CNN:In a hard-hitting, wide-ranging speech Wednesday for a conservative gathering, Cheney targeted the administration's decision-making process on how to proceed in Afghanistan, saying Obama has failed to give troops on the ground a clear mission or defined goals and appeared "afraid to make a decision."
"The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," Cheney said at the Center for Security Policy. "Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries."
Cheney also targeted White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who suggested on CNN's "State of the Union With John King" on Sunday the Bush administration failed to assess conditions in Afghanistan adequately before committing troops there.
"Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced," Cheney said in reference to Emanuel's comments. "It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity."
It takes a lot of guts for Cheney to accuse the Obama administration of taking their eye off the ball in Afghanistan -- and not the least because the Bush administration did just that to go on a pointless, expensive, and bloody snipe hunt in Iraq.
National Security Network Senior Adviser Gen. Paul Eaton reminds us in a statement that Bush and Cheney really sucked at this war stuff.
The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.
The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.
As one deeply invested in the Armed Forces of this country, I am grateful for the senior military commanders assigned to leading this fight and the men and women fighting on the ground. But I dismiss men like Cheney who inject partisan politics into the profound deliberations our Commander-in-Chief and commanders on the ground are having to develop a cohesive and comprehensive strategy, bringing to bear the economic and diplomatic as well as the military power, for Afghanistan -- something Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld never did.
No human endeavor can be as profound as sending a nation's youth to war. I am very happy to see serious men and women working hard to get it right.
I couldn't have put it better myself... Well, not without swearing, anyway.
1 comments:
I was thinking about the Dick yesterday and thinking that he sounds like he might be campaigning for something. Maybe his daughter Liz? Maybe his own death-defying self?
Could you see it?
The one area he could really improve his image and the numbers of the GOP is the gay community.
Being anti-gay is being pro-inequality. You see all sorts of politicians pay lip service to the gay community and never really come through. For shame!
Cheney could make promises of national security and fiscal conservatism-- while his daughter Mary could be his rainbow flag and he could run on a campaign promise with a new GOP social contract with America by vowing to emancipate the gays!
Kind of like the Lyndon Johnson of today's civil rights movement.
And one more thing. For a guy who had absolutely NO constitutional authority in the military chain of command, he spends an awful lot of time pretending to be a credible military strategist relying on his 5 deferments for clout.
And we're supposed take this fraud and his rotten family seriously?
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