tenure to undermine his presidency. After all, even though Obama is being universally praised today for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and discontinuing many of the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that praise will surely turn into eternal condemnation if terrorists execute another successful attack on American soil. And, though diabolically perverse, Cheney knows that nothing would do more to vindicate him and ensure Bush’s legacy.
Unfortunately, if there is an attack, there’s no way Obama would be able to deny Cheney’s hypothesis. And it would not matter if such an attack would have been just as likely if Bush and Cheney were still in power with all of their anti-terror tactics still being enforced.
Therefore, it behooves Obama’s spin-meisters to start planting seeds of their own now to counter this inevitable backlash if, indeed when, America is attacked again. And they can do this by reminding now complacent Americans about al-Qaeda’s declared intent to launch an attack far more devastating than 9/11 and by explaining why no battery of anti-terror tactics can prevent this from ever happening.
It must be understood that no matter their collective resolve, there is absolutely nothing our governments can do to protect us forever from such attacks
[London’s 7/7 attacks, TIJ, July 8, 2005]
More important, they should reinforce the fact that, notwithstanding Cheney, Obama’s executive order to close Gitmo and end torture has not only enhanced America’s moral, political and military character but also made the country less reviled in the Muslim world, which in turn has made it much safer.
I have no doubt, however, that, like George W. Bush, Obama would approve the controversial waterboarding method if CIA interrogators insist that it’s the only way to extract information from a suspect to save American lives.
[President Obama orders no more Gitmo and no more torture, TIJ, January 27, 2009]
Related commentaries:
President Obama orders Gitmo closed
London’s 7/7 attacks
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