The Difference Between Liz and Dad? Lipstick

"America needs a commander-in-chief, not a global community organizer."~Liz Cheney from a speech delivered in Atlanta, Georgia

The French have a term that describes monstrous children; l'enfant terrible. But in the case of Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, one gets the feeling that in Dick Cheney's eyes, the more monstrous the child, the better. Indeed, the comment above and others uttered by the younger Cheney in defense of torture, sketchy wire taps, and the glories of Guantanamo, surely must warm the cockles of dad's heart. Or whatever Cheney has that passes for one.

Liz Cheney's fallacies are easy enough to dispatch. Left unsaid in her outrageous statement is the fact that if America has a President, then by definition she has a Commander-In-Chief. Someone please inform Liz that his name is Barack H. Obama. What Cheney is really signaling is her own preference regarding the style in which the office is handled.

Problem is, we've seen that style and its less than desirable results for the past eight years. The consensus among most intelligence agencies in the aftermath is that these policies have left us less safe. It stands to reason that if the American President is frequently the source of angry protests throughout the world, and in fact is often burned in effigy at such demonstrations, it does not bode well for our security. Conversely, when Germans waved hundreds of American flags when Barack Obama spoke in Berlin in 2008, I felt safer.

This apparently doesn't penetrate Cheney's one-dimensional (and aggressive) worldview. Thus, in interviews and panel discussions she continues to channel dear old dad by advocating the American President if you will, as a sort of "Global Community Destroyer." This was clearly one image of our country and its leader that the world, and more importantly the American voter recently rejected. But Cheney will not be deterred by the mere facts of an election.

She is fond of trumpeting the canard that the Bush administration "kept the country safe for eight years," conveniently omitting 2001, the year that they didn't. Remember, 3000 innocent Americans died on their watch. By that measure alone, Obama's doing a better job. And don't even get me started on the Bush/Cheney non-response to Hurricane Katrina.

Yet instead of feeling humbled or shamed by these failures, both Cheney's continue making the rounds demanding a respect that is hardly deserved, all the while impugning the patriotism of citizens and leaders who are doing a better job than did they in the field of foreign policy and diplomacy. So how does one wrap this up as politely and as succinctly as possible?

Liz Cheney is full of crap....Yeah, I think that works for me.

d.