Dick Cheney of Iraq disaster is dispensing advice on Ukraine
[Black Star News Editorial]
Some of the same folk who took the U.S. into an illegal war on Iraq, using fake and “sexed” up data are now criticizing President Obama for not considering military options against the move by Russia’s Vladimir Putin into Crimea over the Ukraine dispute.
How insane. Risk war with Russia, a nuclear power, over the Ukraine?
Some of these critics sound like they should be whisked away in straight jackets.
Take former vice president Dick Cheney for example; architect of the Iraq debacle. A war for oil.
A war that cost over $2 trillion by now, 4,486 U.S. soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded, and anywhere from hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives with some estimates placing casualties at over one million.
“I worry when we begin to address the crisis, the first thing we do is take options off the table,” the warmonger Cheney said to CBS’s Face The Nation. “In the sense of saying ‘no military,'” Cheney added, President Obama “seems to operate that way most of the time. There are military options that don’t involve putting groups on the ground in Crimea.”
And what kind of options might these be and of what use are they?
Cheney suggests they could include U.S. joint military exercise with Poland or resuming the U.S. proposal to build a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland.
And how would these moves address the crisis in the Ukraine? Would Putin roll back from the Crimea, which next week will vote to secede from Ukraine and become part of Russia? Will Russia to recognize the new government that seized power in Ukraine? Will Russia not turn off the gas line to Ukraine, which will also affect other European countries?
Cheney’s proposals are macho saber-rattling that carries more risks than benefits.
What’s even remarkable is the news judgment of the folk who control outlets like CBS. On what basis should Cheney, a proven warmonger be offering advice on the Ukraine crisis given his discredited record on Iraq?
Then we have Senator John McCain of Arizona. He’s one of the most dishonest foreign policy commentators. He has never acknowledged how wrong he’s been in the past, when he now claims the crisis in Ukraine is “the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy where nobody believes in America’s strength anymore.”
And what does he mean by that?
McCain was one of the biggest boosters of the U.S./NATO intervention in Libya. Where is Libya today? When was the last time he and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, his side kick, visited Libya to tout the installation of “democracy” there? Libya is today a lawless violent no-man’s land operated by the competing militias that was installed as a result of the intervention; McCain was a primary cheerleader for war.
McCain has also been the biggest militarist when it comes to Syria. He even visited the Saudi-financed and trained so-called “rebels” many of whom have been: be-heading their opponents; committing acts of bestiality such as cutting out the heart of an opponent and consuming it; and carrying out summary executions. The rebels also possibly used chemical weapons according to the U.N.’s Carla Del Ponte; the motive seemed to be to blame the crime on the Assad regime in order to provoke a Western intervention on the insurgents’ side.
The insurgents have openly declared their allegiance to Al-qaeda and they are the ones conducting the most fighting on the ground. A Google search will reveal all this information to Americans even if the corporate media and Senator John McCain downplay this. Similarly, a search on YouTube will expose the brutality of the McCain-preferred rebels, who delight in posting videos of their atrocities online.
McCain also pretends as if there is a cohesive Syrian rebel front, knowing he can say anything since most Americans don’t follow the conflict that closely.
Assad’s regime has committed atrocities against civilians during this primarily Saudi-financed civil war. But does that justify installing an Al-qaeda regime in Damascus or reducing Syria into today’s Libya?
Perhaps that’s why President Obama has taken a more nuanced approach, realizing that the best hope for Syria is peace negotiations that results in a government that would be representative while excluding the extremists financed by the Saudis whose only interest is ejecting Assad.
On Syria, one would think McCain would side with President Obama rather than with Saudi Arabia and Al-qaeda.
So how could President Obama’s approach be judged as “feckless” when compared to the “reckless” ones preferred by McCain.
And had the U.S. helped install an Al-qaeda regime in Syria that would have somehow deterred Putin from going into the Crimea?
Meanwhile, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was until recently defense secretary under President Obama, after having served under George W. Bush, reminded the president’s critics that President Putin invaded another former Soviet Republic, Georgia, when George W. Bush was president; nobody accused Bush of being “feckless.”
We should not be surprised that professional Republican politicians like Cheney and McCain take any opportunity to oppose President Obama, even offering insane proposals in the process. We must however demand that professional journalists note the records of these “wise” men when they are provided the opportunity to share their views.
Without proper context media also engages in raising the expectations of ordinary Americans to unreasonable and even reckless levels.
