The notion that the Bush gang is running some kind of Manchurian White House, intentionally undermining the United States on our enemies’ behalf, is not entirely new. In 2004, Doonesbury had an amusing item, explaining that Bush’s presidency had united the Muslim world against the United States, inspired a new generation of future terrorists with an unnecessary war in Iraq, and squandered our moral authority around the world. The strip concluded that bin Laden can only pray that Bush continues on this path.
Shortly thereafter, Paul Krugman wrote a classic, imagining what a president would look like if fundamentalist terrorists chose “as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation’s defender against terrorist evildoers.” Sure enough, America’s enemies would create an agenda that looks a lot like Bush’s agenda.
Today, however, the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof takes the thought experiment one step further, suggesting that Dick Cheney’s allegiances are open to question as well. (thanks to SKNM for the tip)
If an 18-year-old American soldier were caught slipping obscure military paperwork to Iranian spies, he would be arrested, pilloried in the news media and tossed into prison for years.
But in fact there’s an American who has provided services of incalculably greater value to Iran in recent years. So you have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?
Consider that the Bush administration’s first major military intervention was to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Iran’s bitter foe to the east. Then the administration toppled Iran’s even worse enemy to the west, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
You really think that’s just a coincidence? That of all 193 nations in the world, we just happen to topple the two neighboring regimes that Iran despises?Moreover, consider how our invasion of Iraq went down. The U.S. dismantled Iraq’s army, broke the Baath Party and helped install a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better — so maybe they did write the script …
We fought Iraq, and Iran won. And that’s just another coincidence?
Well, probably.
To be sure, Kristof’s tongue is firmly in his cheek and he doesn’t seriously believe the Vice President is undermining our interests so as to benefit Iran. That said, Kristof does offer several additional examples.
* Cheney backed a diplomatic policy that shied away from engaging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seriously, thus making matters worse in the Middle East.
* Cheney advocated a foreign policy that has systematically antagonized our former allies in Europe and Asia, undermining chances of a united front to block Iranian development of nuclear weapons.
* Cheney condoned torture and extralegal detentions in Guantanamo, undermining our moral standing in the world.
* Cheney’s hard-line rhetoric has inflamed Iranian nationalism and given cover to the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
* Cheney’s preferred policy towards North Korea has resulted in that country’s quadrupling its nuclear arsenal.
What’s more, Kristof neglects to mention it, but I’d add that it was Cheney’s office that thought it wise to expose the identity of an undercover CIA agent who specialized in monitoring weapons of mass destruction.
Is that really just one more coincidence? Or could it be another case of Mr. Cheney’s following instructions from his Iranian bosses to damage America?
Again, Kristof’s kidding. Cheney “harmed American interests not out of malice but out of ineptitude,” he concludes.
I think that’s almost certainly right, but there sure are a lot of examples of Cheney’s work undermining the country, aren’t there?