Cheney is at it again with the “you’re with us or with the terrorists” line
Appearing on Fox News this morning, VicePresident Dick Cheney said that attempts to stem President Bush’s new Iraq plan, announced this week, were undercutting U.S. troops in Iraq. Cheney brought Osama bin Laden in to the argument, saying that attempts to reverse U.S. policy on Iraq was exactly “what he wants.” Cheney also defended the domestic spying program, involving the CIA and the Pentagon, revealed this weekend by The New York Times.
I think Americans are sick of this divisive hate speech from the Bush administration. He’s undercutting the electorate. And how stupid are these guys anyway? They’re now insulting 70% of the voters, accusing them of “undercutting the troops.”
Bush/Cheney’s rhetoric has been used to terrorize us all and drive us to surrender our civil rights, a half trillion dollars and 3,000 Americans lives, plus tens of thousands injured. Osama must be pleased. He could never have brought so much fear, hatred and division to the West without Bush and Cheney. Driven by these two fearmongers, we blithely toss out habeas corpus, we kidnap and torture, we surrender to big government our medical, banking and even NetFlix records, all our emails and phone calls, all our privacy and the cherished rights of the Constitution. For what?
Our sacrifice of our values, rights and ideals is supposed to be necessary because of the open-ended “war on terror.” I make the point repeatedly that we are not “at war.” We were not attacked by any sovereign nation and there is no foreign leader to surrender to us. We were victims of a huge case of arson. We learned to lock the cockpit door. The arsonists should have been hunted down. This should have been handled with good police work, in cooperation with the global community, all of whom were on our side, including those who we have now insulted, alienated and dismissed, and we’re fighting this alone.
We have spent $70,000 per Iraqi family trying to kill the people the Bushies so fear. Put away the boy toys and the bluster and we could have bought every weapon in Iraq, hired every resident, fixed the infrastructure and bought everyone there a better life. Let me be clear. That’s more than a lifetime income for all but the richest Iraqis. Yes, folks, we could have employed them for life with what we’ve spent. The whole country. Now that’s winning hearts and minds. Look at the mess now. Destroyed infrastructure, no sanitation, electricity, water, roads, sewers or jobs.
There are many ways, with our vast resources, that we could be resourceful. Conflict resolution, diplomacy and poverty alleviation are just three of dozens of tools our brain dead leaders don’t have the vision to use, or even try. The only resources they seem to recognize is military resources. It’s the worst possible option.
Green Dreams 
Undercutting the electorate? That’s an interesting turn of phrase since the majority of people elected him President.
I couldn’t agree with you more that I don’t like us losing rights. I don’t like giving up the freedoms that I, like my father and generations of millions of Americans have fought for.
The problem is that many liberals and Democrats never want to protect those liberties, and allow for constant erosion of them by failing to defend them in peacetime. Then, when the harsh measures of war are required and we find ourselves having to defend the foundations of our way of life, it necessitates equally harsh measures. Liberals WEREN’T enforcing immigration controls, WEREN’T being proactive in gathering intelligence in the Middle East because they WERE slashing our intelligence agency budgets and reducing our military down to a pitiful size—which consequently is part of the reason so many of our returning soldiers are suffering such severe pyschological damage thanks to having to serve more tours.
I fail to see how it is compassion to want to heap greater sacrifice and psychological damage on a few just to save dollars, which is another reason I think many Democrats and liberals are so very and shamefully selfish. If they truly cared about our troops and our nations defense, they’d instead be clamoring to send two or three times the number of troops Bush has to help our troops win.
And what global community was going to help us track down these “arsonists” as you call them? The same global community that harbors them, aids them, funds them, trains them, and allows them safe conduct and passage through on their way to spread their radical Islamic Jihad? Calling them arsonists is ignoring a lot of history and fact.
I’m a peace-loving person, but I’m not blind either. And as to your assertions that we should have bought them, that’s exactly what’s wrong with the world today. You feel it’s right to pay someone off to leave you alone. That’s called extortion, banditry, robbery, and downright theft from their side. From the other side of the fence, it’s called appeasement.
Personally, if we’re to save money, we ought to just bomb them into the “Stone Age” that everyone likes to toss about as a euphamism for devastation…and not bother to rebuild them. And if they threaten us again after they’ve rebuilt, do it again. I have no compassion for those who want to make slaves of women, abuse children, and keep people uneducated and living in a state of poverty and barbarism—all in the name of religion.
It’s the liberal/socialist notion that came about as the result of just warfare theory after WWII that is costing us money. It is people in Iraq who were too lazy, evil, complicit and black-hearted to overthrow their dictator and instead chose to stand with him and support his invasion of neighboring Kuwait, condoning the rape, murder, and destruction of a nation that has led them to where they are and that is costing us billions, and not some American oil company.
Sure they make a profit where they can, but you encourage them to be greedy by driving to work. You and everyone else in America condones big corporations by buying cheap consumer crap made in sweatshops and by children instead of taking a moral stance, ever, on the side of defending national interests.
And then you all blame it on those who defend our nation because you don’t want to look in the mirror and acknowledge your own complicity. You’d rather point the finger at those who would gladly lay down their lives to save yours, even though you despise their very existence.
I served in Iraq once. I haven’t owned a car in 10 years. I still think we need to be there, and we need to win…not cut and run and abandon the many Iraqis who DO want democracy and DO want a better life. Cowardice and bleeding heart sentimentality accomplishes absolutely nothing except defeat in the face of a determined enemy. If you can’t see the threats we face from certain nations and radical Islam, I can only say I am glad that weak but conviction-filled, bungling but determined Bush is running our country, and not someone sharing your views.
All that said. Great site. Even though I disagree with a lot of what I’ve read so far, you do at least advocate green energy. I too am an advocate of renewable energy.
If you haven’t yet, check out:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
They make incredible cars, and there’s no reason bug auto makers can’t be retooling now to do the right thing. Except millions of Americans (and at 70% of the voting population, I bet it includes a hell of a lot of Democrats and liberals) can’t stand to be inconvenienced.
Now…I do apologize if my comments seem particularly harsh. My caffeine levels are dangerously low, and Hillary has announced she wants to be President, so I’m not in a good mood.
Have a great weekend, though.
Whew. Sean. tell us what you really think.
I don’t know where to start, so I’ll start with civil liberties. No one of either party has launched such an attack on the rule of law that Bush has. Nixon came close with his domestic spying, which drove both Republicans and Democrats to join in passing reforms to prevent that. Reforms Bush has ignored and violated.
9/11 was arson, Sean. Sorry. We were not attacked by a nation that could surrender to us, hence war against the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq cannot bring these criminals to justice. You may have noticed they’re still out there. We had the entire world on our side, and even those who wish us ill would not ban activities by Interpol to catch Bin Laden and his criminal gang. But my point is that we took our eye off the ball. Way off. We abandoned our search for the gang of murderers who killed 3,000 Americans, and instead wasted another 3,000 trying to occupy and subdue Iraq, which had nothing to do with the original crime. Bush has doubled our losses, plain and simple, and without getting the bad guy.
My quip about ‘undercutting the electorate’ was an intentional jab at Bush/Cheney’s divisive rhetoric; the use of such language is intended to vilify, not unite or to solve problems. Bush is supposed to represent the public. The president is the only government official who represents all of us. And the public wants out of this war. Our “leader” owes it to us to do the will of those who elected him, most of whom now disagree with this “surge”.
I sympathize with your yearning to “win” this war. But we can’t. Even with 542,000 troops, 60,000 dead, several hundred thousand injured and 12 years of trying we could not win in Vietnam. The same, sadly, is true of Iraq. We don’t even know who our enemy is, and if they stash their weapons and uniforms, they simply fade into the civilian population. This war is not winnable IMO.
You say “I have no compassion for those who want to make slaves of women, abuse children, and keep people uneducated and living in a state of poverty and barbarism—all in the name of religion.” But in the name of capitalism, 11 year old children work as slave labor in China, which Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes and American businesses built into a global superpower. True, Clinton also went along with the “free market” principle of giving China “most favored nation” status rather than standing up and insisting that American standards apply to those who sell to Americans. The Republicans have always fought against requiring our trading partners or American companies to insist on social and environmental rules in their search for ever cheaper goods. We have made profit the only goal of capitalism, and hence we endorse those abuses.
Your point about liberals not enforcing immigration is wrong. It is Bush who suspended the very program that would have alerted our FBI to students who held visas but didn’t attend classes. And funding for our intelligence agencies? Please. At the very top of both CIA and FBI we had traitors selling out every single secret to the enemy. Then, Bush himself exposed a top counterterrorism agent for his own pathetic goal of discrediting critics of his lies about yellowcake from Niger.
“You feel it’s right to pay someone off to leave you alone. That’s called extortion, banditry, robbery, and downright theft from their side. From the other side of the fence, it’s called appeasement.” I don’t care what you call it. We have nonmilitary resources that can help alleviate poverty, hunger and disease, reduce hatred and strife, increase education and defuse the wealth gap timebomb. It is far more cost effective than militarism.
We have spent $70,000 per Iraqi family so far, more than a lifetime income for all but the richest. I guarantee that even I could have produced better results with that kind of money. Within three months of the fall of Saddam, I would have had 100% Iraqi employment, a repaired infrastructure by month six, a peaceful country by one year. I’m oversimplifying, but the truth is, the carrot works better than the stick with desperate poverty stricken people.
Of course I agree with you about alternative energy and freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. My home is 100% wind powered, I have always driven 4 cylinder cars and as soon as I can, will replace my current petrol-fired car with a hybrid or biodiesel.
Now, Sean, get some coffee, or maybe some soothing herbal tea.