• news
  • WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 8 2004 12:15 AM

Cheney: Vote GOP or Be Terrorized (Updated)

Dick Cheney is selling poison in Iowa.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.


As if we don't face the threat of another attack now. Who knew we were so safe? Not me.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.


I don't need to tell Dick Cheney that terrorists want to hit us again no matter who sits in the White House. But I would tell Dick Cheney, if I were his advisor, that this line of argument is crude, obnoxious, and has serious backfire potential built into it. He is implicitly saying no terrorist attacks can get through if he and George W. hold the White House.

We all know this is b.s. and I shouldn't even have to point it out. It is not possible to deflect every potential attack. We could turn the United States into a totalitarian fortress and attacks would still get through.

If Dick Cheney is prepared to lay the blame of a future terrorist attack on both a Kerry Administration and even the voters (!) then his administration needs to accept the blame for terrorist attacks that occur on its watch. And that includes the attack on September 11.

I do not blame the Bush Administration for the attack on September 11. Nor do I blame the Clinton Administration. Nor will I blame a possible future Kerry Administration if it comes into being. Nor should anybody.

In The Art of War Sun Tzu famously told how to defeat an enemy's leadership: "When he is united, divide him." On that note I'd like to revisit an essay Lee Harris wrote for Tech Central Station on the second anniversary of September 11, 2001. He concludes:

The greatest damage that Al-Qaeda could possibly do to us is not to destroy our buildings or even to murder our people; it is to lure us into abandoning our sense of national unity at the very time we are most in need of it. 9/11 was not our fault, nor the fault of our leadership, of either party. Nor will the next 9/11, if it should come, be our fault, or the fault of those who might happen to be in power, and again of either party.

[...]

[N]one of us may not know for sure what we should do, we can all be absolutely positive about what we shouldn't do, and that is, we cannot fall apart. For if we in the United States fall apart, who in the world will put us back together?




UPDATE: It looks like Cheney's quote was snipped in the middle of a sentence. The AP reporter used a period instead of ellipses to hide that fact. Here is Cheney's complete sentence:

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war.


That is a lot less inflammatory. I still think Cheney is wrong here, but less obnoxiously so.

John Kerry has said he will respond to any attack on the United States, and I believe him. Why wouldn't he? He is not a peacenik.

As a side note, what worries me personally about a Kerry presidency isn't that he won't fight back but that he doesn't have any strategy that isn't reactive. We could fight terrorism tit-for-tat forever. Bush's strategy is proactive with an eye on root causes, while Kerry's isn't.

 

Previous

PAGE: 

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Next

Comments
crucifiedalien

crucifiedalien

I'm lost
February 2004

SEP 08, 2004 12:55 AM

Dear Mr. Dick Cheney,

You suck and I hate you.

Sincerely,

crucifiedalien

sadisticmika

sadisticmika

I'm lost
July 2004

SEP 08, 2004 12:56 AM

Last I heard the terrorists share my viewpoint: Anyone but Bush.

crucifiedalien

crucifiedalien

I'm lost
February 2004

SEP 08, 2004 01:02 AM

I wouldn't put it past these assholes to set Kerry up if he wins so it looks like the American Public made a fatal mistake in electing him. I mean, honestly, do we really believe that if they lose Bush and Cheney are going to leave the White House gracefully?

Makes me sick to think about.

GO KERRY GOOOOOOOO!

TheSeadog

TheSeadog

Reunion
September 2004

SEP 08, 2004 01:13 AM

The sad thing is, there are people who believe this propaganda bullshit. I give you Exibit A. The terrorist threat warning system. This administration has spent four years twisting what has been said and done to suit their purposes. Stalin would be proud.

BrownFrown

BrownFrown

Athens, GA
March 2004

SEP 08, 2004 01:22 AM

The final quote used in this message focuses on removing the blame for the attacks of 9/11/01 on any group or individual...yet the attacks took place. SOMEONE is responsible.
is it only the 9-or-whatever terrorists involved? or is osama bin laden also responsible? or is the al qaeda network as a whole responsible? is globalism? is internationalism?
most will just respond "yes" to some of these questions and "no" to others, depending on political leanings, but the fact remains, it is obvious that it is more complex than just the actual hijackers of september 11.
its time to cut the bullshit and acknowledge this fact without exploiting it for political purposes.
im voting for kerry, i think bush is a fucker of the worst variety, but i think the roots of our current cultural situation, as dictated by the events of 9/11/2001, stretch back long before the moment the actual attacks took place. so what?
lets figure out what went wrong and fix it.
goddammit.

DoctorSkinny

DoctorSkinny

Toronto, ON
October 2003

SEP 08, 2004 01:32 AM

MEROVINGIAN said:
So who exactly was in office when we were hit with the worst attack on the lower 48 states....EVER???

hmmmmm...interesting....



Lincoln?

mokole

mokole

Canada
June 2004

SEP 08, 2004 01:55 AM

you need to change the laws, to allow someone to run more then two terms. then you can bring clinton back, for i would feel safer knowing he was in charge again. i'm really not sure about kerry, but he isn't bush, which is a deciding factor as far as i'm concerned. your electronic voting stations, should have a large battery hooked up to the republican button, so that we can train the people of the us to not vote for people with iq's lower then 80

JoshXXX

JoshXXX

Northborough, MA
March 2004

SEP 08, 2004 02:47 AM

DoctorSkinny said:

MEROVINGIAN said:
So who exactly was in office when we were hit with the worst attack on the lower 48 states....EVER???

hmmmmm...interesting....



Lincoln?



Technically, there were only 34 states when Lincon was inaugurated. It would have to be an attack after 1912 when Arizona was made the 48th state... My guess is that he's talking about the British Invasion of the 1960's. What this means is Lyndon B Johnson is the one to be held accountable.

dakineguy

dakineguy

Honolulu, HI
July 2003

SEP 08, 2004 03:49 AM

Sadistic_Miike said:
Last I heard the terrorists share my viewpoint: Anyone but Bush.



Actually, if I were a terrorist I'd want bush to STAY in office. He's the greatest recruiting tool OBL ever could hope for....

Aaron

Aaron

Shakopee, MN
July 2004

SEP 08, 2004 03:56 AM

How horrible for us liberals to accuse the republicans of using fear to intimidate America into voting for an incompetent who has such a myopic view of the world I wanna slap him in the face.

James_

James_

United Kingdom
March 2003

SEP 08, 2004 05:12 AM

the guys name is dick

says it all.

jpguinness

jpguinness

Seattle, WA
May 2004

SEP 08, 2004 05:23 AM

Dick Cheney and the rest of those neocons are a bunch of evil manipulative mindfuckers. Not only that Dick Cheney looks like a smarmy science teacher I once had in high school.

LICK BUSH AND HIS DICK IN '04!

ichimunki

ichimunki

Minneapolis, MN
February 2003

SEP 08, 2004 05:53 AM

BrownFrown said:
lets figure out what went wrong and fix it.



That is what President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been pretending to do! And that is what VP Cheney is saying here. Anyone who can read this as a "threat" or "voter intimidation" is just making excuses at this point.

What he isn't saying is that he and Bush have responded largely with color coded panic and suggestions to buy duct tape. They didn't prevent Spain from getting hit. They didn't prevent Russia from getting attacked. Whoever these terrorists are, the last three years have been totally ineffective at eliminating them. Maybe if the energy had been on fighting terrorism instead of invading Iraq, the terrorists would actually have been hunted down and neutralized.

If you really want to be safe after Nov. 2, you'd do well to vote for Michael Badnarik-- his self-defense suggestions go a bit further than duct tape. Voting for the Kerry/Bush ticket is a vote for the Invasion of Iraq, more ineffective strategies against terrorism, eroding liberty here at home, and the whole host of policy decisions that got us into this mess. The terrorists have been after us for years. It's not like they just popped out of the woodwork because Bush got elected. So Cheney is right-- John Kerry probably won't make you safer. But Cheney is also wrong. So wrong.

Rickets

rickets

Seattle, WA
March 2003

SEP 08, 2004 07:15 AM

BrownFrown said:

lets figure out what went wrong and fix it.
goddammit.



I agree. Trying to topple terrorism by waging wars is silly. Anybody is a potential terrorist, given the right social/economic conditions. Trying to solve the problem by getting rid of a few people in charge is perhaps helpful, but in the long run, I fear it's about as effective as putting a Band-Aid on a melanoma.

[Edited on Sep 08, 2004 7:19AM]

swirlie

swirlie

Cherry Hill, NJ
July 2004

SEP 08, 2004 07:20 AM

fuck it.
lets let everyone use biological warfare and weapons of mass destruction, and lets wipe mankind, or at least the majority of it off the planet, then the animals can live in peace and well all be dead so noone will have anything to worry about, but in the mean time lets just try to have fun.

Previous

PAGE: 

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Next