Dick Cheney, the “Corporate Cyclops” turned “Poser Politician” epitomizes everything that is wrong with the supposed “conservative” Right. Up until recently I considered myself conservative – a little to the right of Attila the Hun as a matter of fact. No more. Once I saw the RNC give money to a local Democrat candidate for Congress in 2008 because the Republican candidate was “too harsh” on illegal immigration, discovered how both Republicans and Democrats put obstacles in the way of the Alec Team preventing them from taking out Osama bin Laden, and other not-so-conservative maneuvers I re-registered to vote as an independent (I will plead that case in a future blog). I thought when I registered independent I would be dead center in the political spectrum. I find I’m still to the right of the RNC! They’ve moved left while I’ve stayed where I’ve always been politically.
On Monday, August 31, 2015 Rush Lembaugh asked radio guest Dick Cheney where the “moral authority” came from that compelled “America” (beltway politicians) to spread democracy around the world. If I had seen Cheney’s face it would only have been more clear he was lying. Cheney hesitated then said “It comes from the Founding Fathers.” This is me throwing the BULLSHIT card down.
First, I think Rush reads my blogs because as far as I know I’m the only one who has beaten the moral authority drum for the last ten years. “Moral legitimacy” comes from seminal counterinsurgency publications by subject matter experts of the ‘50s and ‘60s (whom Petraeus and Matting plagiarized in “their” FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency Manual). Moral legitimacy in the minds of the host nation population is the most important prerequisite atmospheric prior to invading another country – and certainly needed for “victory” after doing so. With decades of failed “exportation of democracy” in two muslim countries that bit of inconvenient truth needs no defense. Anyone who has been on the ground in those countries knows this. I taught it to military captains and lieutenants at the U.S. Army Intelligence School 1994-96 and 2006-2007. Those students believed. The pentagon and the beltway turned a blind eye. Too much money to be made.
Cheney claiming the Founding Fathers give moral authority to “exporting democracy” is not based on their preserved documents. There are many Founding presidents that insist on the exact opposite. George Washington was admired by almost every American. He was probably the first – and last – president to be so. Despite Breitbart’s jaded, incorrect interpretation of Washington’s Farewell Address let’s examine what our most revered, ethical, and prophetic president of the United States said of “exporting democracy”:
“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence… .
In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments to others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feeling toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is slave to its animosity or to its affections, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculation of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts, through passion, what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes the liberty, of nations has often been the victim.
So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing int one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and be exciting jealousy, ill will, and disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
And it gives to ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens [the military-industrial complex] (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake [italics his], since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of a republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and served to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements (1796), let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
…Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. [honoring existing engagements but unwise to extend them].
Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies (like World War II).
…constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.” – George Washington: Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
Despite the efforts of Progressive historical revisionism – even elimination, I think George Washington still counts as one of our Founding Fathers. He wasn’t the only one to think so. Jefferson, the second president, only used the navy to destroy Barbary pirates preying on our commercial shipping. John Adams, our third president, successfully resisted strenuous attempts to get America involved in a European war. So, DICK, where is your documentary proof “moral authority” to “export democracy” comes from our Founding Fathers?
It doesn’t. The real experts on “moral authority” in conflict (Sir Robert K. Thompson, Frank Kitson, T.E. Lawrence, Paget, Pustay, Galula, McCuen, LCOL. T.N. Greene, etc. all knew that moral authority had to take place in the hearts and minds of the occupied nation’s population. They had to perceive the United States as providing a better way. That didn’t – and won’t – happen in the Middle East or any Muslim country because you can’t impose democracy. Instead successive American administrations have charged helter-skelter –with a golden sledgehammer- into the Islamic narrative’s ambush. (see Michael Scheur’s Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq). The Left has its Welfare State. Cheney et.al have their Warfare State.
Cheney is lying to use his Useful Idiot – the Yale cheerleader (Bush, Jr.)- personal whim/vendetta, camouflage his military-industrial-complex connection, and use tax payers’ dollars to finance foreign intervention to obtain lucrative resource contracts.
And that is not worth one drop of American blood.
