CONTRIVED INDIGNATION INDEED

Former vice-president Dick Cheney hit it out of the park last week in a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington last Thursday. At almost the same time President Obama was speaking about what he considers the “Bush-Cheney team setting aside American values and the rule of law” in dealing with terrorists, Cheney took Obama to the oratorical woodshed. Now Cheney’s dour demeanor and the endless pounding he has taken from the liberal media has made Dick Cheney a tough guy to like but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Let’s start with terrorism itself and work towards 9-11 and the Bush-Cheney response. Prior to 9-11 there had been a series of well financed and coordinated attacks on American interests abroad as well as the first World Trade bombing. Partly because the Clinton administration chose to ignore or downplay the significance and scope of these attacks, most Americans paid very little attention to terrorism or their surroundings. That all changed on September 11th 2001. The beast had come out of the forest. Am I saying Bill Clinton encouraged terrorism? No. But he didn’t use the intelligence available to him to put the nation on a more vigilant course.

By the time George Bush took over much of the planning and training for 9-11 was well underway. 9-11 did indeed come out of the blue for most Americans, out of a beautiful blue sky on that awful morning. President Bush and Dick Cheney reacted swiftly, identifying the perpetrators and the source of their funding. While there was an element of beating up the guy who beat up your brother, America demanded we lash out at the terrorists in Afghanistan. Bombing Afghanistan and our subsequent war there hasn’t caught Bin-Laden but he’s not rubbing our nose in it poolside in Saudi Arabia like so many other nefarious characters. He’s either dead or receiving visitors by candlelight in a cave.

We may all be dead by the time historians sort through what happened under Bush- Cheney but one fact is clear. There was not one incidence of domestic terrorism on their watch. How many of you can remember the number of doomsday scenarios played out on television and living rooms around this country. They’re going to bomb the subways, Grand Central, more planes or they’re going to lace the Croton reservoir with some kind of killer bacteria. Nothing was off the table and Americans feared for their lives and those of their children. But nothing happened, did it? Can you say thank you to Bush and Cheney for making and keeping us safe. Some can but the left wing loonies wanted to try Bush and Cheney for war crimes, some still do. How nuts is that?

Now why do you suppose the same terrorist organizations responsible for 9-11 and bombing the Cole never appeared again domestically after 9-11? Because we either locked the enemy combatants we caught up or extracted the information necessary to prevent further loss of American life. Remember how everyone marveled at the dramatic reduction of crime in New York during the Giuliani years? What a genius, they said. Actually, all he did was lock up the criminals and keep them locked up. Pretty basic math-career criminal in jail, appreciably less crime.

But here’s where Cheney won the day in his critique of the Obama crowd’s reaction to so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Incidentally, hats off to the wordsmith who came up with that ridiculous phrase. It’s right up there with liberals who now insist on being called “progressives.” Please, we know what both mean. It was Cheney’s use of the phrase “contrived indignation” to describe the left’s horrified reaction to water boarding that made me smile. Because that’s exactly what it is.

We water boarded three grown men in an attempt to get information on pending or planned attacks on U.S. soil. These weren’t 14 year-old boys looking at Al-Queda the way some urban kids look to gangs for structure. These were three men dedicated to killing as many Americans as they could. One masterminded 9-11 while another bragged about personally beheading journalist Danny Pearl. This wasn’t Lenny Briscoe sweating a murder suspect on Law and Order. I don’t care if we strapped these guys to a porpoise at Sea World and rode them around for a week. They had a proven evil intent and the information we gained saved untold lives.

And don’t tell me about American values and the rule of law. These were extraordinary times and required extraordinary measures. Would American values have prevented us in World War II from doing whatever was necessary to known Nazi commanders in order to save GI’s? So spare me the “contrived indignation” and accept it for what it was…a terrorism free 7 years.

Jim Langan can be reached at Jimlangan@thehudsonvalleynews.com