Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Eugene Robinson – Dick Cheney’s lies about President Obama – washingtonpost.com

Juan Cole 12/31/2009

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Eugene Robinson – Dick Cheney's lies about President Obama – washingtonpost.com

Excellent demolition of Dick Cheney’s shameful attack on the president in the wake of the Detroit attempted attack.

Cheney wanted to use the nonsensically phrased ‘war on terror’ as a wedge to destroy the Bill of Rights and permanently undermine the US constitution, and is annoyed that all the groundwork he laid for the return of rightwing monarchy has been sensibly tossed aside by the constitutional lawyer who succeeded him.

All this is not to mention that there can be more or fewer Muslims radicalized and that no one made America more vulnerable to attack than Cheney:

  • Torture at Guantanamo
  • Denial of habeas corpus
  • illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq
  • the atrocity of the attack on Falluja

    These are the standard grievances in the al-Qaeda recruitment videos. All of them contravene basic American values.

    So, Mr. Cheney, you don’t make America safer with terminology, blustering about ‘war on terror.’ Living up to American values of no military aggression and basic civil rights and condemnation of cruel and unusual punishment– just being real Americans would deprive al-Qaeda of most of its current recruitment tools.

    In fact, as the Cheney legacy has begun to fade, al-Qaeda is facing problems with recruitment. One problem for them is that family and friends increasingly turn the jihadi in. That is what happened to Abdulmutallab and it would have foiled his mission if Cheney had devoted more energy to interagency cooperation during the last 8 years.

    The reason that Muslims turn in a relative or friend who goes off the deep end about America is that they know America is not evil.

    Cheney’s methods and values are aimed at convincing them otherwise.

    Cheney turned on the American values of the Founding Fathers in the 1970s, when he was defending Tricky Dick Nixon and a quagmire in southeast Asia, and he has only gone further and further toward the Dark Side ever since.

    If we can’t try him, can’t we at least try to get him North Korean citizenship, since he seems to like authoritarian values better than American ones? Plus, he and Kim Jong-Il both like pretending they are James Bond– they’d get along famously.

    End/ (Not Continued)

  • Filed Under: Uncategorized

    About the Author

    Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

    Primary Sidebar

    STAY INFORMED

    Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

    Twitter

    Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

    Facebook



    Sign up for our newsletter

    Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

    Posting....