By Roger L Simon
Dick Cheney and, needless to say, his daughter Liz have announced they will be supporting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, a woman with whom, it would seem, they have as much in common as Leon Trotsky.
George W. Bush has done close to the same, declaring he will not support anyone in the 2024 election but hinting he will vote for the other party.
None of this is particularly surprising. Both have done it before. Donald Trump has declared this “irrelevant,” and it mostly is. We already know how Adam Kinziger is going to vote.
Nevertheless, the MSM is chortling away, hoping to influence somebody or bait Trump into saying something they can misquote.
Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, on his Live tour, accompanied by Tulsi Gabbard, explained Cheney’s views in what we might call a Menckenesque manner—it’s “about the money”— in other words what Dwight Eisenhower warned us about at the end of World War II, the “military-industrial complex.”
True enough. Dick Cheney, through his long association with government contractors, certainly profited from that, as did his friends, many of whom continue to do so. War pays, if you don’t actually have to fight it yourself.
The Cheneys and the Bushes, however, undoubtedly have sufficient net worth to carry them through several Depressions.
Something even more powerful than money may be involved here —history and reputation—to wit, the Iraq War.
Cheney, W., and their SecDef, the wittier Donald Rumsfeld were the primary men responsible. But they were far from alone. Almost all politicians on both sides of the aisle supported the war, as did the vast majority of the American public, as well as your humble scribe.
It was in part, vengeance for 9/11, though Saddam was never directly implicated, plus an attempt to rid him of nuclear weapons that were never found.
But the overwhelming hope, the moral impetus, was that American “shock and awe” would bring about a new, democratic Middle East.
For a bit it looked promising. Saddam was gone. Iraqis were actually voting in an election. When I was CEO of the fledgling Pajamas Media, we ”won the internet” for a couple of days in January 2005 by covering their election in person across the country through our affiliate blog “Iraq the Model.” Remember the purple fingers? Those were heady, idealistic days.
Then the roof started to fall in. What was once a one-sided war, became a real one in places like Fallujah. It turned out that imposing democracy by military force on tribal Middle Eastern countries wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, as has also been demonstrated in Afghanistan.
Iraq, formerly at war with the fascist theocrats of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is now their fiefdom with local Tehran-financed militia regularly taking aim with missiles and drones at remaining American troops. The entire Middle East is inflamed. In short, most now regard the Iraq War as having been an unmitigated failure and a self-inflicted one.
Although he waffled a bit, among the first to declare this publicly was Donald Trump.
Not long thereafter, the never-shy Donald, equally publicly, put the onus for this disaster on Dick Cheney and by inference George W. Bush. History, if written honestly, will not look favorably on their decision and its aftermath. Their legacy was effectively and deservedly besmirched by Trump.
This, I believe, is why they so despise him. It is why Liz Cheney despises him also. More than anything, it’s a family thing. This explains her behavior ever since, why the Cheneys and probably the Bushes could support a Kamala Harris whose views, assuming she really has any, are antithetical to anything they have ever espoused.
A not-so-invisible line can be drawn from Trump’s calling out of Cheney and Bush for the Iraq War, from which many Americans tragically died or were wounded ultimately for no reason, to the overt bias of the commission investigating J6 and the overly-zealous prosecution of demonstrators, some of whom weren’t even in Washington at the time.
This is history at work. They say that journalism, already of dubious accuracy, is its first draft. How the final drafts will be written is yet to be determined.
First published in American Refugees
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
7 Responses
I think it’s snobbery too. Trump may be a billionaire, but he’s the wrong kind of billionaire. The Bushes are patrician, Massachusetts, Yale — snobs, in other words.
Donald Trump is a man who inherited his wealth, his busines ventures employ few people and have been largely unsuccessful and many were reliant on deceiving others. At this point the reasons not to support him are half a mile long, and if you don’t see them then it can only be because you are choosing to ignore them and live in a bubble of unreality.
You are a liar and not a very good one. No point in disputing your nonsense.
Case in point – forget all his buildings.
He was banned by twitter, facebook and the rest of social media. He starts his own company. That is now worth over $3 billion now with very little up front money. Yeah that sure is not an accomplishment.
List your successes, amigo. In fact list the successes of:
Kamala Harris
Joe Biden
Tim Walz
You
…….crickets….we’re waiting………
Aren’t you the guy who was trying to convince people that a deeply vulgar, misogynistic thug was, because he supports Donald Trump and has got the libs worked up at something or other (which is 50% the reason right wingers decide to oppose or support a person or thing), actually a fine human being who deserves their support?
If only he hadn’t made that anti-semitic comment not 72 hours later and forced you to publish a hasty retraction.
Yeah, once in a while in life something wonderful happens, and people get plainly exposed for the yarn-spinning shysters they really are.
This is a welcome commentary. It makes sense. Pride. As simple as that.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort…of three years without mature leadership.”
– T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶D̶e̶f̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ Out-Of-Touch Patrician James Mattis
“His understanding of global events was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand why we’re talking about this. I used to go into meetings with a list of four to five things I needed to talk to him about, and I quickly learned that if I got to three, it was a home run. I began to adjust what I went into a meeting with and what I attempted to explain, and I started taking charts and pictures with me because I found that those seemed to hold his attention better.”
“We squandered the best opportunity we had on North Korea. With Putin, we didn’t get anything done. We’re nowhere with China on national security. We’re in a worse place today than we were before he came in, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues, that they are satisfied with a hundred and twenty-eight characters”
– T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ Spiteful California Lib Rex Tillerson
https://web.archive.org/web/20210111123946/https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/11/rex-tillerson-interview-trump/#cookie_message_anchor
https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2018/12/07/rex-tillerson-trump/
“President Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution that day, but I chose the Constitution and I always will.”
– T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶V̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶P̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ Old Money Snob Mike Pence
I simply don’t care about this deficiency and that deficiency, this failure or that failure. I don’t even care if such comments are true or not.
What we have are two people vying for the presidentship: Trump and Harris.
Now you have to make a decision…