Or so we thought. In a story from Reuters (linked through Yahoo below), we learn that a recent speech Cheney delivered in Vilnius is being compared to Churchill's 1946 speech defining the "iron curtain." Though I'm sure Cheney's speech did not possess one-tenth the gravitas of any of Churchill's utterings.
So, we (not me, but the collective 'we' of Americans) chose an incompetent president, VP and cabinet. That's old news, and is the source of about 10 million diaries a day throughout the blogosphere. But at the very least, we thought we were getting the benefit of a Condi Rice Sovietologist. Sure, we didn't need one...as Clinton departed and Yeltsin yielded to Putin, everything was hunky dory. Hell, Russia was practically a U.S. state, albeit one with lots of vodka and pretty rough winters (try to imagine Spring Break in Prudhoe Bay).
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So we got Rice, with all her incredible Soviet background, and we didn't even need her.
Ah, but along came the littany of fuck-ups, and now we have Cheney starting another cold war. As if the hot ones we're fighting right now aren't enough, right?
So if the only international experience and strength this administration possessed was its knowledge of Soviet Russia, why are we back staring at a cold war? It was the one thing I thought maybe we'd be able to get right.
(Well, if all else fails, at least they know how to handle the Russians.)
Apparently not:
"Enemy at the Gates. Dick Cheney made a Fulton speech in Vilnius," said business daily Kommersant's front page headline.
"Vice President Dick Cheney made a keynote speech on relations between the West and Russia in which he practically established the start of the second Cold War ... The Cold War has restarted, only now the front lines have shifted," it said.
Here's the full article. Not enough time to quote - gotta run out to meetings today.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Sorry - quick Diary. It was just another issue that cropped up that had me shake my head and sigh.