OK, you liberal-leaning, kale munching, Kerry voters, stop telling Iraq War privateer Dick Cheney to shut up, pipe down or otherwise go away. We need this. We need this so bad””it’s as if we planned it.
It looks like liberals, taking a cue from Disney’s iconic villain revival, Maleficent, dug up Dick Cheney and nepotism poster child Liz Cheney to illuminate the Dark Side of our post-9/11 world.
Imagine: The man who popularized the phrase “greeted as liberators” when preemptively invading Iraq, instead of reacting like a normal human being with shame decides to go all over mass media to talk about how the current occupant of the Oval Office has no credibility on foreign affairs. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
To which every thinking person on the planet (and yes, I’m including Megyn Kelly in this group) goes, “So wrong about so much at the expense of so many? Rarely? You mean like 10 years and 36,710 dead and wounded Americans ago, dude?!”
And then to make it even more of a wallop to our collective psyches, Dick takes his almost also-ran senatorial candidate daughter””whose party, state and own sister didn’t want her to run let alone be in office””to do the Scowl Jowl Tour of 2014. (Seriously, they look like competitors at a Baby Jane Hudson pageant.) In which they announce their new project, 501(c)(4) called Alliance for a Stronger America. And you can donate money to them ” in case you were worried.
Why is this such good news? Because it gives the public a chance to reject former Vice President Dick Cheney’s self-serving ideas and faux jingoistic worldview once more. The worldview in which there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Or that in 2005, “they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Or the worldview that Dick Cheney “kept us safe” (*Cough* 9/11). We can all use words like gall and chutzpah as we cringe at the public display of self-delusion.
President Clinton could have only dreamed of former-Vice President Dan Quayle launching a “You’re doing it wrong,” publicity tour coupled with a “donate now” button. The luck of one Barack Obama to have the shadowy villain of the profoundly misguided and mishandled war in Iraq all over television at this moment! It’s not like the GOP isn’t having enough problems with their own insurgency (in its last throes, I’m sure) to have to re-litigate a giant screw-up like a poorly planed incursion into a sectarian-riven Middle Eastern country, it’s not what you call, good optics. And the timing couldn’t be worse.
As soon as Rep. Eric Cantor lost his congressional seat and with it all his power and influence, he got to hear what his colleagues really think of him. It’s not good. Dick Cheney’s creepy vanity project with his unaccomplished sidekick spawn is a lesson in that principle. He’s no longer the Vice President and it doesn’t appear that even his co-conspirator Fox News is onboard with him anymore.
Cheney has embarrassed himself. And that’s awesome.
But also it acts as an antigen against some future foreign policy follies. The concept is simple (even for the anti-vax dolts), once you get measles, you’re immune from the disease. Think of Dick and Liz’s reemergence as a booster shot against reckless bellicosity overseas: It’ll only sting for a second.
So it’s good to have Dick Cheney’s delightful mug on the television, we need to see what so-freaking-wrong-you-can’t-imagine looks like.
Looks like Dick.