In the White House he was one of the main architects of the biggest military blunder in our lifetime which cost over 4,000 American military lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and maimed. Yet Dick Cheney claims to have made America safer by the decisions to invade Iraq and leaving Bin-Laden to roam the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and recruit more sympathizers to his cause.
The idiocy of leaving the perpetrator of 9-11 to his own habitat was further compounded when the Bush Cheney administration decided to import American targets closer to Bin Laden by invading Iraq, which made it far more convenient for a grateful Bin Laden to go after Americans in his back yard.
The only conceivable way the attack on Iraq could be looked at as making America safer is if one looks at the American soldiers being sent as decoys or sacrifices in Iraq, which made it unnecessary for Bin Laden to attack the homeland. It certainly provided Bin Laden with an additional and effective symbol for his anti-American recruiting posters.
Cheney cites the fact that there was no attack on the homeland after 9-11 as evidence that the administration’s doings made us safe. Leaving Bin Laden to his devices to plot and plan our demise didn’t leave us safer and certainly didn’t leave us feeling safer by leaving the chief perpetrator of 9-11 to do his thing, which only added to the notion that sooner or later we would be attacked again by the same source. Thus in saying we weren’t attacked again on his watch after 9-11 is essentially saying he beat the clock.
This is tantamount to the “so far so good” assessment, equivalent to the statement made by the fellow that jumped off the Empire State Building thinking he could fly, who was overheard saying as he went past the fourth floor window, “so far so good.”
As Cheney and his daughter continue on their revisionist history tour it might be instructional to consider other criteria besides the “so far so good” criteria to determine if he has made us safer.
The more pertinent question is what has been done to remove the threat, the underlying reasons for the danger. It’s one thing to avert an attack, it’s yet another to remove the motivation for those who are willing to mount the attacks. It’s the motivation that increases the likelihood of a successful attack. As Condoleezza liked to say, “The terrorist only have to be right once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time.”
Thus a more accurate criteria for determining which approach is contributing more or less to our safety is an examination of whether the ranks of those signing up to commit suicide bombings is increasing or decreasing. It’s common knowledge that the number of those signing up to become terrorist increased during the Bush Cheney era with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo seen as iconic recruiting tools.
Polls conducted in 11 Arab countries show that although approval of U.S. leadership remains generally low, ratings are up in 8 countries including Egypt. Throughout much of President George W. Bush's second term, Gallup found U.S. leadership approval ratings in many Arab countries at times in the single digits and among the lowest in the world."
Dick Cheney continues to campaign for the good old days when he was conducting a foreign policy that included torture and rendition that was alienating the world and had very little upside for the country.
In expanding his criticism of President Obama Cheney says the President has a lot to learn he went on to describe the Presidents brief stint as a Senator as evidence of Obama’s limited experience in effect rehashing an issue the voters retired at the polls.
Ironically the polls show that President Obama has improved the way America is viewed around the world. The long term battle for hearts and minds is being more effectively waged by President Barack Obama, a war that Cheney still has not learned is the one that will address the terrorism threat long term.
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Publisher's Statement
U.S.A. ThisWeek is a national weekly news magazine, the print version will soon be launched that will provide national weekly news-media representation for African Americans and fill a long standing news-media void. It’s our{mosimage} position that, until African Americans have a national voice that presents a perspective representing our interests and concerns on a weekly basis, we are relegated to less than full participation in the society. With the establishment of U.S.A ThisWeek, no longer will the area of news be dominated by the mainstream news media nor will the proliferation of traditional pundits, politicians and news readers have a monopoly on the opinions and perspectives being posited to the public.
In addition, with the new threat to our existence of international terrorism which places us all at risk, we can no longer remain quiescent and allow information that would address that threat to go unreported. Right now we’re in a Russian roulette posture based on the assessment of the current administration that “they only have to be right once; we have to be right all the time.”
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