Saturday, January 10, 2009

Cheney

Jay Nordlinger has a great interview with the vice-president.
A set-up:

“So it’s been a difficult environment in which to portray yourself as somehow warm and fuzzy. Hillary Clinton referred to me as Darth Vader. I joke that I asked my family if they were offended by that, and they said, ‘No, it humanizes you.’
Read it if you want to know why he's been silent while his critics have gone off a very deep end publicly despising him. I have wondered why a man who had so much widespread across-the-aisle admiration eight years ago (Do you remember when Bush named Cheney as veep? There was a certain sigh of relief that the Idiot Boy* would at least have at his elbow The Great Advisor) was over this space of time turned into a punching bag for every mystical evil imagining that the lefty bloggers could conjure. A little insight is therein provided.



*For the record, I am not one of those who think George W. Bush is an idiot.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Bush/Cheney administration has actively and systematically done horrible things for this country, more I think out of fear than out of good intent - though the former is often mistaken for the latter. Point being, Bush may not be an idiot, but he's certainly destroyed some basic rights for people both in and out of this country.

You can regard that as a Young Adult Statement, but it's hard to look at the last eight years in this country and not say that Bush, all debate over his foreign policy aside, has sadly and unfortunately brought the United States into a submerged form of a police state.

Example: http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=168723

Furthermore, his foreign policy has increasingly been less and less tenable, the invasion of Iraq being completely unethical when one considers the dozens of countries around the world that have dictators who are actively murdering their own citizens on a daily basis. Yet still there are billions of dollars pumped into a conflict in the middle east that began on conditions that were and remain still uncertain.

Again, Bush may not be an idiot (and Cheney may not be an evil mastermind), but there is no reason to say or even imply that he and his vice president has done more good during his administration than bad.

One thing that irritated me about Oliver Stone's movie about Bush was his bias and one-dimensional portrayal of everyone besides George W., particularly Dick Cheney. I felt that everyone within the administration deserved to be examined more closely than just as a popular public perception.

To wrap it up: don't be so quick to defend anyone that has been involved in the Bush administration, nor quick to accuse, because the United States in general acted rashly and emotionally post-911, and continues still to operate still more on fear than on reason or justice or, God forbid, love.

Bruce Gee said...

Ok look. If you're going to cite a source to prove your point, please cite a source that proves your point. Otherwise you just end up looking silly.

I'm very confused by your statement. You say that Bush/Cheney have created a "submerged" police state, is that right? And cite an example of higher voter registration standards to prove it (Something Al Gore probably would have done as well)? And you actually take ANYTHING Oliver Stone has ever done seriously?

See ya. Making the governor of a state follow the voting laws is not destroying basic rights for people. And your argument on the Bush foreign policy: it has not been less and less tenable, but MORE AND MORE tenable. You think that the Middle Eastern situation is less stable without Saddam Hussein? We'll have to disagree on that.

What we do agree on is this: "...don't be so quick to defend anyone that has been involved in the Bush administration, nor quick to accuse..."

I have done neither.