Thank God For Dick Cheney (Really)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/dick-cheney-iraq


Thank God For Dick Cheney (Really)
Jason Stanford – June 20, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT


Until today, the sectarian conflict in Iraq has put the mess into messaging. For an administration already in love with nuance, explaining how the United States should engage in Iraq presents the worst on-the-one-hand-on-the-other challenge in the world. But sometimes it’s better to be lucky in communications than good, and for that Obama has Dick Cheney to thank. The more the former vice president talks, the better Obama seems.

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I claim no pride of authorship for the idea that Cheney is a useful foil for Obama. Jonathan Chait wrote a piece under the headline, “Actually, let’s hear more from Dick Cheney on Iraq.” On the Senate floor today {Wednesday}, Sen. Harry Reid said, “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history.” To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney is a known known. Every self-assured snarl he utters reminds us on a precognitive level why Iraq became a national security Superfund site to begin with.

It's too late for Dick Cheney to rehab his legacy. The American people have made their decision about the Iraq War. Today, we are looking to a future where we use our military only when necessary and instead use America's leadership role to create free and just societies, and it is in the contrast of Cheney’s gruff style with Obama’s cool pragmatism that the former Vice President proves most useful.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, presents the U.S. with a new, post-al Qaeda enemy that has destabilized a region from Palestine to Baghdad. ISIL has kidnapped the Turkish consul general in Mosul, a clear incursion against a NATO ally. We have real interests in this region and are the only ones capable of leading a multilateral coalition to prevent Iraq’s collapse.

But we will accomplish nothing if our only two options are Cheney’s invade-first strategy and Paul’s isolationism. Thank God for Dick Cheney. Before this week, Obama’s options were limited by a public justifiably tired of international entanglements. Now all he has to jab a thumb at the lot of Cheney, John McCain, and the rest of the Iraq War apologists and promise that whatever happens, he’s not repeating their mistakes. At long last, Dick Cheney is finally the right man at the right time.