Dick Cheney Just Wants To Be Loved

[marmar]

from the American Prospect:



Dick Cheney Just Wants To Be Loved

Dick Cheney's attempts at public redemption have a logical root in his Cold War experience.

Terence Samuel | May 15, 2009 | web only



Before Dick Cheney was Dick Cheney -- the horns, the tail, the breath on fire and all that -- he was just another Washington inside player who had mastered all the important aspects of the capital city game. He made friends in the right places; he schmoozed the right reporters. He struck most people as a respectable conservative who respected the processes and institutions of American government -- people found him funny, and they liked him. It's almost impossible to imagine now, but Cheney the congressman once chastised Army colonel and conservative hero Oliver North for trying to stiff-arm Congress during its probe of President Ronald Reagan's Iran Contra scandal.

In 1987, as North tried to circumvent congressional subpoenas requiring him to testify on the scandal, Cheney, then the ranking Republican on the House Iran Contra Committee, declared: ''If the ultimate objection is to avoid any testimony to the Congress then it seems to me that the colonel would move in the eyes of many of us from the posture of being a man trying to serve his country and president ... to a figure who is ... obviously not a pillar of patriotism.'' Wow! To think that Cheney once thought Congress was entitled to information from a White House that did not want to give it. Oh, how things change.

The Cheney currently on display is a unique specimen of a special time. At the end of the day, the former vice president is a Cold Warrior, a man formed by the United States' long confrontation with the Soviet Union. Cheney's experience as part of the administration that declared America the victorious superpower tells us three important things about him relevant to his current behavior:

* He is conditioned for protracted fights. The more ideological, the better.

* He always needs a “foremost adversary” in order to organize his world. This explains his attraction to the neo-con obsession with Saddam Hussein, in the face of real al-Qaeda dangers. It also explains his implacability in his battles with the Obama administration in defense of the Bush administration.

* It's hard for him to believe that the world can change, despite all the contradictory evidence. He keeps fighting the same war, in the same way. In March 1989, when he was officially sworn in as defense secretary, he assessed the changes taking place in the Soviet Union in the following manner: “Containment has worked. Deterrence has held. Principle has paid off. Still, dangers abound. ... We must guard against gambling our nation's security on what may be a temporary aberration in the behavior of our foremost adversary.” That is the same Dick Cheney we have now.

Part of the explanation for Cheney's current public-relations crusade in defense of Bush policies flow from his time as defense secretary and his Cold War understanding that, in some wars, a consequence of defeat is a permanent ignominy, with no possibility of redemption. The threat of communism is dead forever. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=explaining_cheneys_bid_for_salvation

[aquart]

1. Kind of like a woman who still has a beehive hairdo.

She found her decade and she's sticking to it.

[santamargarita]

2. So does this guy...