Cheney’s a loser. Why are Americans letting him and his drones call us weak?

Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs. You’ve got to deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. There are a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger that the United States will validate the terrorist strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists’ strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task –

Q Here’s the Nouri al Maliki –

THE VICE PRESIDENT: — that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.

Q Here’s the problem.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That’s the biggest threat right now.

This is just bullshit from the Republicans, and Americans shouldn’t take it. We’d take the fight against those who originally attacked us, but Bush pulled us off that focus. There’s a difference for having a stomach to fight for what is right, and just having an interest in fighting. Cheney makes no distinction. We went to war in Iraq misinformed and disinformed by the Bush Administration. The primary reasons we went turned out to be false. The things we went to prevent are now the conditions we’ve allowed to happen. The war has not gone as the Bush Administration said it would go. The Bush Administration spent years claiming we’re winning and have enough troops in Iraq and then admitting in one fell swoop that we were in danger of losing because we didn’t have enough troops in Iraq. The Bush Administration has failed and failed and yet somehow it is the American people that are at fault if we fail in Iraq. Perhaps it is true to the extent that Bush was elected (at least officially). But that’s not how the blame is falling.

America has proven time and time again that it has the stomach to fight for what is right. But what history do we have for a prolonged war based on lies? Oh, did I hear someone say Vietnam. Question - what is our status with Vietnam today? Yes, it’s been 30 years, but isn’t Vietnam heading in a direction that is workable?

What about Cuba? What about North Korea? It’s been longer for both of those countries, and yet our relationships with these countries are much rockier and adversarial that with Vietnam. Is that because we’ve been strong with them, and we were so weak with Vietnam?

Is it weak to find ways to co-opt your enemies without fighting them? I know that Bush and Cheney can’t figure out how to do this, but Americans shouldn’t have to be insulted as being “weak” just because most of them suspect this likely would be a much more effective approach.