Apparently I am not the only one who has taken umbrage at Dick Cheney’s shameful attack on President Obama, using the Christmas Day attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253 strictly for political gain.
Among Cheney’s outrageous accusations was his “As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.”
In a Washington Post column yesterday, Eugene Robinson takes Dick Cheney to task and, of course, does a much better job than I tried to do in my “Tired of Defending Dick Cheney” post.
My hometown newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, republished Robinson’s column this morning under the title “Resolve to put the country first.” The Washington Post title was “Dick Cheney’s lies about President Obama.”
While there is nothing factually wrong with the Post’s title, in the spirit of a New Year, of a new beginning, I prefer the Statesman’s title.
Aside from that, Robinson is right on target with every word, starting with:
It’s pathetic to break a New Year’s resolution before we even get to New Year’s Day, but here I go. I had promised myself that I would do a better job of ignoring Dick Cheney’s corrosive and nonsensical outbursts — that I would treat them, more or less, like the pearls of wisdom one hears from homeless people sitting in bus shelters.
But he is a former vice president, which gives him a big stage for his histrionic Rottweiler-in-Winter act. It is never a good idea to let widely disseminated lies and distortions go unchallenged. And the shrill screed that Cheney unloosed Wednesday is so full of outright mendacity that, well, my resolution will have to wait.
Robinson then focuses on Cheney’s “big lie” mentioned above and provides plenty of evidence for Obama’s commitment to fighting the war against terrorists, a commitment that “has won the president nothing but grief from the liberal wing of his party, with more certainly to come.”
As I broached in my piece, Robinson asks: “Hasn’t anyone told Cheney that Obama is sharply boosting troop levels in Afghanistan in an attempt to avoid losing a war that the Bush administration started but then practically abandoned?”
On the Guantanamo issue, Robinson observes:
Interesting that Cheney should bring that up, because it now seems clear that the man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training — and probably the bomb itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear — by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. It happens that at least two men who were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
On Cheney’s anger that Obama does not use the phrase “war on terror” all the time, the way the Bush administration used to, Robinson says, “…Obama just specifies that we’re at war against a network of terrorists, on the sensible theory that it’s impossible to wage war against a tactic.”
Robinson concludes:
I can find reasons to criticize the administration’s response to the Christmas Day attack. Obama and his team were slow off the mark. Their initial statements were weak. Obama shouldn’t have waited three days to speak publicly, and when he did he should have shown some emotion.
But using a terrorist attack to seek political gain? I have a New Year’s resolution to suggest for Cheney: Ahead of your quest for personal vindication, put country first.
“Putting country first.” What an excellent New Year’s resolution—for all of us.
It also makes for a better title.
