Vice President Dick Cheney always impressed me as the most dangerous and vicious member of the Bush administration. He seemed to regard war as the answer to every foreign policy problem, and his contempt for the Constitution and civil liberties was legendary.
But his daughter, Liz Cheney, seems determined to outdo her father with respect to both of those repulsive attitudes. She is fast becoming my least favorite Cheney.
Her organization, which has become a prominent lobbyist for war with Iran, has now taken dead aim at supposed terrorist sympathizers in the Obama administration. Television ads are now running attacking the president for appointing officials to the Justice Department who had previously served as defense counsels–or even just peripheral members of defense teams–for accused terrorist suspects. Smearing those attorneys as the “Al Qaeda Seven,” the ad implies that such legal work should disqualify them from appointments to office.
That is a “guilt by association” attack that would have made Senator Joseph McCarthy (who was notorious for such tactics) blush. And it is an especially ugly tactic in this case. Lawyers are expected to be willing to defend even odious individuals, and they routinely do so. That is part of the code of their profession. It is appallingly unfair to hold that duty against them, much less to imply that they endorse the values of those individuals. Moreover, just because someone is accused of being a terrorist does not necessarily mean that the person is one. That’s why our justice system requires fair trials–and defense attorneys.
If the logic of Liz Cheney and her cohorts was correct, John Adams, America’s second president, should have been disqualified from ever holding any office of trust. After all, he was the defense lawyer for the British Redcoats involved in the Boston Massacre. Got an acquittal, too. Wonder what Liz and her smear artists have to say about that episode?
The good news is that decent conservatives have rebuked Cheney for her odious tactics. People should not have their patriotism or integrity impugned because they uphold the core principles of our legal system. That she would do so says all we need to know about Liz Cheney and her neoconservative associates.
The good people of New York City have been saved from a pint-size criminal. It seems that Patrick Timoney, a fourth grade student at PS 52, dared to bring a weapon to school. That weapon was a 2-inch plastic gun from his Lego set. The PS 52 principal lectured young Patrick about the evil nature of his offense and threatened him with suspension.
Now, one might simply write-off this incident as the over-reaction of one school bureaucrat, except that a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education subsequently defended the action. She stressed that the district had a “zero tolerance” policy for weapons, real or toy, brought on school grounds. Apparently the district also has a zero common sense policy. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature should be able to tell that a two-inch Lego is not a weapon.
And these people are paid to educate our children?
Just when you think the “security” measures at the airports can’t get any more absurd, along comes this gem. It seems that the latest terrorist suspect is an 8-year-old Cub Scout, Michael “Mikey” Hicks. The practitioners of security theater (taking highly visible measures to make travelers feel safer without actually making them safer) are alert to the dire menace that he poses. They might have failed to stop the underwear bomber from getting on the plane, despite numerous warning signals, but they’re not about to ignore this lethal threat. Little Mikey is on their watch list, and they subject the poor kid to a pat down whenever he and his parents try to fly. Apparently, he has the same name as a real terror suspect. But wouldn’t you think that reasonably intelligent adults could figure out that an 8-year-old is not the person they’re looking for? Oh, wait… we’re talking about the TSA, where no intelligent adults need apply.
An update to last month’s decision by a school board in Mesquite, Texas to impose an in-school suspension on a four-year-old boy for the heinous crime of having long hair. You can always count on bureaucrats, especially public school bureaucrats, to stick to a dumb policy no matter how much the evidence mounts that it’s a dumb policy. True to form, the educational bureaucrats in Texas have offered a “compromise” to the parents of young Taylor Pugh, the miscreant who insists on maintaining a long hair style. They can braid his hair–as long as the braids don’t come past his ears.
How a boy with braids is less of a “distraction” in the classroom (the official justification for the suspension) than a boy with long hair, I will leave it up to the Texas hair police to explain. If this is the best that so-called educators can do with their time, I know a way that the hard-pressed Texas state budget could save some money. Eliminate those positions and divert back to the state treasury whatever funds are used to pay for them.
Repeat after me: We are not the Taliban. We should not try to dictate hair styles.
If you saw this story, you might assume that you slipped back in time to 1959. The educational bureaucrats of Texas have suspended a boy–a preschooler, no less–for having excessively long hair. The tot actually looks quite dapper–at least in any civilized part of the country. Furthermore, he was growing his hair so that he could later have it cut and donated to a charity that provides wigs to cancer victims who have lost their hair from chemotherapy treatments. One would think that he would receive praise, not be bullied, for such a generous impulse.
Even if charity had not been his motive, such idiotic regimentation should have disappeared by the end of the 1960s. But apparently it hasn’t in certain authoritarian precincts in the South. I have a suggestions for the Texas hair police, who apparently believe that every young male ought to look like he’s planning to have a career in the Marines. You have enough of a challenge educating the next generation, and most of the public schools aren’t doing a very good job at that task. Stop trying to dictate such things as grooming preferences. This is supposed to be a free country, and you might at least try to maintain that illusion a little longer with respect to your students.
President Obama will address the American people on Tuesday night regarding Afghanistan. Reports have leaked out over the past week that he will announce that he is sending additional troops into that quagmire. The only question seems to be whether he will send 30,000, 40,000 or some number in between. That is, frankly, not a very important issue. And for all of his talk about “off ramps” for the United States if the Afghan government does not meet certain policy targets or “benchmarks,” the reality is that he is escalating our commitment. Since Obama has repeatedly asserted that the war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity, not a war of choice, his talk of off ramps is largely a bluff–and the Afghans probably know it.
I am in the process of co-writing a book that includes a chapter on America’s disastrous war in Vietnam. I’m the first to acknowledge the hazards of equating one historical event with a development in a different setting and time period. In fact, the tendency of U.S. leaders to view every conflict in the world over the last 60 years through the prism of the failure to stem Nazi aggression in the 1930s has been a major cause of policy disasters like Vietnam and Iraq. And I don’t want to imply that what Obama is doing is exactly the same as the foolish strategy that the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations adopted in Southeast Asia during the 1960s. But there are a couple of very disturbing similiarities. In both cases, U.S. leaders opted to try to rescue a failing war by sending in more troops. And in both cases, Washington found itself desperately searching for a “credible” leader who could serve as an effective partner in the war effort. The United States never found such a leader in Vietnam. From the first client, Ngo Dinh Diem, to the last leader of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, American policymakers were frustrated by a parade of repressive, corrupt, and ineffectual political figures. Now, doesn’t that sound more than a little like the problem the Bush and Obama administrations have encountered with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government?
That fact alone suggests that our Afghanistan mission is not likely to turn out well.
Instead of escalating, Obama should move to rapidly draw-down our forces and narrow the mission to one of trying to harrass Al Qaeda and keep it off balance. My colleague, Malou Innocent, and I published a Cato Institute White Paper, “Escaping the Graveyard of Empires,” describing how to achieve that goal without pursuing the futile objective of nation-building in Afghanistan.
I have a new article in the National Interest Online about the speech by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during his recent visit to East Asia. His comments inadvertently underscored why U.S. foreign policy is such a mess. In one speech, he 1) made the North Korean nuclear crisis more dangerous, 2) greatly reduced the chances that China will exert itself to help solve the crisis, and 3) gave U.S. allies Japan and South Korea a green light to continue underinvesting in their own defense while free-riding on U.S. efforts. Other than that, it was a brilliant speech.
Gates is reputed to be the foreign policy “adult” in the Obama administration. If that’s true, we’re all in deep trouble.
Just when you think law enforcement bureaucrats can’t get any more irrational, comes this story (hat tip to my Cato Institute colleague Dan Mitchell) from Indiana. A grandmother ran afoul of the drug war laws by making two purchases of cold medicine for her family.
When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.
Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.
…Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.
Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.
When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine.
The good citizens of Indiana can now rest easier knowing this nefarious drug lord has been apprehended. Whatever happened to the concept of discretion by police and prosecutors? Whatever happened to common sense?
And then there is this story about how a young couple lost custody of their young children for a month after a Wal-mart employee forwarded “bath-time” photos they had taken of the children to the authorities. How many parents over the decades would have run afoul of such absurd suspicions of child pornography, if that standard had been the norm?
I’m interested in suggestions about how Americans can rein-in this runaway zealotry before it turns our country into something resembling the fascist and communist systems we used to abhor.
Parents who dare to be affectionate to their children had better think twice about visiting Brazil with them after this episode. I guess it’s nice to know that U.S. law enforcement bureaucrats are not the only ones who can be irrational zealots. That realization, however, is mighty small comfort. Why has common sense apparently died all over the world?
Last week, I published an article in The National Interest Online about the folly of engaging in nation building in Afghanistan. Following the 9-11 attacks, I strongly supported military action in Afghanistan to punish al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that gave the terrorist organization a safe haven from which to plan that dastardly attack. But I also warned that we should not try to remake Afghanistan into a modern, stable, democratic country–in other words, try to pursue a utopian nation-building crusade. Yet, during the Bush years, we gradually drifted into exactly that sort of mission. And, unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to be escalating that effort.
The reality is that Afghanistan is not going to become a Central Asian version of Arizona–or even Arkansas–no matter how long we stay, how much money we spend, and how many American lives we sacrifice. The country is not called “the graveyard of empires” for nothing. Invaders from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union discovered that it was impossible to subdue that fractious society. Now, the United States seems determined to make the same foolish error.
We have to adopt realistic objectives. It is possible to further disrupt and weaken al Qaeda. But we must learn to treat that terrorist threat as a chronic, but manageable, security problem, not an overpowering threat that requires a definitive victory with a surrender ceremony (which isn’t going to happen anyway). And it certainly doesn’t require us to (somehow) get the people of Afghanistan to become good 21st century democratic capitalists committed to gender equality. That won’t happen for generations–if it ever does.
Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, we need an exit strategy, not the escalation strategy that the Obama administration is giving us. On September 14, my colleague Malou Innocent and I will be publishing a Cato Institute White Paper giving a detailed analysis of the current situation and outlining such an exit strategy. Please stay tuned.