Whatever her fate, the entire spectacle is ironic. Because since when did [Republican Congresswoman Liz] Cheney have a problem with telling big lies to get what she wants? Furthermore, her transformation into truthteller should be seen in its full scope, for the lies she has told in the past have promoted and sustained wars that have left hundreds of thousands of people dead, displaced millions, and created a national security state at home that has not only militarized domestic law enforcement, but has encroached upon the fundemental civil rights and liberties Cheney professes to support.
In other words, those who seek to keep Cheney in her post because of her stance on Trump should be careful what they wish for.
Let’s start with the biggest and most damaging lie in modern American history: That Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi dictator was in cahoots with al-Qaeda. Not only did her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, perpetuate these lies, but his daughter has dutifully defended and repeated them through her entire political career.
No serious person believes either of these assertions today. History and tragedy has definitively proven both wrong. The legacy of the George W. Bush administration’s big lie about Iraq is a mistake that will continue to loom larger than January 6, as terrible as that day was.
Key to the neoconservative agenda post-9/11 was been to dramatically overstate the dangers to the U.S. abroad or domestically in ways that encourage public support for military action, mass surveillance, torture, or any other illegal act hawks deem necessary to maintain a global U.S. hegemony. After 9/11, hawks became bigger and bolder in their lying, knowing the Republican president had so much public support. Truth had little to do with it.
The abuse of public trust went further than just the war itself. Cheney has long been a passionate public face for neocon propaganda.
Liz Cheney will tell you with a straight face that torture is not torture. “We don’t torture; we haven’t tortured,” Cheney said in 2017, adding, “I do support enhanced interrogation.” Cheney has always insisted that any attempt to reform FISA or to rein in mass surveillance of citizens will weaken America’s national security. Not surprisingly, Cheney’s opinion of Edward Snowden — famous for calling out James Clapper on his big lie to the U.S. Senate that American intelligence does not conduct mass surveillance — is that the whistleblower is a “traitor.”
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Here’s another doozy: After former President Barack Obama helped craft the Iran nuclear deal, Cheney and her former vice president father wrote in their 2015 book, “The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
That obviously never happened. Hawks claiming nukes will ignite if we don’t go to war with some country is a well-worn tactic. A personal favorite of mine is Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying in 2013 that my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina would be nuked if the U.S. didn’t go to war with Syria. The last time I checked, my friends and family are all still there, unharmed by nuclear weapons.
Hawks may find weapons of mass destruction all over their imaginations, yet never in Iraq where they all absolutely promised they were.
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If nothing else, Cheney is a career-long opportunist who will tell any tall tale necessary in whatever position she holds to promote perpetual war, which has been her primary inspiration throughout her public life.
This might be the beginning to the end of Liz Cheney’s political career, thankfully, but it likely won’t be the end of Liz Cheney as a force in influencing America’s foreign policy and the overall Washington establishment. Rest assured she will continue to tell any lie necessary to succeed in her next chapter of warmongering neocon foolery.
Read the rest of this article at Responsible Statecraft
