Dick Cheney’s heart transplant perked him up enough to push him into the presidential race. President Obama was, he told a newsman, a “weak president.” Weak, he explained, because he is pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We shouldn’t be turning our backs on our friends in that region,” said the former vice president.
Mr. Cheney can take a lot of the credit for the fact that the United States went to war with Iraq in the first place. Goodness knows how wide that war would have grown if fate had made him president. Cheney surely will go down in history as the most bellicose V.P. of them all.
The United States has had troops in Afghanistan since October 2001. Cheney appears to advocate a permanent occupation. As to exactly which “friends” in that benighted land would join him in that recommendation, he is silent. Sure, there are Afghans addicted to U.S. billions — but very few who want an occupying army to stay indefinitely to oversee their daily lives. That goes double for the Iraq people.
President Obama’s decision to announce far in advance when he would pull out the last combat troops can be criticized as poor tactics. But ending those wars and bringing the troops home deserves the applause it has won throughout the nation and from our allies.
Mr. Cheney couldn’t have found a way to give the Obama campaign a bigger boost.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
