The typical image of a dangerous man is often that of a serial killer, an assassin, and so forth – perhaps one that is historically notorious. Were I to say to you that one was recently interviewed on CNN you might think such an assertion a little much given the afore mentioned company. But the truth of the matter is that former Vice President Dick Cheney is a dangerous man.
A patient, calculating, equivocal, imperialist – to him, and other likeminded ideologues, the attacks of September 11th represented more opportunity than tragedy. In fact, the occurrence of such an attack was outlined in PNAC literature as being one of the quintessential components required to significantly alter post Cold War US foreign policy (and please, I do not say that to, in any way, infer conspiracy). In short, September 11th paved the way for the implementation of an imperial American doctrine that would open the door to the exploitation of crucial natural resources in the Middle East and Central Asia.
All that was required was a central US military footprint in the region.
Iraq was chosen to play host.
One only need review Cheney’s position on executive powers to realize that he is an autocrat in sheep’s clothing. He is also a cunning revisionist, one that will admit mistake in passing only as a device with which to bolster some other agenda. We are, after all, talking about a man that, as Secretary of Defense, agreed with General Colin Powell at the end of the Gulf War that occupying an Arab country (that being Iraq) would be a disaster.
In the end, Cheney ran out of time and did not get the prize that he was ultimately after – Iran, centralized and resource rich. His belief that Iraq provided the best opportunity for US military permanence in the region was driven by the necessity of time versus political capital. After Bush’s win in 2004 perhaps Cheney knew that the war would ultimately demolish Bush’s Presidency. Thus, running the administration into the ground in favour of creating a situation in Iraq that the next administration would not be able to simply disengage from certainly isn’t a concept that should be dismissed. Accomplishing that would mean an extension of America’s presence in the country and perhaps even more room to maneuver with regards to provoking the Iranians through not only occupational proximity, but also using the Israelis to amplify threats regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In the afore mention interview with CNN, Cheney said the following…
“I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do.”
In response to Cheney’s assertion, Professor Juan Cole wrote the following…
“What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?
An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney’s war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.
It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.
Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney’s war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.
In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.
Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity.
$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can’t even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.
Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.
The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government’s bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.
The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.
Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy– given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran’s influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting “al-Qaeda” in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens’ lives better.
The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.”
July 12, 2009