Defending Dick Cheney

Time for some in the GOP to stop wringing its hands over the Iraq War.

It was the right call and by 2009 was close to lasting stability.  Because of that, former Vice President Dick Cheney has every reason to speak from the high ground about Obama's failures there.

Imagine buying a junked car.  You give it extensive repairs with new parts, get it up and running.  It is relatively reliable if you do not put too much pressure on it and sensibly maintain it.

Then you sell it to an irresponsible owner who drives it for six years with no oil changes, no transmission service, no attention to coolant cleanliness or if it even has coolant.

What would you expect to happen?  The car would break down at the most inopportune time.

Iraq at the end of the Bush presidency had held free elections, despite terrorists' intentions to disrupt.  They had assembled a relatively democratic government.  Armed forces were being put together under the tutelage of the US military.  American troops remained in place, keeping terrorists at bay.  Advisers quietly urged the government towards good policy, albeit with mixed success.

Naysayers forget about the cruelty of Saddam, of his backing of terror, of his plans to leave his country's resources and military into the hands of his sadistic and psychopathic sons.  If that day had come, Iraq itself would be a dangerous source of instability in the region.

This Washington Post rebuttal of Cheney's thoughts on Obama and Iraq centers on the Bush Administration's original agreement to keep forces in Iraq until 2011.  It infers that Obama's task in renewing that agreement was impossible.  How hard did the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even try?

The State Department's fixation on oceans for the past few years indicates that its priorities are a bit out of whack.

Over six years, Obama turned his back on the fragile, but still developing government.  He did not negotiate a status of forces agreement to keep US troops in place.  American soldiers are the best ambassadors of our system and our way of life, whether fighting for the Iraqi people or simply talking about the US every day. The enemy also fears US troops, knowing that engaging our soldiers brings a potentially heavy price for them.

Obama sent mixed signals to the Middle East.  President Bush followed the Reagan tradition of using confident expressions of freedom and liberty to inspire the world. Obama went over there and ruminated about mistakes and problems that historically pale in comparison to the good we have done.

His going to Canossa was the first step in destroying the respect carefully constructed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice.

Many will point to complaints, demonstrations, social media rants as proof that American policy was wrong because we were not loved.  They have it wrong.  America needs to be not loved, but respected. Respected for our power and the principles behind its use.

Iraq today stands at the edge of the precipice.  Obama abandoned it to a cruel fate and now considers a rushed last minute rescue, not because it is the right thing to do, but because Iraq's failure would hurt his legacy even more.

America cannot be the world's policeman.  Some situations, however, do call for action. Iraq was one such issue.  Had Bush's successor maintained a foreign policy based on engagement and respect rather than golf and celebrities, Iraq and the Middle East would be on a much firmer foundation today.

Is Obamacare This Century's Equivalent of "Who Lost China?"

In 1947, President Harry Truman engineered the passage of an aid package to Greece and Turkey.  At the time, both countries feared Communist takeover.  He used it as a foundation of his famous Truman Doctrine, which simply promises aid to any country resisting Communist takeover.

The very next year, Chiang Kai Shek fled China for Taiwan, leaving the massive mainland portion in the hands of the bloody Communist Mao Tse Dong.  Although "losing China" did not lose Truman the 1948 election, it frightened Democratic presidents for a generation.  They knew the electorate saw them as soft on foreign policy so they endeavored to not lose again.  Kennedy and Johnson fought in Vietnam for American, but also Democratic Party credibility.  Losses of both in Vietnam convinced future Democrats, rightly or wrongly, that course was unwise.  Could the Obamacare disaster do the same to their Big Government ideals?

The health care law is called the Affordable Care Act.  Since October, Americans have found out how Orwellian that moniker is.  Premiums have skyrocketed; millions lost their plans altogether.  The government system, based mostly on a $634 million website, does not work.  It is also only about 60 percent completed.

You might say that the healthcare.gov site gave Americans a crash course in why it should not run a business.

Meanwhile, Obama's poll numbers sank.  One might expect a serious dip in job performance.  But for the first time, a majority of Americans find him both dishonest and incompetent.

The long term effect of this on American politics could be profound.  The "who lost China" effect made Democratic presidents more bellicose for the next two decades.  At least one pundit believes Obamacare could make Democrats very gun shy about pursuing massive overhauls on this level again.

The cumulative effect of the first two presidential administrations on the country could be a body blow to backers of aggressive government action in any sphere.  Many still see the Iraq War (which the United States actually won) as a breakdown and a failure.  Obamacare has crashed a major segment of the country's economy and thrown millions into suffering and turmoil.  Both of these add up to further popularize libertarian concepts of government's role.

Time will tell whether this cows the Democrats and leads to a long term revision of what Americans expect from government.  But in the short term, confidence in government in any sphere is extraordinarily low.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing.