In an Oct. 21 speech, former Vice President Dick Cheney said that President Barack Hussein Obama was ‘dithering’ on whether to give his handpicked commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the troops he has requested for the campaign.
The much-maligned Cheney is dead-on in his claims that Obama has shown an utter inability to make this difficult decision on Afghanistan. However, one must ask: is Cheney the proper vessel for such criticisms?
Cheney was considered by many to be the de facto president of the United States during President George W. Bush’s terms (or at least until the president moved further left during his second term), and it was the Bush administration that took its eyes off Afghanistan and focused on Iraq.
Cheney had a hand in the selection of Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s first secretary of defense, whose job performance in that position was deplorable. It was only after Robert Gates was selected as Rumsfeld’s replacement that the Iraq problem started getting solved.
One must remember that it took the Bush administration more than a month from the first talk of the potential troop surge in Iraq before they actually put more boots on the ground in what has proven to be a pivotal moment in that conflict.
As of today, Obama has failed to make a decision for more than 70 days, so perhaps Cheney does have a point here.
The surge – while extremely unpopular and politically suicidal – worked, and was the result of the commander in chief listening to his generals in the field and making a hard decision.
The casualty rate supports this claim. Since the surge, violence in Iraq has dramatically decreased while our forces in Afghanistan are having the deadliest year since the war began.
The war in Iraq is virtually over, won because a decisive leader made a hard and unpopular decision based on suggestions from knowledgeable and competent leaders such as Gen. David Petraeus.
This is where Obama could learn from the mistakes and successes of the previous administration.
Going into Iraq was a mistake based on faulty intelligence, but once the decision was made, Bush listened to his generals and made the tough decisions necessary to win the war.
While not the perfect messenger, Cheney is correct in his summation that Obama must follow in Bush’s footsteps and make the unpopular decisions needed to protect this country and its troops.
Timothy Mathis is a history junior and may be reached at [email protected]
