A new crisis in Iraq and out comes the saber rattlers. Dick Chaney, the former US Vice president under George W. Bush, and his daughter, Liz, recently penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (where else?) blasting President Obama's foreign policy in general and his handling of the new Iraqi crisis in particular.
The breadth-taking hypocrisy and undisguised hubris of the manifestly delusional is astounding even by Chenyite standards. Its as if the man is devoid of any memory of how America got into the Iraq war in the first place. Mr.Chaney and his prodigeny wax eloquent about the misadventure -- up to 2009. Then excoriate President Obama for the war's "failures and lack of leadership."
Without batting an eyelid Mr.Chaney, Paul Wolfowitz, Billy Krystal et al., the neoconservative warmongering cabal during the Bush/Chaney Administration, are again beating the drums of war. The equally delusional Senator John McCain who seems to have great difficulty remembering his own positions on the Iraq war from day to day is also calling for air strikes.
Air strikes? How is that going to solve the present Iraqi crisis that is a combination of social disenchantment by large sections of the Iraqi population and an opportunistic military insurgency? Is Senator McCain and company saying that America can bomb its way into a political resolution? Its like killing to show that killing is wrong. And that's patently stupid. But more than that. This kind of thinking demonstrates just how out of touch and backward this group of Republican are when faced with real complex political and military situations that are intertwined with serious social issues on the ground.
But the former Vice President of the United States and his able bodied group of armchair generals and Monday morning quarterbacks are an odd bunch to say the last. Mr. Chaney and his cohorts have started to revise and rewrite the history of the America/Iraq War without even offering up an explanation, excuse or discussion about the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 in the first place.
Again, this clearly demonstrates the kind of political hypocrisy that they eagerly engage in. By starting their historical revision of their badly calculated military adventure that cost over 4.500 American lives and thousands of wounded, Mr. Chaney and company are arrogantly banking on the fickle nature of the American masses and their tendency to be forgetful.
But they also calculate that the Iraq war is still deeply unpopular with the American people even though they still think that sending young American men and women to die in Iraq was still a great thing. So, amazingly, in a kind of Orwellian way, after George W. Bush demitted office in 2009 the ENTIRE Iraq war was now all President Obama's fault.
Here's Liz Chaney and her dad in the Wall Street Journal op-ed:
"Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."
American defeat? Are they completely nuts? Maybe Dick Chaney needs to see his doctor because he must be in the early stages of Alheizmer's disease for him to be so utterly forgetful. It's either that or he's deliberately twisting and manipulating the facts and the truth just to attack President Obama.
But hold on. This is what happens when civilian political leaders without a clue about military matters internalize their own arrogance. Like Mr. Chaney they enter a magical world of fantasy. Sure, just leave a few thousand American soldiers and Iraq would be safe and, Hey Presto! a new democracy is born. Just America's presence alone would have ISIS scared and cowering.
Bummer. Poor Dick Chaney. Struggling to become and remain relevant after being carted off to the bad dreams section of political fantasyland.
O yeah, he (President Obama) "had only" to leave a few thousand troops and everything would have turned out just fine and peachy. The Gospel and Doctrine of Lord Dick of Head. But who was it that signed the so-called Forces Agreement with the Iraqi Government mandating the removal of all American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011? That's right, it was the very same President George W. Bush.
You see, contrary to Clueless Dick and Company the Iraqis do not want American troops on their soil. Hell, America invaded the country on the pretext of unadulterated lies and falsehoods. But in Mr. Chaney's delusional mind the Iraqis loved and welcomed the invasion and the killing of over 350,000 of their countrymen, not to mention the infrastructural damages that reduced parts of the country to rubble.
So Mr. Chaney would have left troops here even if the people AND the government that President Bush AND Mr. Chaney installed and sanctioned, were saying "Go home Yankee!"
But wait, its gets better.
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