Sorry, Tony -- but you're still an asshole

Political spectators with weak stomachs would be advised to stay away from New York magazine this week.

First, there's a piece about Dick Cheney's lunatic spawn, Liz, and her future as a player in the Republican party.

To my untrained, unprofessional eyes, she seems the longest of long shots. Even though the article goes to lengths to try to disprove it, Liz's kinship with Dick is really the only thing she has going for her. (It's true, she worked at the State Department, but the only substantive mention of her professional life was some screw up she was responsible for when trying to hammer out an agreement with the Egyptians.)

But a blood-relationship with Dick Cheney will not carry anyone to the White House. I doubt very much that she can pose a credible challenge to Jim Webb for a Virginia senate seat -- although I suppose it's not out of the question that she could carry some deep red fly-over state.

But almost more upsetting, in a way, is the profile of NYU scholar Tony Judt.

Professor Judt is sick with Lou Gehrig's disease. I'm very sorry for him and his family. But this doesn't change the fact that he's a pretty lousy thinker -- at least when it comes to Israel. Judt gets away with it somewhat because he's Jewish. And he gets away with it somewhat because, unlike a lot of Jewish Israel critics, he actually spent significant time in Israel.

I'll even go one further: Not all of Judt's attacks are wrong. In fact, when he says, "a growing number of Israelis, [have] been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact with a partisan God" I sort of agree with him. (And I concede that "entho-religious real estate pact" is the mark of a good writer.)

The thing that I can't stand is the fact that his invective is solely reserved for Israel.

Sure, there are fanatics in Israel -- that should come as no surprise to anybody. But I find it unfathomable that Judt can't get equally outraged by the fanatics amongst the Palestinians. Fanatics like Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade (all of which have a sharia interpretation of their future Palestinian state) have spent years directing the attacks against Israel with the intention of driving Israel further right and undermining the possibility of a two-state solution. (And have been running the lives of the Palestinians into the ground along the way, I might add.)

Yes, I concede that Israel has greater responsibilities, given that it's a functioning democracy -- but where's the disgust and anger with the other thugs who have hijacked the peace process?

Also, I thought there was a snobbishness in Mr. Judt's dismissal of Israel that I found unbearable. “Most Israelis were not transplanted latter-day agrarian socialists," Judt writes, "but young, prejudiced urban Jews who differed from their European or American counterparts chiefly in their macho, swaggering self-confidence, and access to armed weapons.”

You'll pardon my French, but that's an utterly bullshit argument. First off, what does Judt expect? "Latter-day agrarian socialists?" So Israel has to qualify morally and ethically -- according to Tony Judt's idea of a liberal democracy -- before it's entitled to its status and protection as a state?

Certainly not. Why shouldn't Israel be urban? Why shouldn't it be modern? Why shouldn't it be western-centric? None of these offenses punishable by death. Nor have I ever heard of any other state who had to defend itself on such existential (and ridiculous) grounds. (As for the claims that they're macho and prejudiced: Some are, yes. But these, too, are not offenses worthy of a suicide bomb in a market place.)

I agree with Mr. Judt that Israel is committing a slow form of suicide in its attachment to the West Bank -- but when he says that the idea that Israel will ever leave is a "fantasy" I have to reply: What have you been smoking? Israel has pulled out of territory five times in the last three decades. They abandoned settlements in the Sinai in exchange for a peace treaty. They abandoned settlements in Gaza without a peace treaty. The other three times (Lebanon, Lebanon and Gaza) there were no settlements to dismantle or abandon. While I don't see Israel leaving the West Bank right now, it's absurd to say it will never happen.

I only hope that Mr. Judt remains healthy long enough to see himself proved wrong.

One piece of praise for Liz Cheney

She clearly loves her father.

If you watch this clip in which she claims that the Obama administration's "incompetence" is getting people killed (or will get people killed) the mind reels.

It's the weakest, limpest, stupidest statement I've ever heard. I mean, it almost falls into one of those too-easy-to-refute-and-I-really-don't-want-to-embarrass-her-any-more-than-she's-already-just-embarrassed-herself sorts of categories.

I mean, did somebody with the last name Cheney really just criticize the Obama administration over competence? The woman is obviously smoking crack, right?

But the fact that it's such a lame, intellectually indefensible claim is the kind of thing that only a loving daughter could make with a straight face. And I sort of admire anybody who sticks up for their father -- even when he's a feckless rat like Dick Cheney. (Maybe especially when he's a rat.)

Anybody who loves somebody enough to make a complete and utter fool out of themselves for their sake has something admirable in them.

That being said: Liz Cheney is an utter moron.

"Cheney only eats what he kills."

Our soon-to-be-former VP is (mercifully) lured out of Washington.

The Cheney Administration

Last night on the Daily Show show, Jon Stewart did a brief little story about how one of Dick Cheney's investments -- in this case prisons -- was getting him in legal trouble.

Stewart looked into the camera and asked: "Is there any unpleasant aspect of our society that Dick Cheney isn't making money off of?"

Dick Cheney was kind of the gift that kept on giving for Stewart; the ultimate cartoon of a nefarious puppetmaster behind the scenes, plotting sinister dealings, ruling the world through George W. Bush. Always good for a joke.

But for a long time, I thought that this kind of cartoon wasn't particularly helpful to Democrats -- and probably wasn't even true.

Frankly, I didn't think that George Bush was all that easily manipulated by the likes of a Dick Cheney. Sure, I knew that Cheney was extremely powerful (more so than any other Vice President) but Bush was also very much a man who knew his own mind; who knew his wants and desires; who refused to be coached into something that he didn't believe in.

In short, I thought that a cartoonish exaggeration badly missed the mark. And misunderstanding the Bush administration (as Democrats did throughout his presidency) was a mistake. It enabled Bush and his cohorts in Congress to run rings around Democrats for the bulk of the last eight years.

Well, after reading Barton Gellman's book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, I no longer thing that the cartoon was so far off the mark.

Gellman's book might very well be the single best book that I've read about the Bush administration -- which should more accurately be called the Cheney Administration. (For the first five years or so, anyway.) The portrait Gellman paints is of a Cheney who is much more powerful than I had any idea. And probably more powerful than even George Bush knows.

And while I just made the point that the book makes the greatest case for the cartoon version of the Bush Administration, I would argue that paradoxically Angler succeeds so well because it does not take a cartoonish view of the administration or the Vice President. It doesn't have an ideological ax to grind, and doesn't take long winded stands. It doesn't examine the unverifiable evidence, or the rantings of the unstable. It deals with the players extremely seriously, and on their own terms.

I would be loath to come away from Angler thinking that Dick Cheney is an idiot. He is anything but. He is a frighteningly smart man. I was extremely surprised at the fact that he voiced a great deal of skepticism about the invasion of Iraq in early 2003. (Even though none of this was aired publicly.) Apparently he thought both the option of going to war and not going to war were very bad -- which is a more nuanced position than I initially gave him credit for.

Moreover, Gellman steers away from the idea that Cheney went to war for personal enrichment.

I think that the argument that America went to war for oil has some merit in it (but not in the way the, "No blood for oil!" protesters think -- more along the lines of, "Our entire economy is based on oil right now, so putting the Middle East in the hands of madmen is kind of a mistake" reasoning). But it's ludicrous to think we went to war in Iraq to ensure Dick Cheney's stock portfolio would rise. Gellman has examined his finances and concluded that he divested himself from Haliburton before becoming Vice President -- at a significant personal loss. (Although Cheney was already quite rich by the time he became VP.)

But the cartoon of Cheney holding power in the administration definitely holds true.

I won't ruin the book by going into each and every instance of Cheney's power (or just how little of it Bush was aware of) except for one small story about why Cheney is so powerful:

During the Florida recount in 2000, when Bush was extremely distracted by the politics and lawsuits going on, Cheney came to Bush and told him that he would need to prepare for an eventual transition; staffing decisions would need to be made, etc., and he was obviously too busy to handle it now. Cheney volunteered himself to do this.

In other words, everybody in the first part of Bush's administration was essentially handpicked by Cheney. True, Bush signed off on everybody -- but every cabinet member (or anybody who needed congressional approval) was vetted first by Cheney. He decided whose resume would reach Bush's desk and whose would not.

And being that they were all Cheney picks, they had an interest in keeping him informed and running decisions and policy through him before going to the President.

A shocking read -- go out and buy it!

The Dark Side

I just finished reading Jane Mayer's truly devastating book, The Dark Side, about the Bush administration's torture policy, and the legal machinations to give the CIA (and the Defense Department, to a lesser extent) a freer hand in interrogating suspects -- sometimes to the point of death.

Very chilling, horrible stuff. Everybody should read it (especially if you take a very hard line on terrorism -- as I often do). Also, a fascinating portrait of the way the administration works (apparently David Addington is possibly the most bullying, and arrogant man on the planet, and even crazier than his boss, Dick Cheney. If Mayer's book is to be believed, this youtube clip is probably Addington at his most polite.)

This book is not the kind of thing you can find funny anecdotes in.

That being said, there was one story which is sort of hilarious in illustrating the confounding stupidity of it all. It's the story of a guy named Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, who had the misfortune of having a name very similar to that of a wanted terrorist. He was picked up by the Macedonian authorities and rendered to an American prison in Afghanistan. Right from the beginning he had a German Passport (as well as a family and employment history back in Germany which could fairly easily be checked to corroborate his story) and the authorities thought his arrest was extremely fishy. But one particularly zealous CIA officer had some sort of gut suspicion of Masri, and he was allowed to rot in prison for months before reason prevailed.

George Tenet was, apparently, terrified that he had been tortured in prison. ("Just tell me -- please -- we haven't used enhanced interrogation techniques on him, have we?" was the question to his underlings.) The CIA had no idea what to do to try to keep the situation as quiet as possible.

They finally decided that the smartest thing to do was release Masri with a shitload of cash, hope he kept relatively quiet and pretend the thing never happened. But Condoleezza Rice overruled them. "We can't put the President in the position of telling a lie to our allies," she piously replied.

OK...

So the US ambassador tells his German counterpart about this clusterfuck who replies: "Why are you telling me this? My secretary is here -- taking notes! Now there's a record! It will get out -- it will become a German political issue! I'll have to face investigations -- I'll have to testify in front of the Bundestag! Why didn't you just let him go, give him some money, and keep it quiet?"