As usual, Dick Cheney is busy demonstrating that he just doesn't get it. After making his mark as the most universally despised vice-president in our country's history, he kicked up a small storm by demanding President Obama release the records of interrogations showing that torture really works after all. Currently, the smiling vice-presidential countenance of sweet reason is often seen attacking everything Obama does compared to his own sterling record of incompetence.
Maybe he's counting (perhaps not unreasonably) on the American public's proven ability to forget history. Maybe we'll not recall the whole anti-American mess in the Middle East was stirred up by the Bush/Cheney rush to war in 2003. Maybe we'll let the abandonment of the rebel-hunting in Afghanistan in favor of the oil-hunting in Iraq slip our minds. And maybe we'll forget the oath Dickie took about preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution.
In the old days (he stroked his beard and reflected), children were taught to look up to Patrick Henry and his immortal words, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Old Pat believed that the principles of the country he was helping form was more important than his own personal safety.
Many of our Founding Fathers thought the way Pat did. After all, they could have cooperated with the British, paid their taxes and just shut up. Instead, they risked everything, including their lives, to fight for what they believed was right.
Of course, they also didn't shoot their friends in the face, bribe the president of Nigeria to allow a billion-dollar gas liquification plant to be built with insufficient environmental safeguards or use their offices to help oil company executives to plan the country's energy policy, but let's stick to the point.
Henry, Washington, Jefferson and their kind didn't wonder whether fracturing the Constitution would get things done faster or better. Americans didn't use cruel and unusual punishment. Americans didn't unreasonably search and sieze. Americans allowed religious freedom. These were what America was all about. What Cheney doesn't understand is that in this country, there's such a thing as principle and morality. Of course, he's always had trouble with that idea. When told the majority of Americans were against the Iraq war, his uttered that immortal remark: "So?" If there were a test on the principles of democracy, he'd score lower than whale doo-doo.
It's not whether torture worked or didn't work. It's that torture is wrong! If this means additional danger to our safety, then what we should be asking is whether we should throw out Patrick Henry and the rest of the gang and do what it takes to keep up safe - like shut down opposing opinions, keep immigrants out, arrest dissidents and act like any other self-respecting dictatorship. I suspect Cheney would feel right at home.
I wonder how our brave draft-dodging vice president would react if he were arrested (which I fervently hope he will be) and faced the possibility of waterboarding if he didn't confess.........