The Other Cheney Posted by James Lamond

So Liz Cheney, who has been in the news a lot lately, has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, that is, to say the least, misrepresenting.  Here are a couple of the highlights:

First the straw man:

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

This part of the column is pretty bizarre.  She quotes the President in his Moscow speech, setting herself up to give a response, but then goes and responds to something that he did not even say.  I am not sure what part of the speech Obama praised the Soviet regime as benevolent liberal democracy.  

Then there are the other points where Cheney actually addresses what Obama did say, misrepresenting history. For example, I was always under the impression that the space race and Olympic politics (particularly the space race) played kind of a big role in Cold War politics.  And well let’s be honest, I wouldn’t exactly describe America’s behavior during the Cold War as “an unmatched force for good.”  

Next, Cheney discusses a neocon favorite, American exceptionalism. She says,

Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much.

The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism -- Obama exceptionalism. "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said. What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them. We also expect you to know your history.

If we want to talk about American exceptionalism, I happen to think that the president’s answer was right on, and Cheney did not really address her problem with it. More curiously though, is how she answers Obama’s comments on American exceptionalism with a quote from a White House staffer on Obama’s brand image. The staffer of course is Desiree Rogers, the White House Social Secretary, who plans White House social events.  Why she felt the need to quote the social secretary when discussing US exceptionalism and foreign policy, I don’t know. 

Ms. Cheney then goes on to discuss arms control, saying 

Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs?

A CFR task force, chaired by William Perry and Brent Scowcroft tends to agree (PDF) with President Obama's position on nonproliferation, including the START treaty.

There are just a myriad of ways that this column is misrepresenting and simply lazy.  I don't solely blame Liz Cheney for this, I have to repeat Pat's question from yesterday, "who is editing [her]?"

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