I LIKE Cheney

I had a bunch of other posts in the works---all saved as drafts, so you'll see them soon enough. But today, my attention was completely caught in Dick Cheney's speech. This, my friends, is a good man with a bad name. There is no need for me to go into all of the terrible things people have said about him. He was one of the most universally hated men in this country for the last several years. On my own campus, BYU in UTAH (the only all-red state in the Union), there was an enraged outcry and protests when he was selected as the commencement speaker at graduation.

But say what you will about Dick Cheney, he does not care what people think about him. He speaks his mind more straightforwardly than any other politician I know of, and is less afraid of the consequences when people disagree with what he has to say. This total disregard for the opinions of other is actually the single strongest evidence that he's honest. I feel like I'm getting to know one of the only adults in politics.

So, you can find the entire transcript of the speech here, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you read the entire thing. This is one of those rare speeches to which every American should be exposed. This is NON-PARTISAN stuff. Sure, Republicans are going to mostly agree with it, and Democrats are going to mostly be enraged by it, but it is not playing to any political base. Cheney is Cheney. Most people don't like him and he doesn't care.

These are some excerpts--I share them not to give you the most important highlights of the speech, but to try to convince you to read the whole thing:

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

...

So we’re left to draw one of two conclusions – and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

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By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called “Truth Commission.” Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

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In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, “abducted.” Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

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The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world – for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences – and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

And there is much, much more.