Cheney’s Chutzpa

Dick Cheney's credibility has more holes in it than a Russian submarine. The former vice-president was a central figure in what is widely acknowledged as the most incompetent administration in modern American history. Yet, the man who once shot his hunting partner in the face has the temerity to launch a fusillade against the Obama administration for supposedly ducking the "war on terror" metaphor.

Cheney's latest broadside follows on the heels of an unsuccessful al-Qaeda plot to blow up an airliner on Christmas, which follows on the heels of the Fort Hood Massacre where a disturbed U.S. Army psychiatrist (who happened to be Muslim) opened fire on his fellow soldiers.

Both incidents, in fact, were carried out by devout Muslims who could best be characterized as unmarried social misfits deeply opposed to America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Major Hasan both illustrate the unconventional nature of the jihadist threat. Neither man was following orders as a part of a formal hierarchical organization. Rather, each was inspired by al-Qaeda's ideology to initiate attacks of their own choosing. Hasan and Abduulmutallab may have received "spiritual guidance" which reinforced their impulses to unleash terrorist violence against "infidels." However, the clerics that recruit, counsel, and radicalize lost souls like these probably do not dirty their hands by planning or coordinating specific acts of terrorism.

Al-Qaeda is arguably the ultimate "virtual community," a collection of loosely affiliated groups and cells comprised of career criminals, paramilitaries, religious zealots, and loner terrorist wannabes.

Osama bin Laden is a charismatic figurehead who is the spiritual locus of al-Qaeda, but he largely irrelevant from an operational or managerial point of view. The Bush administration claimed that bin Laden had been neutralized because he could not plan or conduct operations. This view is self-serving and erroneous. Simply put, nothing would deflate al-Qaeda more than the death or capture of their charismatic spiritual leader, who has supposedly evaded U.S. forces thanks to Allah's protection.

The failure to kill or capture bin Laden at Tora Bora (U.S. resources were being diverted to Iraq at the time) must rank very high on the list of the Bush administration's missed opportunities. Killing bin Laden would not have ended terrorism as a technique, but it could have delivered a knockout blow to al-Qaeda.

The Bush administration instigated one of the greatest strategic blunders in military history when it invaded Iraq. Toppling Saddam Hussein was supposed to be the first step in a wave of democratization that would sweep and transform the Middle East. Instead, the misguided and mismanaged Iraq War became a recruitment tool that radicalized an entire generation of Muslims.

The Islamic extremists that are plotting to blow up airliners and attack Western targets are convinced that the U.S. is waging a war against Islam. Bellicose rhetoric from the Bush administration regarding the "war on terror" proved to be self-defeating because it reinforced al-Qaeda's deluded ideology, which paints the Muslim world as the victim of America's imperial aggression. The Obama administration is right in downplaying such rhetoric because the struggle against Islamic extremism is an ideological struggle to convince ordinary Muslims that America is on the side of human dignity and social justice.

America won the Cold War against the Soviet Union because it contained Communism and won the ideological battle for hearts and minds of mankind. At the height of the Cold War, however, there were those on the extreme right who insisted that the only way to defeat Communism was to launch a pre-emptive nuclear war against the "Evil Empire." Recently, right-wing extremists like Dick Cheney took America down a path that included pre-emptive war, torture, and other Constitutional abuses. As a result, America's reputation sank and the country nearly drowned in a financial crisis caused in no small measure by the failed economic policies of the Bush/Cheney administration. Dick Cheney's credibility on national security matters is unsalvageable.

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