Dick Cheney took a little time out on the Sean Hannity show yesterday to discuss his favorite topic, the "weakness" of President Barack Obama. Here's Cheney on the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian court, which he said would "give aid and comfort to the enemy":
I think it will make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed something of a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam around the world. It will put him on the map. He'll be as important or more important than Osama Bin Laden, and we will have made it possible.
I guess that means Tora Bora doesn't count then.
Let's look at this for a moment. Cheney is arguing that killing thousands of Americans on 9/11 didn't make KSM "something" of a hero to extremists, but the act of giving him a civilian trial will make him more of a hero than Osama bin Laden.
Yesterday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal testified that Al Qaeda wouldn't be defeated until bin Laden is dead. In an interview with counterterrorism expert Leah Farrall, well-connected Taliban figure Abu Walid al-Masri said that Al Qaeda is "an authoritarian organisation" and that "bin Laden runs al-Qa'ida with 'absolute individual leadership.'" Yet somehow, putting KSM on trial will make him more important than the founder and continuing leader of Al Qaeda, whose death is essential to Al Qaeda's ultimate defeat according to the American military commander in Afghanistan?
It's complete nonsense, and the only reason the argument is being made is that Cheney needs to find some way to make the KSM trial important enough for people to keep interviewing him about it. But even if KSM became, to borrow a Romneyism, "double bin Laden," it wouldn't free the U.S. government from its constitutional obligations.
Back to KSM:
HANNITY: How likely is it that the evidence theyaccumulated isn't going to be admissible because they didn't give himMiranda rights?Cheney shrugs, "I'm not a lawyer." But you don't have to be a lawyerto think that terrorism shouldn't mean the government abandoning itsconstitutional obligations to provide everyone with a fair trial. Fromthe above, it's pretty clear that Cheney would be happy with a summaryexecution. Cheney, never one to miss a right-wing talking point, alsoaccused the president of not believing in "American exceptionalism."It's not that America is exceptional when it meets the high standardsof democracy and due process set aside in its founding documents -- theright-wing definition of American exceptionalism is that Americadoesn't have to meet even the obligations it sets for itself.
CHENEY: I'm not a lawyer Sean, so I don't want to make predictions.I don't know what's going to happen in those trials, the thing that'sdisturbing is I don't know what the Justice Department does either. Ifit's an absolute certain thing, than Holder has the problem of sayingwe're going to have a balanced trial, and they'll have the opportunityto defend themselves and so forth. If it's not a certain thingwhy are you bringing him here. I mean we know he's guilty. He'sresponsible for the death of thousands of Americans, and he ought to bepunished as such.
Cheney also criticized the President on Afghanistan:
When [Al Qaeda] sees [Obama] announce in advance that there's going to be a withdrawal 18 months down the road, they come to the point where they feel like their strategy, their world view has been validated and in the meantime, your task of trying to control the situation, trying to put down the Taliban and so forth, has simply gotten harder because you're weak and indecisive when you made the decision to do it.
There's something really consistent about Cheney's criticisms, and it's that Cheney gets red-faced at the possibility that extremists might think they've beaten the United States. Indeed, whether it's the KSM trial or military strategy in Afghanistan, Cheney's strategic priority seems to be determining how the enemy "feels" and making sure he or she doesn't feel that way. That's bizarre. American policy should be based on furthering American interests, and part of that is going to be figuring out what Al Qaeda's objectives are and foiling them -- but how terrorists "feel" shouldn't be our priority. And if we're talking objectives, pulling us into an indefinite war in Afghanistan is one of bin Laden's, as Lawrence Wright has written.
Meanwhile, even if we're speaking on Cheney's terms, you have to wonder how Al Qaeda and the Taliban "felt" about gaining ground in Afghanistan over the past eight years while Cheney and his boss invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, and whether their "world view had been validated." Oh, wait. You don't have to wonder at all.
If there's anything that frustrates me about the Cheney coverage, it's that his arguments are consistently reprinted without challenge or acknowledgment that Cheney is a stakeholder in these matters. After his administration consistently failed to develop a working policy in Afghanistan for the past eight years, Cheney has an interest in making sure the new guy looks bad. As someone intimately involved in approving torture, he has an interest in delegitimizing a civilian trial process in which the details of that policy will bear scrutiny in a court of law. He is a man furiously protecting his reputation. And yet, he is constantly presented as a dispassionate observer, a mere elder statesman.
-- A. Serwer
