For eight years, Vice President Dick Cheney relished the mocking, dark sobriquet of Darth Vader, easily earned by his skulking, dour persona—living in an "undisclosed location," the premiere advocate for kidnapping and torture, architect of defying Congress, lying to manipulate public opinion, rewarding political cronies, scoffing at global warming, trashing civil liberties, rarely emerging for press interviews and dismissing public disapproval with "So?"
Now, acting as a government-in-exile, Cheney is trying to sanctify Bush-Cheney abuses of power as national salvations and ridiculing President Obama as weak and inviting a terrorist attack.
Listen to assertions during an interview with Politco.com:
"If it hadn't been for what we did ... then we would have been attacked again."
He deplored those "more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to anything they can to kill Americans."
This Cheney mantra is easily summarized: White House lawlessness was preferred over lawfulness.
His claim that he and President Bush kept homeland America safe is a delusion, illusory, a fiction.
What safety?
The unprovoked invasion of Iraq spawned a new generation of terrorist recruits brainwashed about the American Satan. Hordes of them have kept the Middle East in turmoil and bathed in blood, not to mention killing U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the United States isn't attacked again, it'll be sheer luck, not because of any impregnable defense engineered by the iron fist philosophy of Cheney.
Nor are we safe elsewhere. The Bush-Cheney intoxication for war spending and contempt for regulating Wall Street have transformed America into a bankrupt beggar, trying to bail itself out of an economic catastrophe with more borrowing while millions are jobless.
Air and water aren't safe. Nor are imported foods. Bush and Cheney scorned environmental and food safety laws by slashing inspection budgets and handcuffing pollution regulators.
Safety in personal privacy, destroyed by illegal Bush-Cheney wiretapping, is being restored quickly by the Obama administration. So, too, are overseas alliances shattered by the Bush-Cheney who-needs-you attitudes.
The United States rose to global preeminence in its history not as a harsh authoritarian society, but one in which lofty principle, decency, civility and law ruled. In a matter of a few years, George Bush and Dick Cheney reduced American prestige with attitudes and acts usually associated with Third World tyrants.
Cheney's attempt to continue justifying those awful years amply proves he still doesn't understand or appreciate the ideals embedded by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
