Why
Cheney Really Is That Bad
By Scott Ritter
24 August, 2007
Truthdig
Karl
Rove, interchangeably known as “Boy Genius” or “Turd
Blossom,” has left the White House. The press conference announcing
his decision to resign has been given front-page treatment by most major
media outlets, but the fact of the matter is the buzz surrounding Rove’s
departure is much ado about nothing, especially in terms of coming to
grips with the remaining 16 months of the worst presidency in the history
of the United States.
Rove is a domestic political
marauder, the personification of a conservative movement which lacks
a moral compass and has a complete disregard for facts. The master of
exploiting mainstream America’s predilection for news-as-entertainment,
under which the likes of Rupert Murdoch can manufacture headlines out
of thin air, Rove helped turn “fair and balanced” into a
national joke which everyone laughs at but few actually comprehend.
Rove served as the maestro of a political-smear orchestra composed of
such intellectually challenged muckrakers as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh
and Ann Coulter, manipulating the NASCAR/professional wrestling crowd’s
addiction to seedy gossip in an effort to maintain the all-important
51 percent majority needed to win elections.
Perhaps if the Democratic
Party had possessed a semblance of organization and cohesion (not to
mention a post-Clinton message that could be sold to a majority of America),
then Rove would be but a footnote in history, known simply as the man
who helped the worst governor in the history of Texas get elected. Even
the self-destructive campaign run by Al Gore in 2000, in which he distanced
himself from a sitting president who, despite all of his faults, would
have defeated Bush in a landslide if the Constitution permitted a third
term, was enough to deny Rove his beloved 51 percent—it was Gore,
not Bush, who won the majority of votes in that contest. It took a Republican
governor of Florida, backed by a compliant Supreme Court, to put George
W. Bush into the White House, not any genius on the part of Rove.
“Bush’s Brain”
may claim that it was his careful manipulation of fiction over fact
that carried the 2004 election, in which the term became synonymous
with political character assassination, but it was the events of Sept.
11, 2001, and the war in Iraq which sank the Democratic Party and its
candidate for president, John Kerry. It is very difficult to unseat
a president in a time of war, especially when so many Democrats voted
in favor of the concept, first by buying into every post-9/11 policy
put forward by the Bush administration (find me one Democrat who actually
read the Patriot Act in its entirety before it was voted into law) and
second by rubber-stamping the lies that led to Bush’s decision
to invade Iraq in March 2003. Remember, it was Kerry’s inarticulate
defense of his decision to vote in favor of granting war powers to the
president that sank his election hopes, not his Vietnam War record.
Certainly, Karl Rove played
a significant behind-the-scenes role in supporting Bush’s war
policies. The perjury trial of “Scooter” Libby forced the
collective of deaf, dumb and blind pseudo-journalists who populate what
is known as the mainstream media in America to recognize how pathetically
duplicitous and petty the Bush administration could get when it came
to defending the policies propping up the so-called Global War on Terror
and the awful tragedy of Iraq. Rove’s fingerprints were all over
the decision by Vice President Dick Cheney to leak CIA officer Valerie
Plame’s name to the media in an effort to thwart the truth-telling
of her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.
But that is about as deep
as Rove’s involvement in the two issues that will define the presidency
of George W. Bush gets. While Rove might be the “genius”
behind the kind of winner-takes-all dirty politics that won the Republicans
a majority in Texas The vice president is the single greatest threat
to American and international security in the world today. Not Osama
Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung
Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George
W. Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney’s alone.
Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists
between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States,
Cheney’s office has made its impact felt on the policies of the
United States of America as had no vice president’s office before
him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign
policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror
attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from
being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly)
in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation
as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination
whatever the cost.
The absolute worst of the
rot that has infected America because of the policies and actions of
the Bush administration has originated from the office of the vice president.
The nonsensical response to the terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a “global
war” versus defending the rule of law at home and abroad, taking
the lead in spreading the lies that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing
torture as a tool of American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless
wiretappings of U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth
Amendment says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for
an expansion of America’s global conflict into Iran—all
can be traced back to the person of Cheney as the point of origin.
America today is very much
engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the forces of evil. The
enemy resides not abroad, however, but at home, vested in the highest
offices of the land. Neither Osama Bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein threatened
the life blood of the United States—the Constitution—to
the extent that Cheney has. Not Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh.
Not since the American Civil War has there been a constitutional crisis
of the magnitude that exists today, threatening to rip the very fabric
of American society apart at the seams, courtesy of Dick Cheney.
That Congress today remains
relatively mute on this crisis is one of the great mysteries of our
time. Perhaps the vagaries of national politics can be blamed. The Democratic
majority in Congress appears to have ceded its leadership role to unelected
presidential candidates who seem solely empowered to comment on current
events, domestic or foreign, and who, out of fear of any misstep which
could hurt their chances to seize the White House as their own, refuse
to actually take a substantive stand against the policies of the Bush
administration. In an effort that is curiously Rovian in the quest for
electoral victory, the Democratic candidates (with a few notable exceptions)
have been less than bold in their opposition to the heinous policies
that are currently in place concerning Iraq, Iran, the war on terror,
torture and constitutional violations—unless you count empty rhetoric.
In many ways, the leading
Democrats, both those running for office and those currently holding
office, are a far greater insult to American values than the conservative
standard-bearers for the policies of Cheney. No one of substance takes
seriously the manic ranting of the Hannity/Limbaugh/Coulter triad. These
Democrats, on the other hand, have mastered the art of compromise to
the point that they stand for nothing at all—this at a time in
American history when the policies of the administration, derived from
the dark abyss of Bush’s soul, Cheney, provide the most concrete
example of what we as Americans should be standing against.
The Democrats need to stand
for something. Cheney has provided the sort of political ammunition
that would enable them to fight, and win, a constitutional battle over
the heart of America, the kind of defining struggle which I believe
the vast majority of Americans would rally around. Unless the Democrats
start separating themselves from the policies of the Bush administration,
and take an active role in outing and suppressing the true evil that
is Dick Cheney, all they will achieve in the coming years is a change
in the titular political orientation of America, without the kind of
deep-seated break from the failures and crimes of the past six-plus
years that have taken our nation, and the world, right up to the edge
of chaos.
“Bush’s Brain”
may be gone, but his “Soul” lives on. It is high time all
of America put Dick Cheney fully in the spotlight of collective accountability,
purging our nation of this scourge which has harmed us in so many ways.
If there is any case for impeachment to be made against any member of
the Bush administration today, it can be made against a vice president
who has shamed our nation, destroyed our moral standing and broken our
laws.
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