Cole in Salon: The Hidden Hand of Dick Cheney
My column for Salon.com, "The hidden hand of Dick Cheney" is now out.
Excerpt:
' don't dismiss Dick Cheney as a fading punch line, or as tragedy reprised as comedy. While the Obama administration has adopted large numbers of policies that directly contradict Cheney's positions, it would be a mistake to overlook Cheney's continued influence on the executive branch through the precedents set by the Bush administration. Among the former vice-president's most important legacies is increased government secrecy. Obama's Department of Justice continues to rely on an alleged "state secrets" privilege. It has thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing, on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state secrets doctrine was used by Obama's DOJ in an attempt to block investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing before a judge to challenge their imprisonment. '
Read the whole thing.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/13/2009 12:48:00 AM
|
Facebook
9 Comments:
Richard "Lil D" Cheney is a one trick pony, namely push the outrageous lie with conviction and smear the opponent with charges of moral failure. He has enough in the public record to be tried in a court of law, but until that happens, it would be useful to try him in the court of rational analysis.
Cheney says .... facts are ..... Cheney is full of it because ....
Cheney Analysis (as a demonstration of logical failings) would make a nice thematic unit in a course on critical thinking. This is appropriate as Cheney offers himself as the penultimate logician. It would be nice to see him destroyed by his own failings before he is transported to The Hague for the inevitable Crimes Against Humanity trials.
It too many instances, it is not an exaggeration to say that Obama = Bush/Cheney. My prayers for change were not answered.
There are many instances where Obama and Bush/Cheney policy have remained the same or have gotten worse.
Perhaps Obama stepped out of the Cheney mold by rejecting the ban on government-funded stem-cell research, but this is a peripheral policy.
On major issues such as surveillance, war, state secrets, lobbyist influence, rewarding failure, terror and fiscal transparency, Obama continues the Bush/Cheney legacy.
totally in love with that graphic they made for your piece. a really intriguing piece of artwork.
Keep talking. Just keep talking. Eventually by year's end, you will contradict yourself and the world will hold him accountable.
I just want the US to do the trial. This is our mess, our fault, and our failure stand up to a bully.
Now that they are out of the sandbox, and on a soapbox, let him speak. He is saying more now, than when he was in office. Any good prosecutor will let him blow the cover in order to save his own tail. But since Pres. Bush is not heard from, maybe the VP was the orchestra conductor. Which makes an easy target because of the lack of public comments by him.
Hell he has just concluded that he broke the law, but rewrote the law before any discussion could take place on the subject. And now he wants more evidence of his illegal commands. But since he is not part of the Commander in Chief protocol, can we hold Pres. Bush accountable for not performing his own duties. (isn't the military command for this type of interrogation come from the oval office, not next door?)
While I agree with the 99% of Juan's article, I am not so sure he should be taking issue with the push to get the Pakistan government to take on the Taliban. The alternative, after all, is to let hundreds more schools be bombed, and to have democracy rendered meaningless for large swathes of Pakistan, as elected officials are beheaded with complete impunity.
The Swat peace deal did not work, since the taliban advance continued. What alternative can there be to advancing on the Taliban strongholds? And why would it be better to do that later than sooner?
"What alternative can there be to advancing on the Taliban strongholds?"
What about USA army get the hell out of the parts of world which are NOT USA (at least). What about stopping USA agressive wars, support for dictators and toppling of democratic leaders? Does it sound suprprising for anon 7:12 PM? If so, s/he could study USA history and learn how it was USA meddling that started not only Taliban but the most problems in the region and beyong
Hi lidia, thanks for responding.
There's no need to display insecurity about your grasp of history - most readers here, myself included, have read a lot of it, so you ought to display more courtesy.
As for your points: I entirely agree about the initial causes of the problems we are discussing. But effects can outlive their causes, and there is little reason to assume that the Taliban(s) will abandon their power, money, weapons and butchery just because the USA pulls out of the region. Do you assume the bombings, the beheadings, and the all-out assault on Afghan and Pakistani civil society will cease? Or are you happy with that happening, just as long as the USA is taken down a peg or two? The USA lost interest in the region immediately after the cold war, and the Taliban conquered most of Afghanistan in short order. Why do you think that would not happen if the USA pulled out now? Again, are you happy for that to happen to Afghanistan, or do you want the war to continue?
There is some room for political solutions, of course, but there are clearly many Taliban leaders in the Af/Pak region who can't be part of any parliament. The leaders that regularly murder female MPs, for instance.
The Pakistanis that I have spoken to, including one from Swat, all point the finger at the ISI, first and foremost. It has its own agenda, and that agenda is sometimes compatible with US goals, and sometimes is not. But I think it is clear that the loose Taliban coalition is no longer anyone's puppet; it is well-equipped, well-established, and largely self-financing; a player in its own right. It was effectively able to overturn the election result in Swat through sustained violence. I don't buy into the hysteria about them getting ahold of nukes, but I can't see how their encroachment can be tolerated by Islamabad either.
Cheney never rants for nothingThe general rule is, Cheney never makes meaningless noises. His activities are usually meaningful, but you never know what his seemingly abstract rhetoric means in real life.
Apparently, recent assignment of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman confirms this rule. This way, one of the major Republican leaders gets control of a major direction in the US foreign policy.
Sure, this move makes lots of sense terms in terms of party politics. How this will affect the US-Chinese relationship itself, is another question, but it is hard to be optimistic.
What Cheney fights for is not just political benefits for himself and his friends, but for more GOP influence in general. As we see, at this point, he gets what he wants - one way or another.
Post a Comment
<< Home