Cheney’s World

In the long tradition of abysmal Republican Vice Presidents – Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Dan Quayle - Dick Cheney has quickly surmounted even their combined records. While they displayed in varying degrees annoying, corrupt, and stupid behavior, Cheney appears to have undue influence on the policies and decisions of the Bush administration, which makes his history of lies, distortions, and advice detrimental to the well being of the country.

Following the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote opposing Bush’s troop increase, Cheney stated that the administration had achieved “enormous success” in Iraq. Even the President admitted last week that his Iraq policy should be considered a “slow failure.”

When Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked whether the administration's credibility had been hurt by "the blunders and the failures" in Iraq, Cheney interjected: "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

For a different view of the situation in Iraq, Peter Beinhart, editor-at-large at The New Republic in a column published 1-29-2007, comes a little bit closer to the reality facing us than does the Vice President who predicted the insurgency was in its “last throes” back in May 2005:

When will we finally take no for an answer? In December, Bush administration officials began talking about a surge of U.S. troops to Baghdad to create the military conditions for political reconciliation. Such an effort, they said, would only succeed if Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki reached courageously across sectarian lines, disarming the Shia militias that buttress his government and sharing political power with Iraq's beleaguered Sunnis. "If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises," President Bush declared when he unveiled the surge plan to the nation, "it will lose the support of the American people."

And, since December, here's what Maliki has done: First, his aides told reporters that he didn't want any more U.S. troops in Baghdad. To the contrary, he wanted all U.S. troops out of Iraq's capital. Maliki, it turned out, had a plan of his own. Iraqi troops would attack Sunni insurgents only, while ignoring the Shia militias. In other words, in a city increasingly cleansed of Sunnis and run by Moqtada Al Sadr's brutal Mahdi army, Maliki would hasten the job.

American officials threatened and cajoled, and Maliki supposedly backed down. But, at a January 11 press conference where he was expected to endorse Bush's surge, Maliki didn't show up. Instead, a spokesman told the press that Iraq's government "will not stand against it" before adding that "what is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us."

Behind the scenes, it seems, American and Iraqi officials had reached a deal. Maliki would appoint a commander for Baghdad to oversee Iraq's share of the new military offensive. Maliki agreed, according to The New York Times, because the commander would be less beholden to the Defense Ministry, which is run by a Sunni and closely monitored by the United States. And, on January 12, he made his pick, rejecting America's preferred candidates and picking an obscure Shia naval officer. None of the non-Shia parties in Iraq's supposed national-unity government had been consulted. "Nobody asked us," one Sunni legislator told the Los Angeles Times about the man charged with leading the military effort to close Iraq's gaping sectarian divide. "This is the first I've heard."

Nobody asked the Sunnis about Saddam Hussein's execution, either. There were, after all, good reasons to postpone the hanging. For one thing, Saddam had only been convicted of murdering Shia (in retaliation, as it happens, for an execution attempt by Maliki's Dawa party). He was still awaiting trial for his crimes against Kurds and other Iraqis. Moreover, he was set to be executed on the day Sunnis begin celebrating the holiday of Eid Al Adha. (Shia begin celebrating a day later.) And, finally, his execution violated Iraqi law. In Iraq, a death sentence requires the approval of the country's president (a Kurd) and two vice presidents (a Shia and a Sunni). But Maliki, channeling Dick Cheney, insisted he had all the legal authority he needed and rushed Saddam to the gallows, where the former dictator was mocked by Sadr's henchmen, prompting mass Sunni outrage.

Does this sound like a man interested in courageous efforts to bring Sunnis and Shia together? Of course not. Before becoming prime minister, Maliki was known as a Shia hard-liner who wanted to limit Sunni influence in the committee drafting Iraq's constitution--and tried to bar virtually all former Baath party officials from government office. He became prime minister largely because of Sadr, who functions as a kind of Tom DeLay to his Dennis Hastert. After he was sworn in last May, the United States urged him to rewrite Iraq's oil law, soften de-Baathification, and rein in the Shia militias, all to show Sunnis that he was their prime minister, too. Eight months later, we're still asking.

Maliki's behavior is a big part of the reason so many in the U.S. military opposed the surge. Over the past year, he has repeatedly blocked them from going after Sadr's men, and, when they have captured members of the Mahdi army, he has sometimes intervened to secure their release. "Repeated reports from our commanders on the ground contributed to our concerns about Maliki's government," wrote National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley last November in a memo leaked to The New York Times. Pressed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about Maliki's government last week, Condoleezza Rice lamely replied that "the fact that they didn't act properly in the past does not mean that they won't act properly in the future."

As evidence of Maliki's change of heart, Bush administration officials are claiming they finally have the green light to go after Sadr. Except that Maliki's advisers say the opposite, insisting that U.S. troops can only go into the sprawling Shia slum known as Sadr City with their approval. We are, to put it bluntly, being used. Maliki has only consented to more U.S. troops because he thinks they will help him cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis. Already, there are reports that Sadr's men are taking off their uniforms, stashing their weapons, and dismantling their checkpoints. As they go underground, Maliki will declare the Shia militia problem solved and push the United States to throw its full weight against the Sunni insurgents who are guarding Sunni neighborhoods from Shia takeover.

This is what it means to send more U.S. troops into the teeth of a civil war. President Bush says we are surging to support Iraqi leaders committed to reconciliation across sectarian lines. But the Iraqi leaders he's conjuring up no longer live in Iraq. Defeated at the polls and fearful for their lives, they now reside in Amman, London, or the United States. Maliki, the sectarian, fundamentalist leader of a sectarian, fundamentalist government, has taken their place. And, given the political climate in Iraq today, even if he were overthrown, the likely successors would be just as bad.

"Do we and Prime Minister Maliki share the same vision for Iraq?" wondered Hadley in his November memo. Virtually everything Maliki has done in recent weeks screams no. How much more evidence do we need, and how many more Americans must die, before we take that no for an answer?