Cheney Scales New
Heights of Hypocrisy
By ROBERT FANTINA
14/09/08 "Counterpunch"
-- - While Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential
nominee Sarah Palin is getting all the attention, the current
vice president, Dick Cheney, was able to pontificate about
Russia and Georgia with barely any notice from the media.
However, while hardly anyone was watching, Mr. Cheney echoed the
hypocrisy of his boss, President George Bush. While traveling in
Italy, Mr. Cheney decided to become the moral arbiter of
Russia’s foreign policies. His incredible remarks are worth
studying.
“Recent occurrences in Georgia, beginning with the military
invasion by Russia, have been flatly contrary to some of our
most deeply held beliefs. Russian forces crossed an
internationally recognized border into a sovereign state; fueled
and fomented an internal conflict; conducted acts of war without
regard for innocent life, killing civilians and causing the
displacement of tens of thousands.”
If anyone doubted the vice president’s disdain for those who
elected him and kept him in power, this speech should have been
an eye-opener. How he could make that statement with a straight
face is beyond comprehension. Was he not a major force in the
U.S. military invasion of Iraq? Mr. Bush may not have needed
much encouragement to embark on this deadly oil grab, but
whatever encouragement he may have needed was gladly provided by
the vice president.
Did not U.S. forces cross an internationally recognized border
into a sovereign state? At least Russia’s incursion was to a
country it bordered; the U.S. sent 130,000 soldiers halfway
across the world to invade and occupy sovereign Iraq.
Russia, says Mr. Cheney, ‘fueled and fomented an internal
conflict.’ It has been some time since people have been talking
about civil war in Iraq, possibly because with the increase of
30,000 soldiers, Iraq may have finally, after five bloody,
terrifying years, been cowed into submission. The U.S. overthrew
the government with nothing to put in its place, disbanded the
police, and turned a once peaceful nation into an inferno of
deadly, daily violence.
He goes on to decry the idea that Russia ‘conducted acts of war
without regard for innocent life, killing civilians.’ When Mr.
Bush’s horrific and unspeakable ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign began,
residential areas were targeted. The president said he was
invading Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction aimed
at the U.S., but since he didn’t know exactly where they were,
he would simple practice genocide on the Iraqi people and hope
the weapons of mass destruction would turn up eventually (they
didn’t). At the time his bombers were dropping death from the
air over Baghdad, over half the population of that city was
under the age of 15.
As far as conducting acts of war is concerned, could someone
point out to Mr. Cheney that the invasion of a sovereign nation
is probably the ultimate act of war? Occupying it for years,
killing a million of its citizens and terrorizing much of the
population for over five years may be business as usual for U.S.
foreign policy, but that does not make those actions any less
acts of war.
One could also point out that torturing political prisoners,
some as young as 15, is an horrific act of war. The torture
chamber that the U.S. operates at Guantanamo Bay is only the
most famous; the U.S. uses ‘rendition’ sites around the world to
torture those it considers dangerous. The supposedly cherished
rights, such as due process, that the U.S. is said to stand for
are meaningless to those who get in the way of Mr. Bush and Mr.
Cheney’s imperial designs.
The Russian incursion, said Mr. Cheney, caused ‘the displacement
of tens of thousands.’ That number pales in comparison to the
millions who have been displaced in Iraq due to the U.S.
invasion and occupation. At least a million Iraqis are in
crowded refugee camps, forgotten by the media and certainly
ignored by that master terrorist, Dick Cheney. Perhaps two
million more have had to leave their homes, although they remain
in Iraq.
“The United States and many in Europe have made clear that
Russia's actions are an affront to civilized standards and are
completely unacceptable.” Mr. Cheney did not bother to explain
why these behaviors exhibited by Russia are ‘an affront to
civilized standards,’ and why they are ‘completely
unacceptable,’ but when the exact same acts are perpetrated by
the U.S., although on a far larger scale, they are, apparently,
just fine.
“For its part, Russia has offered no satisfactory justification
for the invasion -- nor could it do so.” In over five years
since the U.S. invaded Iraq, it has offered ‘no satisfactory
justification’ for doing so. All the original lies, including
the falsehoods that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, was
close to developing nuclear weapons, etc., have faded into
oblivion, like the blood of millions of Iraqis on the desert
sands. Mr. Bush also stated the need for ‘regime change;’ why he
and his neocon cohorts felt this was their right has also never
been explained.
“Differing views on the status of these two areas, within the
sovereign borders of the Georgian democracy, cannot justify a
sudden and violent incursion by Russia. This much, at a minimum,
should be understood by all people of good will in the year
2008.”
Yet apparently the belief that Iraq posed an imminent threat to
the U.S., despite the fact that United Nations weapons
inspectors were combing Iraq and finding nothing, could justify
a sudden and violent incursion by the U.S. People of good will
in the year 2008 understand that that is simply wrong, as they
did in 2003.
“This chain of aggressive moves and diplomatic reversals has
only intensified the concern that many have about Russia's
larger objectives.” The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq,
continued threats against Iran and Cuba, and the fact that the
U.S. has enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy the
entire planet several times over have certainly intensified
concern about the U.S.’s larger objectives.
Eight long years ago, Mr. Bush promised to bring dignity back to
the White House. In his war-mongering mind the fact that
President Bill Clinton had had an extra-marital affair was so
disgraceful that the reputation of the U.S. was in tatters as a
result. Today, following the Iraqi invasion and occupation that
most of the world, including most of the U.S.’s allies, opposed
from the start, the U.S. is the most hated and feared nation on
the planet. With Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney now prancing around the
world, criticizing Russia for actions that parallel in action
but not in scope, the exact behaviors they have practiced and
continue to practice, another mark of hypocrisy has been struck
against the U.S.
As the U.S. plods towards the conclusion of its every-four-year
election farce, the race for president is said to be too close
to call. The Republican presidential candidate, the elderly
Arizona Senator John McCain, the man who is so wealthy he does
not even know how many houses he owns (or perhaps it is simply
senility), calls for change by offering more of the same. This
is the model his idol, Mr. Bush, used following the 2006
Congressional elections. After the war-mongering Republicans
were thrown out of Congress, replaced by the spineless but
equally war-mongering Democrats, Mr. Bush led the country on a
‘new way forward,’ by escalating the war. Mr. McCain has
consistently supported Mr. Bush’s worst policies.
Mr. McCain’s Democratic challenger, Illinois Senator Barack
Obama, has inspired many with his call for ‘change we can
believe in.’ Whether or not we can actually believe in his idea
of change, at the very least he offers a glimmer of the hope
that U.S. citizens and the world have lived without for eight
long years. He selected as his running mate Senator Joe Biden, a
distinguished senator with a thorough knowledge of foreign
policy, having served for many years on the senate Foreign
Relations Committee, which he currently chairs. Mr. McCain
selected Mrs. Palin, an (almost) one-term governor of a state
with a population of less than 1,000,000. Her previous political
experience was as mayor of an Alaskan town with a population of
less than 7,000. She opposes every progressive movement known to
man, encourages the shooting of wolves from airplanes, and
believes that global warming is a natural occurrence, and not a
man-made threat.
One wonders how more of the same will help to rebuild the
reputation of the U.S. throughout the world, especially when it
is ushered in by a cowgirl brandishing a gun and a chastity
belt. Yet that is what change means to Mr. McCain.
The world is watching to see if the U.S. voters will make the
same disastrous mistake in 2008 that they made in 2004. There
was no excuse for it then, and there will be even less so if
they do it again. The consequences of those mistakes grow with
each one. It will not be long before those consequences are
irreversible, to the detriment of the entire world population.
Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier:
1776--2006. Click on
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