Rather, this video shows an interview that Vice President Dick Cheney gave to C-SPAN in 1994 to discuss the aftermath and the lingering questions of the Persian Gulf War, during which Cheney was President George Herbert Walker Bush's Secretary of Defense. In the interview, Cheney responds to the question "Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?" with the following retort:
"Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off -- part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.When I first heard about this video, I didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't until I watched it for the first time the other day that the sheer magnitude of this really took hold of me.The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."
Either Dick Cheney was possessed by the spirit of the seer when he gave this interview, or he and the administration have been playing the ignorance card with astounding success over the last four-plus years.
In light of what has taken place in the last few days regarding the political footing of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Cheney looks downright prophetic. The administration has once again followed its patented formula of allowing a problem to boil over until there is no conceivable solution, then present a pointless and useless observation.
In this instance, al-Maliki and his tenuous coalition of moderate Shiites, Sunni, and Kurds have been largely unable to foster any sense of political power and compromise needed to enact the reforms necessary to establish a stable and secure Iraq. As has been reported from many different sources, the surge has been working in some aspects. Violence and chaos has lessened slightly in portions of Baghdad and the Anbar province. Moderate Sunni clans that fought against us just a few years ago have taken up arms to combat the power of the pro-Al Qaeda tribes that have gained power in their towns and villages.
Unfortunately, the surge is not the slam dunk success that President Bush might lead you to believe. On the contrary, the fragile pillars supporting this success could come tumbling down at any moment. Two columns that appear in today's New York Times highlight the difficulties of maintaining this fragile grip on power.
In "Watch the Sunni Tribes," Thomas L. Friedman discusses these alliances with moderate Sunnis and the possible outcomes of them. He quotes a U.S. general as saying that these tribes "still hate us. They just hate Al Qaeda even more right now and they hate the Persians more even more than them. But they could turn their guns back on us anytime."
As Friedman details, the only foreseeable way to keep these Sunnis in line is to improve access to public services like clean water and electricity - services which are controlled by a Shiite-led government that is hesitant to make up with the minority that dominated them for decades.
On the other side of this ethnic merry-go-round is an article by Jack Miles titled "Occupational Hazard." In it, Miles explains that the current United Nations resolution providing the United States authority to occupy Iraq is set to expire at the end of this year. Unfortunately, the Iraqi Parliament is not set to support re-upping this resolution; it has passed both a non-binding resolution calling for a timetable for withdrawal as well as a resolution stating that it would not support a renewal of this mandate come December.
Now, as Miles explains, al-Maliki could veto this bill. However, he is not likely to come vacation at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport any time soon. On the contrary, given the increasingly loud chorus of calls for his ouster in the few weeks and Bush's contradictory stance on the matter - separating himself from the Iraqi PM one day and then assuring his support on another - al-Maliki has become quite irritated with the United States. He told the US to stay out of Iraq's politics and vowed to find support elsewhere if the US abandoned his side. This means Iran and Syria. Oh, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged to fill the gap if the US leaves Iraq.
So, to recap:
- The Sunnis who were our enemies are now our allies and could become our enemies again at anytime based on the decisions of the Shiite government
- The Shiite government, under al-Maliki, on whom we have placed the fate of this war, has not gotten much done for the nation and now hates the US
- Al-Maliki has pledged to find support from US-haters in Syria & Iran if we don't help him, an offer which both nations would readily accept
Taken in light of his 1994 speech, Dick Cheney is brilliant. Maybe the next time we invade Iraq, the people really will greet us with flowers, and the insurgency really with be in its last throes. It could happen.
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