This from the Washington Post.
'John P. Hannah, Cheney's second-term national security adviser, said the former vice president is driven, now as before, by the nightmare of a hostile state acquiring nuclear weapons and passing them to terrorists. Aaron Friedberg, another of Cheney's foreign policy advisers, said Cheney believes 'that many people find it very difficult to hold that idea in their head, really, and conjure with it, and see what it implies.''
Since it is unimaginable that this threat will ever recede, what it implies is a state of perpetual war. As I have said before, though I can't find it. Cheney seems to want an Israelification of American society, a constant state of intense military readiness affecting everybody all the time. This is what is odd about the man. He sees unacceptable softness wherever he looks, including, it is soon to be revealed, in Bush.
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Lets all hope that all the young sikhs MI6 have sent into battle get the job done and Ravi Bopara gets sent to Pakistan next Wednesday, other wise is bye bye ashes, and ashes to ashes for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteSince it is unimaginable that this threat will ever recede, what it implies is a state of perpetual war.
ReplyDeleteThat is absolutely the case, and there stands a cadre of American conservative voices poised to attribute any future act of terrorism to our naïve respect for civil liberties and international conventions. I'm assuming they have the essays already written out.
"Democray" in the 20th century killed off several hundred million people.
ReplyDeleteAs an American I wish we had a political system that was run by somebody safe like Queen Victoria.
Do US news channels still announce the daily terror alert colour code? As in, today's average temperature will be 27 degrees, the pollen count is high, the going at Goodwood is good to soft, and the terror status has been raised to orange, so you need to be slightly more frightened of Muslims than you were yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the terror code in ages, not even on Fox.
ReplyDeletePerhapds he reads Gibbon: "The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war; and while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations on their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer an injury."
ReplyDeletePerhaps, Frank, but Cheney/Bush diminished the "terror of (American) arms" by bleeding it away in a useless war in Iraq. Do you know anyone in the military who can describe for you the perilous state of American arms? The necessity of filling the lower ranks with felons and morons? The mass exodus of intelligent, battle-tested junior officers out of disgust over the wastage in Iraq? Do you think the Russian invasion of Georgia, the awakened assertiveness of Taliban/Al Queda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the saber-rattling by North Korea and Iran would have occurred had the US kept its powder dry?
ReplyDeleteCheney's a fool who, despite his disdain for "softness", didn't have the stones to serve in the military when he could have in the 1960's. He's nothing but a pathetic armchair patriot who got his start in the executive branch by helping Betty Ford choose china patterns for state dinners.