Dick Cheney is Turning the Tide

In our May 17 comment “Treatment for American Angst”, we concluded this way:

”We don’t know what the signature phrase of the signature speech will be that historians point to as the one that woke up and turned America around (maybe Dick Cheney will voice it), but we believe it will come, and soon. Americans are restless and agitated. This government’s agenda is illegitimate; it can’t continue, and it won’t. Truth and freedom have their own power, and cannot be denied or contained.”

Brushfires-of-freedom gets results. Less than four days later, we have at least one entry for the signature phrase and the signature speech: Dick Cheney’s speech on national security at the American Enterprise Institute. We know everybody and their brother will be commenting on it, but it can't be over-exposed. If you can possibly spare the time, read the whole thing, here (and forward the link to your liberal friends—ask them if they have the courage to read it and then react, rather than waiting for Pravda spin to tell them what they think).

When courage to speak directly on controversial issues is combined with truth, the power of the resulting speech is almost palpable. Cheney’s speech is going to change things; many cowering Republican officials will rediscover their backbone; and the Obama administration will be put on the defensive on national security issues from this point forward. More of the air in the Obama popularity balloon will have been sucked out, and the entire fraudulent Obama agenda will be slowed significantly.

Pravda will of course be full of fury in attempting to rebut Cheney; every Pravda story will include in the first paragraph something about the ‘highly unpopular, angry Dick Cheney’ or ‘departing from the long honored tradition of not criticizing the new administration…’. But those pesky things called the internet and talk radio are way out in front of Pravda, and Pravda simply can’t control access to what Cheney actually said. (The power of the internet is one of the things that keep us optimistic). Cheney is speaking truth and common sense, and it resonates with the vast majority of Americans, both Democrat and Republican.

“Recklessness cloaked in righteousness” was one of the gems Cheney used to describe the Obama administration’s approach to national security, and is our nomination for the first entry in the signature phrase contest. But there were many others (see below):

…for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. … I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about "values."… Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings.

…From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans. Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

…In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, “abducted.” Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

…Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

…when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those who asked them questions and got answers: they did the right thing, they made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

…After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.

The political world had made much of the fact that both Obama and Cheney would be speaking on the same day on the same subject (though it was apparently just an accident of scheduling and not planned). But in hindsight we may someday view the ‘accident’ of timing as evidence of ‘divine Providence’ at work in a way not anticipated and not containable. These contrasting speeches and approaches may make at least one of the key turning points America has needed and has been looking for in the absolutely critical mission of stopping, reversing and rescinding the radical leftist agenda of Obama. All we need now is a ‘Cheney-esque’ speech on the power of a free market economy, and the rescue of America will be underway.

Paul Gable

Posted May 21, 2009