Our Mad Mad Mad
Mad Vice President Speaks
March 19, 2007
by Karen Kwiatkowski
The Cheney speech to AIPAC
reassuring militant rightwingers in Israel and the US that America is leaning
forward on Iran, and that we are never leaving Iraq was filled with honesty
and conviction, and gives us a clear window into the administration's thinking.
Cheney's description of terrorists is somewhat emotional and
overblown. Calling them "freedom's enemies," he comes dangerously close to
describing this administration's id. His emphasis on one-sides victims in last
summer's war with Lebanon, and his proud silence on the thousands killed,
injured, made homeless and jobless by American weaponry is also understandable
as he speaks to the AIPAC audience. His "three myths" on Iraq and the so-called
war on terror are sermons to a choir that raises its voice demanding America be
not a policeman in the Middle East, not an inspiration, but a blustering and
imbecilic bodyguard.
But the real truth in Cheney's speech is found in his sense of
urgency. Cheney exhorts Congress to remember 9-11 and damns it for failing to
subsume its every decision to the maintenance of the administration's cultural
mythology of that day. He rails at the idea of time limits in Iraq, and suggests
that debate in Washington on the role, objectives and cost of our militarism in
the Middle East is counterproductive and allows the "enemy" to "watch the clock
and wait us out."
But it is Cheney not al Qaeda who is watching the clock
now. This former Secretary of Defense understands only too well that the
deployment of two battle groups in the Persian Gulf, and the onset of this
year's "spring offensive" in Afghanistan both point to a ticking clock
second-generation shock and awe forces require many months of planning, and a
massive logistics tail to support even a short-lived coordinated attack. The
clock is indeed ticking, and nothing must get in the way of that. It is not
ticking for the occupied Palestinian territories, nor the fractured and dazed
Iraqis living out some kind of neo-colonial nightmare. Those efforts are
perfectly on track, as hoped for, and AIPAC completely understands this.
It is all about Iran. The U.S. military, from the tone and
content of Cheney's speech, is now ready, and the window is open. The
administration may actually be a bit behind in building its public case at
least one as plausible as the false case made by this same administration less
than five years ago regarding Iraq. Part of this case-making process entails
boxing the Congress, and preventing that body from asserting its collective
intellect, refreshing its own collective familiarity with truth, justice,
reality and even the Constitution. Iran is back on the table, and the House
warning language on Iran stricken.
70% of the American public, and most of the soldiers and
Marines in Iraq understand the idiocy, the pointlessness and shoddy logic of
this alter-ego "war" we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, soon Iran
and perhaps even Syria. This majority of Americans are beginning to hate Dick
Cheney and George W. Bush for what they are doing to our own nation. But the
70% in this country have no important conferences for the political leadership,
they have no lobbyists, they have no deep pockets, and they have no rabidly
confident sense that they alone have all the answers to the world's problems.
AIPAC, on the other hand, has all these things.
And soon, it is likely they'll have their desired attacks on
Iran. We may soon hear of an accident, an incursion, or a purported attack on
our forces. That provocation will force the President to bomb until our bombs
run out, and will give the Democrats one more opportunity to prove their abject
fealty to war. From what we are hearing of this year's AIPAC conference, it
will be up to a few honest and courageous souls in the Senate, or a revolt of
the generals, to stop America's next war.
--
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send
her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues
with a libertarian perspective for
MilitaryWeek.com, hosted
the call-in radio show
American Forum,
and blogs occasionally for
Huffingtonpost.com
and Liberty and Power.
Archives of her American Forum radio program can be accessed
here and
here. To
receive automatic announcements of new articles,
click here.
Copyright © 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski
|
