It's very tempting to just blow Dick Cheney's latest harangue. He's just a failed former vice president whose ideas have already been discredited, and whose catastrophic record on national security issues is pretty obvious.
But his comments last night were just a little too offensive to let pass by unnoticed.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday night accused the White House of dithering over the strategy for the war in Afghanistan and urged President Barack Obama to "do what it takes to win."
"Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries," Cheney said while accepting an award from a conservative national security group, the Center for Security Policy. [...]
"The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," the former vice president said. "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's hard to know where to start, but I suppose it's worth noting from the outset that Cheney and the most recent administration left the mess in Afghanistan for President Obama to clean up. Hearing the guy who screwed up tell the Commander in Chief, "Hurry up and mop faster" is more than a little disturbing.
For that matter, Cheney wants to see Obama "do what it takes to win"? That's a fine idea -- too bad Cheney didn't follow that advice when he was helping run the previous administration. Conditions in Afghanistan were stable and improving when Bush/Cheney decided it was time to launch an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq, making it easier for the Taliban to regroup and go on the offensive.
The White House isn't sending "signals of indecision"; the White House is doing what Cheney failed to do: come up with a strategic plan for the future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. In Grown-Up Land, it's the former vice president who "dithered" his way through eight years in Afghanistan. Taking a few weeks to come up with a coherent plan doesn't put U.S. troops "in danger"; listening to Dick Cheney puts U.S. troops "in danger."
Cheney said last night that the Bush White House left Obama with a great plan. That's an interesting claim.It'd be more compelling if we had any reason to believe it.
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