Cheney’s respect (or lack thereof) for American principles

May 28, 2007

Over the weekend, I noted that Dick Cheney seemed to express a certain disdain for American principles during his commencement address at West Point.

“As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.”

I had suggested that Cheney might consider taking pride in the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution, not dismissing them as inconvenient hurdles. Digby explained very well, however, that it’s actually worse than that.

He’s explicitly saying that only a bunch of girly-men with “delicate sensibilities” need the protections of the Geneva Conventions or the Constitution of the United States. He isn’t proud of them. He thinks they make the US weak and it’s obvious that he’d be thrilled to take a match to both the treaty and the constitution.

I hope all those new officers at the US Military Academy got the message. Real men don’t need those silly protections. When the Vice President of the United States openly derides the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution at West Point by snidely describing those who demand their protections as “delicate” I think you can assume they are no longer operative. If any of these newly minted officers ever have the misfortune to be captured, they’d better hope they can be blasted out because they surely won’t be able to leverage any kind of reciprocation or make any kind of an agreement. You are on your own boys, no “delicate sensibilities” allowed.

I’m sure the enemy understands that. We’ve got people being tortured and locked up forever because Dick Cheney and his hand puppet unilaterally decided they were guilty of terrorism and therefore they have no rights. Let’s hope those two soldiers who are being held captive right now were given the opportunity to hear the Vice President’s speech on CNN. I’m sure it made them feel terrific to be led by such a manly man as he. And I hope it clarifies for them what the rules are.

Quite right. Cheney had an opportunity to remind cadets of what separates us from our enemies: we value human dignity.

Or, given the Vice President’s comments, I should say some of us do.

Cheney will quickly turn girly man and scurry under the protection of the Constitution …. when HIS evil deeds start to surface and HIS OWN prosecution is being considered. Cheney is cruel and hard ass to others but very careful and generous to himself.

  • Apparently the VP’s oath doesn’t involve any mentioning about defending the Constitution….

    If it did… he’d be dipping towards treason.

    Oh wait…

    I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter….

  • To think that we are forced to continue to tolerate this fascist embarrassment to the nation especially after the crimes he’s committed…manufacturing false intelligence to start a war, outing the identity of a CIA operative and torture demonstrates the flaws we have in our system of checks and balances. This man should be in jail, not giving commencement speeches. That is an insult to the institution. Once again the congress allows Cheney to place himself above the law. He and Rice and Bush and Gonzales, all have enough evidence against them to indict already yet congress allows them to continue to breach our constitution. What an embarrassment.

  • Bullies are always wimps. Those who tease others mercilessly always scream loudest when teased. And #1 is right – Cheney will try to expand protections afforded him under the Constitution when his court cases begin.

    Torture is effective only on tv programs.

  • Based on the excerpt from his speech, Cheney did not “explicitly” say what Digby accuses him of saying. One doesn’t need to spin the words of Dick Cheney to add to the loathsomeness of the man.

    The wars of the 21st century will feature the brutality of terrorism, which is by definition uncivilized and cruel by design. Torture may or may not work, but terrorism does. So far, we have tried to fight terrorists like we have fought conventional enemies, and by trying to observe our own principles of civilization and the Geneva Conventions. Inevitably, however, all war leads to coarsening and then brutality. There are always acts of cruelty on both sides, but there’s a difference between exceptions and policy.

    There are two ways to fight a war like the ones we are coming to face. We can become “them” by fighting them as the Mongols and Romans did. Mercilessly. Or we can discredit the enemy, removing his base and support. Today we should be doing the latter, and we should be doing it with something more like police work. Al Queda is much more like a gang than an army.

    War is always ugly. As usual, the greatest tragedy is that no effort was made to avoid this one. That is Dick Cheney’s guilt.

  • “Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.”

    This coming from “Mr. Secret, Undisclosed Location.” Yeah, when the chips were down in Viet Nam, Cheney’s delicate sensibilities headed straight for five deferments. During and after 9/11, Dick was quick to demand the protection of god knows how many resources to protect his ass as he hid away in secret, undisclosed locations around the US to the point where it became a comedy line on the late shows. His concern for his own personal safety in now the stuff of legend.

    I refuse to listen to some idiot make insinuations about the bravery of others when he himself is so filled with fear that he will only do interviews on Fox News, shuts down the airspace wherever he travels, will not even reveal the names of his own staff and is king of secrecy in Washington D.C. Yet Dick’s the guy who when the US has taken captives has no compunction about torturing the helll out of these guys. Dick’s statement doesn’t describe al Qaeda, it describes himself to a T.

    Dick Cheny is the most scared person on this planet. I bet he wouldn’t even have the same composure Saddam Hussein had with a noose around his neck and the gallows doors waiting to fall.

  • In a more perfect world, the Dems would sweep in 2008, join the World Court of Justice, and send Cheney and all the rest to the Hague for trial as war criminals. Cheney’s sentence: no more batteries for your Pacemaker Plus.

  • I don’t think that the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions can be defended on the basis of reciprocality, because we are not fighting a conventional war, run by a state. Basically, if our soldiers get captured by the insurgents (or whatever stripe), all they can hope for is a quick and merciful death, whether we observe Geneva or not.

    We need to observe the Consitution and the Geneva Conventions because it’s the right thing to do. If we don’t, we’ll become worse than barbarians.

  • Libra, I fear your use of the subjunctive is unjustified.

    Having failed to maintain the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions (and showing no signs of impending correction), we have become worse than barbarians.

    While our governing morality may be merely on a par with the barbaric, its combination with our excessive power does add up to something worse.

  • Digby can always be counted on to distill things down to their essence. By the way, if you didn’t know the Contstitutution was “no longer operative,” you just haven’t been paying attention.

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