Thursday, August 25, 2022

Editorial -- The Irony of Supporting Liz Cheney

A book title we’d like to see sometime is, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dick Cheney.” Today, the Democrats are swooning over Liz Cheney, the defeated Congresswoman from Wyoming, who is now contemplating presidential ambitions. Unlike most Republicans on January 6th, she took a stand for the impeachment of Trump, the rule of law, our system of government, and participated in the hearings to expose the former President. Some Democrats are even pushing her to run for President so she can stick it to Donald Trump. The problem is, they need to be careful what they wish for. In 2016, Hillary Clinton deliberately elevated Donald Trump because she thought he would be the easiest candidate to beat. We all remember how that turned out.

It is ironic that the Democrats are holding up the former Vice President’s daughter as the exemplar of virtue for conservatives to follow. In 2000, the Democrats accused George Bush and Dick Cheney of stealing the election, aided and abetted by the Supreme Court. There were more allegations of vote fraud and rigging in 2004 after John Kerry narrowly lost that year. Mr. Cheney was held up as the example of all that was evil in the GOP. He was seen as a war criminal who never met a war he didn’t like, who was the real mastermind behind the Bush Administration, and who would stop at nothing, including putting American lives in danger, to further the narratives of the Bush Administration.

Now, the Democrats want us to forget all that in 2022. But we can’t. For all her loud talk about the rule of law, Liz Cheney voted with Donald Trump 93% of the time. And what if history repeats itself, the Democrats elevate Cheney in 2024 like they did Donald Trump in 2016, and she wins? We would have even more wars, even more bloodlust, the danger of a four front war with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and even more roads and bridges falling into disrepair as the Cheney Administration fuels ever increasing sums of money into wars of choice.

George Bush was the worst President in US History, and Dick Cheney, of course, was the 2nd in charge. After the 9/11 attacks, we had a unique opportunity to shape the world for the better. President Putin was one of the first people to call Bush after the attacks, and people were willing to follow our lead.

But instead of using the attacks to usher in an era of goodwill, Bush used it to carry out a war of choice and a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and who shot terrorists. Over 1 million civilians died in a US effort to prop up an Iraqi government that nearly fell to ISIS after Barack Obama fulfilled a campaign promise and left. Instead of the Pax Americana that we could have had, other countries would no longer accept our leadership. 

In 2007, President Putin of Russia gave a speech in Munich in which he decried what he saw as the US monopolistic dominance in global relations, and its uncontrolled reliance on the use of force. In effect, he was flipping everyone the bird. One does not have to defend any of the actions of Putin subsequent to that speech to see that the policies of perpetual warfare that Bush championed and that Joe Biden has brought back have led to this state of affairs. 

George Bush was the worst President in US History because his policies destroyed the system of Pax Americana that the collapse of Communism in 1989 created. Instead of being a country that everyone else looked up to, many nations saw us as a nation to be feared and wondered if they were next. For instance, Kim Jong-Un built up North Korea’s nuclear program because he knew full well what happens to countries such as Libya which give up their nukes and are later bombed into the Stone Age.

We regard Mr. Bush as the worst in US History over a few others. James Buchanan stood on the wrong side of history on the slavery issue, but it would have been difficult for any US President to stop the slide towards Civil War. Herbert Hoover ushered in the Great Depression and was trounced by the biggest margin of any incumbent US President in history. But the Depression was worldwide, and it would have been difficult for any US President to stop it. Under Donald Trump, we were in perpetual crisis mode, with one crisis after another coming one right after the other, and he three times brought us to the brink of war with Iran and once with North Korea.  But we were already in decline thanks to the Bush era. Bill Clinton, while he presided over a period of prosperity, gutted our local communities with NAFTA and the China Agreement, planting the seeds for the rise of Trump.

So with Bush being the worst president in history, why are the Democrats trying to rehabilitate him and Cheney? They have the perpetual warfare thing down pat. For Joe Biden, the only mistake that Bush made was in not arming proxies to do our dirty work. But there is a big difference between Ukraine and Iraq. Russia is a nuclear armed country fully capable of destroying us in an instant if they wanted to, just like we could them. If Ukraine turns into a shooting war between the US and Russia, then it could quickly spiral into a nuclear war that nobody would win.


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