Softball with Sean and the Dark Lord

Here is former Vice-President Dark Lord (also known as Richard "Dick" Cheney) and his 'interview' with wannabe journalist Sean Hannity. I hate posting FOX 'News' links, but you don't get to experience the sheer arrogance of the Dark Lord, or the utter sham of the 'questions' posed by the recently divorced (from Alan Colmes) Hannity.

Someone really needs to put the former Dark Lord in his place. I nominate two people who have excelled at this in the past: former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz. One, or both, of them need to give interviews that put the smack down on a) a former and b) Vice-President openly criticizing the foreign policy and national security policies of his succeeding administration, period. Never mind that we haven't even gotten to 100 days yet!

I realize that Dick still thinks he was his own branch of the government but he really needs to shut up. Baker and Schultz may be able to help that happen. Of course, they'll probably be attacked as liberal pansies by the Hannitys, Limbaughs and Becks. Never mind that just yesterday they helped end the "Cold War."

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Next: A particular issue. Sean Hannity is not an interviewer any more than Ron Guidry is currently a major league pitcher. Sure, Guidry can throw batting practice and let hitters smoke balls into the center field stands but that doesn't mean he is still a major league pitcher. Similarly, check out this great big softball, not to mention totally leading, question about how Barack Obama handled his European trip:

Hannity: "Should he maybe have spent a little bit more time talking about the great sacrifice that America has made; While Europe was adopting totalitarianism and embracing appeasement, America was acting decisively to beat back totalitarianism?"

Um. First of all, he is apparently referencing pre-World War II America here. A country in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to struggle with Republicans like Arthur Vandenburg and Robert Taft with their increasingly anti-internationalist and isolationist points of view. We didn't actively stand up to totalitarianism! We, because of these guys, slinked off into our own corner. Things today celebrated as 'schemes' for Roosevelt to work our way into the war such as the "Lend-Lease Act" were vigorously opposed by Republican isolationists especially in the face of drawing us into a war. So any inference that we "were acting decisively to beat back totalitarianism" is utter nonsense. To the extent that we were acting at all, it was in spite of Republican (and to be fair there were Democratic non-interventionists also) non-interventionists and isolationists.

Further: Yes, we made a sacrifice. Was it purely out of the kindness of our own hearts? I don't think so. Roosevelt correctly saw that we had no choice but to go to war with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. He had to battle incessantly for years in order to get us involved in Europe. If we didn't? Well, we'd still be dealing with the ramifications of a German dominated continent. Hitler would never have had to pay attention to his western front, particularly if he did eventually overcome Great Britain. Stalin may never have been able to recover sufficiently to challenge Hitler's eastern front especially if Germany could have devoted more of it's resources there without a western front to worry about. (Admittedly, Stalin getting his ass handed to him does have it's benefits.) There is no way we could have allowed all of that to be the status quo.

So if you want to lord it over Europe. Fine. But don't expect to be considered anything other than an asshole by them for doing that. Just like you would consider the French assholes for lording over us the fact that we wouldn't ever have been a country if they didn't back us in the Revolutionary War. Which, by the way, is true: We would've been done long before 1780 if they hadn't come into the fray.

So, please, save your revisionist history. America is not always perfect. Expecting the world to constantly extol the virtues of this country and wonder why they get offended when you ask them to is idiotic. Obama and we on the left aren't ashamed of our country. Quite the opposite. We're just ashamed about the arrogance of some of our country's recent leaders.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.