Dick Cheney, asshole

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(That isn't the most intelligent or nuanced characterization, is it? Sometimes, though, you gotta call 'em like they are.)

As if we needed yet more proof that the warmongers don't care about the troops nearly as much as they care about themselves, Cheney, in an interview with ABC News, stated that it is Bush who "carries the biggest burden, obviously," not the troops, not their families. Sure, he talked about "the cost that's involved in the global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan," again lumping the Iraq War and Occupation and the so-called war on terror together as one great monolithic struggle, and about how "we are blessed with families who've sacrificed as they have," but all he could say about the troops was that "they are committed to the cause, to doing what needs to be done to defend the nation," which may be true, to an extent, but what about all those multiple deployments, as Martha Raddatz stressed in her questions, and what about those 4,000 deaths?

In the end, all Cheney could muster was the usual warmongering bullshit: "It's important to achieve victory in Iraq. It's important to win, to succeed in the objective that we've established." Forget troop reductions, forget an end to this disastrous war. It's all about whatever vision of victory is dancing in the heads of the warmongers at any given time.

For what is now "the objective"? What now is "victory"?

Over five years in, even those basic questions remain unanswered. And, meanwhile, the deployments continue and the death toll rises.

But poor Bush, poor Cheney, what with that huge burden of theirs. "[W]e are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us." Note: for the rest of us, for those of us who wage war without ever having been to war, who put those volunteers in harm's way without having much of a clue as to what the war would actually be like, who seem to want to wage war for the sake of waging war, or for their delusions, for their grand geopolitical delusions, for their dreams of American hegemony.

Yes, Bush and Cheney and the rest of the warmongers sent them off to wage an unnecessary war, a war that never should have been waged, a war that should, if waged at all, have ended a long time ago.

But they're volunteers, right? So they do what they're told, deployment after deployment, and if they die, well, they die. Too bad for them, too bad for their families, but it's hard on Bush, don't you know, so hard, so very hard, what with that "biggest burden, obviously," what with all those sacrifices he's had to make, and Cheney too, so many sacrifices, boo-fuckin'-hoo.

Asshole indeed.