Former Vice President Dick Cheney once again made headlines recently by criticizing President Barack Obama. As we’re used to by now, Cheney doesn’t mince words:
On the eve of the unveiling of the nation’s new Afghanistan policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Barack Obama for projecting “weakness” to adversaries and warned that more workaday Afghans will side with the Taliban if they think the United States is heading for the exits.
In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”
“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.
“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”
Now, let’s not get into a debate about whether or not Cheney hasn’t been guilty of playing politics himself in the past (he has, of course; that’s what politicians tend to do). What matters most is that he’s right. From the day he was sworn in, Obama has projected an image of weakness to the rest of the world. And that’s a dangerous thing to do.
Even those of us who criticized George W. Bush regularly during the last years of his administration (and before), have to admit that he at least projected an image ofstrength. America’s adversaries knew, especially after Bush’s reaction to 9/11, that America could not be messed with. If America was seen as weak back then, you can bet on it that it would’ve been challenged even more by its enemies than it was.
Obama is making a tragic mistake by spending too much time and energy on trying to come across as a ‘uniter,’ instead of on squashing the West’s enemies. The world is a dangerous, Hobbesian place. Obama’d better realize it ASAP. Before Iran has nuclear weapons, for instance.