[Marxism] Cheney losing image race, but winning war: Juan Cole on Obama's course

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/13/cheney/print.html

Hidden hand of Dick Cheney
Out of office, he continues to push his tortured version of reality -- and
his vision of an imperial presidency -- and there are signs he is
succeeding. 
By Juan Cole

May. 13, 2009 | 

Dick Cheney is out there. He is defending torture, dissing Colin Powell, and
genuflecting before radio personality Rush Limbaugh as the high priest of
what's left of conservatism. His refusal to go quietly, unlike his
much-reviled boss, is risky. He was a laugh line more than once at
Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner.

But the media's focus on the sheer spectacle of the ex-veep's antics, and on
the Republican vs. Democrat feud he's stoking, underestimates the way
Cheney's principles still inform many of the country's most crucial
policies. Like the creatures in the "Alien" films, Cheney has planted some
vicious spores in the bellies of his successors, which threaten to tear them
apart as they mature. Can the new administration truly reverse Cheney's
transformation of the United States into a 21st century empire, with the
president an imperial figure above the law?

The former vice-president is now a more reliable laugh-getter than
vote-getter. At the correspondents' dinner, President Obama quipped, "Dick
Cheney was supposed to be here, but he's very busy working on his memoirs,
tentatively titled 'How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.'" Guest
comedian Wanda Sykes went further, saying she found Cheney positively
terrifying. "He scares me to death. I tell my kids, I say, 'Look, if two
cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney, you
get in the car with the stranger.'"

This week's news is about the grand old pit bull's struggle to continue to
define his own party. Cheney emerged last Friday to warn on a North Dakota
radio program that it would be a mistake for the Republican Party to
moderate its message. (Does that mean it is now radical?) Then on Sunday
Cheney told Bob Schieffer of "Face the Nation" that it was a mistake to stop
using waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation, and that they
did not constitute torture. He also poked fun at Colin Powell, questioning
his credentials as a Republican and expressing a preference for the waspish
Limbaugh as the party's leader.

But don't dismiss Dick Cheney as a fading punch line, or as tragedy reprised
as comedy. While the Obama administration has adopted large numbers of
policies that directly contradict Cheney's positions, it would be a mistake
to overlook Cheney's continued influence on the executive branch through the
precedents set by the Bush administration. Among the former vice-president's
most important legacies is increased government secrecy. Obama's Department
of Justice continues to rely on an alleged "state secrets" privilege. It has
thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and
tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing,
on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state
secrets doctrine was used by Obama's DOJ in an attempt to block
investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has
attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to
prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing
before a judge to challenge their imprisonment.

Although the Obama administration is pledged to withdraw from Iraq
militarily in a way that Cheney would never have contemplated, it is just as
committed as Bush-Cheney to spreading good cheer about the new government in
Baghdad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the bombings by Iraqi
guerrillas this spring the "last gasp" of "rejectionists," seeming to
channel Cheney's allegation in 2005 that we were seeing the "last throes" of
the insurgency. Red Washington and blue Washington both want to tell us
stories about how Iraq will be OK and is just bedeviled by a few unreasoning
malcontents who are on their last legs.

On a trip to Afghanistan in 2004, Cheney told U.S. troops, "Your children
and my grandchildren will live in freedom tomorrow because of what you're
doing today." He warned them of continuing threats there, however, saying,
"Our coalition still has important work to do." He added, "Freedom still has
enemies here in Afghanistan. And you are here to make those enemies
miserable." Obama has, likewise, tied the establishment of a stable
government in Afghanistan to U.S. national security, and pledged to defeat
the Taliban and al-Qaida (even though there does not appear to be any
significant al-Qaida in Afghanistan anymore). Both Cheney and Obama tend to
amalgamate al-Qaida (a small, mainly Arab, international terrorist
organization) to the Taliban (a form of Pushtun fundamentalist nationalism
with local concerns). Cheney's war in Afghanistan envisaged no end, and
neither, apparently, does Obama's.

Many of Cheney's harshest policies were rooted in a conviction that small
terrorist groups might well get hold of nuclear weapons or other very
dangerous armaments, and that all necessary steps must be taken to forestall
that eventuality, even if it has only slight probability of occurring.
(Journalist Ron Suskind called this notion the "one percent" doctrine.) The
Obama administration just forced the Pakistani military to invade the
Malakand region and to displace hundreds of thousands of civilians in the
course of shelling and bombing a few thousand Taliban tribesmen. Among its
rationales for this massive application of force was that the Taliban had
advanced too close to Islamabad, and, apparently too close to that country's
nuclear warheads. (In fact, the idea that a small force of rural Taliban
could take over the Pakistani government or get access to its closely
guarded arsenal is fantastic.)

In the government's commitment to a doctrine of "state secrets" that protect
the executive from the scrutiny of other branches of government, in the
continued attempt to block lawsuits and release of important documents, and
in the shielding of secret programs of torture, unlawful kidnapping and
warrantless wiretapping, Obama is preserving policies to which Cheney is
deeply committed. In configuring Pushtun fundamentalists in southern
Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as a mortal threat to the U.S. and
potentially even a nuclear power, the Obama administration is picking up
themes from Cheney's old speeches and running with them. Cheney may or may
not win his struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. If we are not
careful, he will win the struggle for the soul of the country as a whole.
-- By Juan Cole



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