Yes, his critics acknowledge, he was number two in the government with access to all the inner workings of the cabinet and all the background to all the controversies. And yes, he has long experience in matters related to the conduct of war from even before then.
But his spectacular misjudgment at a crucial juncture should not be forgotten or forgiven, and his frequent, sharp criticisms are beyond the acceptable role of an out-of-power, at-the-end-of-his-career pol.
He should simply exit the national stage in the disgrace he has earned and leave the matters at hand to the new men who understand that the world is so much more complicated and nuanced than the old man could possibly imagine.
Thus did the critics of Winston Churchill deride the banished former Chancellor of the Exchequer (the second highest office in the British cabinet) after his nearly five years in the job, and thus did they mock Churchill’s advice about the threat posed by Hitler throughout the ’30s, despite the fact that Churchill had served as First Lord of the Admiralty as well as Secretary of State for Munitions, for War and for Air, as well as many other senior posts.
It did not matter that Churchill had immense experience in the most important affairs of the planet –he was an inconvenient figure, and a noisy one. The fiasco at Gallipoli was used as a rod to beat him whenever it was necessary to do so, even though the failure of the campaign to force the Dardanelles was not solely or even primarily his.
Most of the important powers in England’s press in the 1930s joined with the country’s most senior politicos to marginalize and isolate the man who would not shut up.
Scorn did not deter Churchill from using his immense visibility to sound the alarm about Hitler from 1932 forward, and his vast array of contacts within the government continually provided him with the updates he needed to push first Stanley Baldwin and then Neville Chamberlin to do more to attend to the U.K.’s defenses.
Churchill was only partially successful, but that margin of additional preparedness that is undeniably the result of his pressures from a lonely exile provided Britain with the very thin margin that allowed it to endure in the early years of World War II.
I thought of Churchill when Democrats and their partners in the mainstream media denounced former Vice President Dick Cheney all last week. I remarked to Newsweek’s Howard Fineman on air that the Left greets every Cheney appearance as Grendel-escaped-again-from-its-den, but their defensiveness about the former vice president is extremely revealing.
Cheney isn’t appearing in order to advance his own career, or even to serve his party (as many unnamed Republicans are eager to tell their pals in the Beltway media.) Cheney is talking directly to the American people about national security and the fecklessness with which the new president is taking decisions on matters of utmost importance.
This is a crucial role, and Cheney has the national security credentials to make the criticisms stick, even if the hysterical left wants to shout “water-boarding” and “WMD” in an endless round of self-absorbed echoes.
Every American serious about the war should welcome Cheney’s continuing contributions to the debate about national security. There are very, very few people with similar backgrounds, and only a handful with the same sort of exposure to the current nature of our enemies’ capabilities and intentions.
Colin Powell is of course one those few, but he has been out of government and away from the front line of the war with the Islamists since 2005. Dick Cheney has been off of that line for four months.
Most of the former veep’s critics have never been on it, though you would never know that from the certain dismissal of his arguments over the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Cheney spent seven-plus years being briefed on the fanatics who think of 9/11 as an opening overture to a very long passion play, and he isn’t going to go quietly into the night with that knowledge, nor would any serious observer want him to.
Cheney owns a resume and experience that have prepared him for another key role in his long and dedicated career of selfless public service – that of loyal opposition to a national security policy that seems dangerously naive and powered by an ideology that simply will not admit that there are enemies of the United States who scheme for its demise out of pure hatred and religious fanaticism with which there can be no negotiation or compromise.
Cheney scares the appeasers of the new millennium, even as Churchill scared the appeasers of the ’30s, and for the same reason. Cheney knows the enemy, and he knows the new government isn’t taking that enemy seriously.
Cheney is pushing for seriousness in the war that is still underway, whether the issue is closing Gitmo, the conduct of interrogation, or the maintenance and disposition of our forces. Every time he speaks, millions will listen closely even as the hundreds within the Beltway scowl. Long may he comment.
Examiner columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
