In the wake of President Obama announcing that the United States will use air strikes to target the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank decided to go after liberals’ favorite punching bag, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In an op-ed that appeared in Thursday’s Washington Post, Milbank proclaimed “Dick Cheney, Still Blindly Beating The Drums of War.” The Post columnist proceeded to trash the Republican for daring to suggest that the United States should aggressively go on the offensive to eliminate the ISIS threat.
Milbank began by insisting “It was just like the good old days. Scooter Libby was in the front row. Paul Wolfowitz was in the second. And on the stage was Dick Cheney, beating the drums of war.”
At the heart of Cheney’s speech, which had Milbank so distraught, was his argument that the U.S. should do everything in its power to destroy terrorists who want to harm the United States:
The situation is dire, and defeating these terrorists will require immediate, sustained, simultaneous action across multiple fronts… We should immediately hit them in their sanctuaries, staging areas, command centers and lines of communication wherever we find them
After including several quotes from the former Vice President’s appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, Milbank made sure to diminish Cheney’s credibility on foreign policy:
In summary: War, war and more war.
Cheney, five years out of office and two years after a heart transplant, looked and acted like his old self: Back to his former chunkiness, he flashed his crooked grin — and dismissed any information contrary to his martial thesis.
There is agreement across the political spectrum on some of what Cheney said: that Obama has been disengaged and too hesitant to use military power. Even as he announced an expanded campaign against the Islamic State on Wednesday night, Obama reminded Americans that combat in Afghanistan will end this year, that 140,000 troops are home from Iraq and that “we will not get dragged into another ground war” there.
But Cheney is a singularly flawed critic, because the alternative he offers is war everywhere and always — and though there is support for taking on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, there is no appetite in the country, or even in the GOP, for Cheney’s alternative extreme. As if to underscore that point, Jim Wallis, an evangelical with a pacifist bent who called the Iraq war a “war based on lies,” was speaking in an adjoining conference room at the conservative think tank while Cheney gave his address — and the applause could be heard in the room where Cheney was speaking.
Milbank continued his attack by dragging up the tired liberal talking point that Republicans are to blame for Middle East unrest:
Cheney said the Obama administration “failed utterly” to keep American security strong.
“He has demonstrated his own distrust for American power as a force for good in the world,” Cheney growled, drawing a connection “between a disengaged president and some very volatile situations abroad.” Cheney, saying the Obama administration “failed utterly” to keep American security strong at home, is making “opportunity for our adversaries” with his “stern declarations of inaction.
Of course, it could be argued that the spread of jihadist movements has less to do with Obama than with destabilization caused by the Bush-Cheney wars. But Cheney, so expert on Obama’s failings, remains blind to his own. “A policy of nonintervention can be just as dogmatic as its opposite,” he said, “and this president has seemed at times only more sure of himself as he is disproved by events.”
A sense of self-awareness would have led Cheney to drop that line.
Nowhere in Milbank’s piece did he bother to mention that President Obama’s failure to establish a status of forces agreement probably played a major role in the rise of ISIS and other extremist groups in the region. Instead, he conveniently laid the majority of the blame at Cheney's feet. Apparently Milbank rould rather make Dick Cheney the foreign policy boogeyman while simultaneously giving Obama a complete pass in playing a role of the ongoing turmoil sweeping across the Middle East.
Given the Washington Post columnist’s obsession with smearing the GOP to push his agenda, Milbank’s attack piece on Cheney fits perfectly with his record. In April of this year, Milbank declared that that the GOP can “say bye to votes from women.” During an appearance on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation on April 8, Milbank smeared the Koch brothers as being “demons” with “pitchforks.”
