Comments on: Heart of Darkness http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/ "If not now, when?" Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:12:06 -0800 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Rip Van Winkle http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/comment-page-1/#comment-23372 Rip Van Winkle Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:06:54 +0000 http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/#comment-23372 This is a segment of a 1994 interview with Dick Cheney. The former Sec. of Defense convincingly argues that invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein would have been a bad idea. INTERVIEWER: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad? CHENEY: No. INTERVIEWER: Why not? CHENEY: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad, we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got into Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim -- fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire, if you go that far in trying to take over Iraq. This is a segment of a 1994 interview with Dick Cheney. The former Sec. of Defense convincingly argues that invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein would have been a bad idea.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

CHENEY: No.

INTERVIEWER: Why not?

CHENEY: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad, we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got into Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim — fought over for eight years. In the north, you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you’ve threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire, if you go that far in trying to take over Iraq.

]]> By: eatbees http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/comment-page-1/#comment-23360 eatbees Sun, 26 Aug 2007 04:54:34 +0000 http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/#comment-23360 @leblase — Our Congressional leaders are by nature centrists, with very little variation. The question is really where the center is located on any given issue, at any given time. In the 1970s, following Watergate, we saw a high point of anti-militarism and transparency on national security issues, but we have been sliding backward ever sense. I give Bill Clinton some credit for moving the center in a more compassionate direction, but of course after 9/11 that work was undone. About Cheney, he's doing his best to create the fictive event you describe, though it won't remain fictive if he gets his way! The darkness that haunts Cheney is real. I never believed in "real evil" before, but he's convinced me. And of course, the nature of evil is to see everything but itself as evil. I should have known that. Because it's evil we are talking about (or to use a scientific term, psychopathology) it infects what is around it. Complacency in the face of evil makes us collaborators. We can't use the good German defense ("But I didn't know!") forever. At some point this problem must be cut out at the root. On one level, it's a pragmatic question about the correct functioning of government, but it's also deeper than that. It's a question of saving our own souls. I often wonder about the appropriate punishment for a man like Cheney. I can imagine putting him in the same cell we reserve for Bin Laden, or seeing him blown up by insurgents as he almost was in Afghanistan. But I actually prefer to let justice take his course. Milosovic ended as a sad, irrelevant man who had no hope of ever leaving his cell in the Hague. No one came to see him any more. No one cared. His only hope was to fake an illness so the judge might let him go to Russia for "treatment." Only the pills he took to create his fake symptoms actually killed him. Some similar fate for Cheney would be justice done. @leblase — Our Congressional leaders are by nature centrists, with very little variation. The question is really where the center is located on any given issue, at any given time. In the 1970s, following Watergate, we saw a high point of anti-militarism and transparency on national security issues, but we have been sliding backward ever sense. I give Bill Clinton some credit for moving the center in a more compassionate direction, but of course after 9/11 that work was undone.

About Cheney, he’s doing his best to create the fictive event you describe, though it won’t remain fictive if he gets his way! The darkness that haunts Cheney is real. I never believed in “real evil” before, but he’s convinced me. And of course, the nature of evil is to see everything but itself as evil. I should have known that.

Because it’s evil we are talking about (or to use a scientific term, psychopathology) it infects what is around it. Complacency in the face of evil makes us collaborators. We can’t use the good German defense (“But I didn’t know!”) forever. At some point this problem must be cut out at the root. On one level, it’s a pragmatic question about the correct functioning of government, but it’s also deeper than that. It’s a question of saving our own souls.

I often wonder about the appropriate punishment for a man like Cheney. I can imagine putting him in the same cell we reserve for Bin Laden, or seeing him blown up by insurgents as he almost was in Afghanistan. But I actually prefer to let justice take his course. Milosovic ended as a sad, irrelevant man who had no hope of ever leaving his cell in the Hague. No one came to see him any more. No one cared. His only hope was to fake an illness so the judge might let him go to Russia for “treatment.” Only the pills he took to create his fake symptoms actually killed him. Some similar fate for Cheney would be justice done.

]]> By: leblase http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/comment-page-1/#comment-23347 leblase Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:03:50 +0000 http://www.eatbees.com/blog/2007/08/24/heart-of-darkness/#comment-23347 I tend to think it is quite naive to believe there is much difference between a Democrat and a Republican Senator, even though they do push for some layers of separate policies. Moreover, the majority of them do not have the guts or the wits to send Cheney down where he belongs: a high-security jail. So, apart from the ascending of a Democratic Administration after next Presidential elections, I do not expect much from the actual Senate. Maybe a little more from the House, but not much. That leaves time enough for the lunatic Cheney to create a fictive event, involving fictive bad guys that would plunge America (and possibly a good part of the world) in more darkness. But Ritter is so right in pointing at the VP: the psychotic Vice President has much more strength and willpower than Bush. His private interests (Halliburton, Kellog, etc) and his mental fantasies fed by the souvenir of his past failures and cowardice would be a perfect subject for a historian of psychiatry. A new war could come from him, for sure, since he already has lost the two first he laid on the people of Afghanistan and Irak. But there should be a time when an American citizen, most probably a Republican close to the White house, will make a move to stop this folly. One should ask a simple question, that is surely a the top of dick Cheney's everyday preoccupation: what to do to avoid a Grand Jury once he is out of office? I tend to think it is quite naive to believe there is much difference between a Democrat and a Republican Senator, even though they do push for some layers of separate policies.
Moreover, the majority of them do not have the guts or the wits to send Cheney down where he belongs: a high-security jail.
So, apart from the ascending of a Democratic Administration after next Presidential elections, I do not expect much from the actual Senate. Maybe a little more from the House, but not much.
That leaves time enough for the lunatic Cheney to create a fictive event, involving fictive bad guys that would plunge America (and possibly a good part of the world) in more darkness.
But Ritter is so right in pointing at the VP: the psychotic Vice President has much more strength and willpower than Bush. His private interests (Halliburton, Kellog, etc) and his mental fantasies fed by the souvenir of his past failures and cowardice would be a perfect subject for a historian of psychiatry.
A new war could come from him, for sure, since he already has lost the two first he laid on the people of Afghanistan and Irak. But there should be a time when an American citizen, most probably a Republican close to the White house, will make a move to stop this folly.
One should ask a simple question, that is surely a the top of dick Cheney’s everyday preoccupation: what to do to avoid a Grand Jury once he is out of office?

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