TODAY'S FRONT PAGE OF THE Los Angeles Times had pictures of the President of the United States and Dick Cheney side by side, with quotes from their respective speeches.
"It boils down to the idea that Americans should be so afraid of the terrorists that we should trade in our values: torture and imprison without a free trial, endorse preemptive warfare, never admit a mistake, and generally become like the people we fear."
Barack Obama's speech was an attempt to outline the rationale, both legal and moral, behind the policies of his Presidency.
Dick Cheney speech was a desperate attempt to reframe history in order to rescue the legacy of his own Presidency, which would be a little less sad, and a great deal less pathetic, had he ever actually been President.
The quote which the Times chose to put under his picture says volumes about that legacy, and about the fundamental difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration:
"The United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims."
Where to begin?
"The United States has never lost its moral bearings."
The entire enterprise of the Bush Presidency could be seen as an exercise in conflation. Time after time, both during those deadly eight years and now after them, they push their policies and ideas forward by refusing to make common sense distinctions.
We weren't allowed to criticize their war policies because they would admit no distinction between criticizing the President and criticizing the troops. We were supposed to be against taxes, but were not supposed to notice that all the cuts actually went to the wealthy. We were expected to endorse the "war on terror", but not notice that there was a difference between Bin Laden and Saddam.
Now Cheney is at it again. "The United States has never lost its moral bearings." True enough, if by that you mean the average citizen. I offer as evidence the fact that Republicans are no longer in power.
But if you mean the government in Washington, over the previous two terms, the claim is absurd.
The reason the average citizens threw the bums out was precisely the fact that we could all see that the party in power had completely lost its moral bearings: torture, spying on innocent American citizens, laws depriving average citizens from exercising their rights, sending soldiers into battle without the proper equipment, lying in State of the Union addresses, lying to the United Nations, the list is as long as it is undeniable.
But Cheney would like to conflate that record with our sense of the good-will and uprightness of the average American. He would like the Bush Presidency to be able to continue to hide behind the flag.
No, Mr. Cheney. The country has not lost its moral bearing, which is why we can see clearly that you and your cronies have.
If we needed any further evidence, we only need to look as far as the second sentence in the quote.
Where would you expect a defense of American morality to lead, from the lips of any reasonable person—to praise of our fairness and even-handedness with other countries, to reflection on our foreign aid programs, to admiration of our system of laws and rights and the basic decency of our judicial system?
Not in Cheney's book. In his mind the evidence of our "morality" is our ability to pronounce judgment on others—morality, for Cheney, means laying blame.
"And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you that they were neither innocent nor victims."
I'm not disputing, here, whether the people he's referring to are innocent or guilty. I'll get to that issue in a moment. I'm merely pointing out that his invocation of morality is immediately applied, not to himself, not to the Bush administration that he was a part of, but to the blaming and judgment of others.
This is perhaps the biggest difference between the light and dark sides of morality, and between the world-view of the last administration and the world-view of most Americans.
Americans tend to see morality as applying, first and foremost, to themselves. We tend to refrain from judging another until we have walked a mile in his sandals.
The current administration has already admitted to the fact that they will, inevitably, make mistakes—before even making them. The administration Cheney was part of won't even admit to them long after they're old news.
The purpose of morality, in Cheney's eyes, is to blame others, to put others in the wrong. He blames the Clinton administration for 9/11 and for the Bush years economic decline. He's currently setting the stage to blame the Obama administration for any future terrorist attacks. In Cheney's world, anything good goes to his credit, anything bad is someone else's fault.
And the purpose of "moral bearings" and "moral reckoning" is to be able to assign blame elsewhere.
So what about "the men known as high-value terrorists"?
That's a pretty vague phrase, when you think of it. Known by whom? On what evidence?
His conflation is showing again. It's his favorite tool. Does it mean people who actually committed terrorist acts? Or does it mean anyone the previous administration happened to imprison? (We already know that some of those were innocent.)
The phrase is conveniently vague enough that it's impossible to prove wrong, simply because it's impossible to be sure what it means.
But, of course, he has given us a way out of this puzzling situation: the same way the Bush administration gave us for eight years.
We can trust him.
They weren't the pro-faith administration for nothing.
How are we supposed to know that these people are "neither innocent nor victims"? Some possibilities—American possibilities—come to mind. An investigation into the facts? A fair and speedy trial?
No.
"I can assure you..."
In Cheney's world, all that's required for the assigning of guilt or innocence is Cheney's word. That is supposed to be our moral compass.
Remember Rumsfeld assuring us that the worst provisions of the Patriot's Act were never going to be "misused"? Remember Cheney assuring us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?
The assurances of Cheney are not my idea of a safety net or a moral guide.
But behind all this is the same, deeper, flaw in the Cheney world-view. It's a world-view based in fear.
The subtext of his quote is that Americans should be willing to throw out our fundamental values, our belief that a tyrant does not get to sentence a man without a fair trial, that the rights of all depend upon all having rights, because we live in a dangerous world.
He's right. We do live in a dangerous world. Unless there's an enormous combination of vigilance and good luck we will certainly have another terrorist attack on U.S. soil—whoever is in the White House. Cheney knows this, and its dishonest of him to try to blame it on the current administrations policies in advance.
The question is not whether we will ever be completely safe. We won't. The question is whether the people of this country and our government have the courage to hold to our values even in a dangerous world.
If we don't have that courage we will go the Cheney route. We will resort to attacking people who have not attacked us, torturing both the innocent and the guilty, holding innocent people prisoner alongside guilty people.
And in each case, we will do it out of fear.
This is what moral bearings and moral reckoning boils down to in the Cheney universe. It boils down to the idea that Americans should be so afraid of the terrorists that we should trade in our values: torture and imprison without a free trial, endorse preemptive warfare, never admit a mistake, and generally become like the people we fear.
It's the morality of a coward.
At least, that's what I think today.
