Dick Cheney: His God and His Empire

[johnfunk]

I stumbled on a holiday card in my business mail last week.

It was from Dick Cheney, a man I have accredited as the most treacherous politician in America, but an American, our Vice President nonetheless and with due respect.

I was stunned but not bewildered by this quote from a speech by Benjamin Franklin on his Christmas card:

"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

What shocked me was that this elected official, only a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, was flaunting was seemed to be his private deal with God -- in a sense telling us that "He" (God) will aid us in building an American "Empire."

Jeff Koopersmith puts the screws to Tricky Dicky Ticker for a little more than quoting Franklin out of context here.

[priller]

1. Nice article

Thanks for posting. I really liked this quote from antiquity:

The British chief Calgalus, speaking of the Romans in Agricola, warned, "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace."

Today Mr. Bush would have us believe that to ransack, appropriate, kill and bomb the cradle of civilization into a wasteland is something done from "peace" and that this makes it acceptable to engage in empire building.

This is not acceptable.

[priller]

2. Another thing..

He also points out something that many here have noticed:

Have you ever looked closely at these faces? They are faces of evil, even as they accuse the Axis of Evil. Mr. Bush appears as might a teenage boy who has been smacked on the jaw or the side of the head repeatedly by a cruel parent. He smirks like Leave it to Beaver's Eddie Haskell. Many political and social observers have written things similar. He slurs his words, evidencing a dry drunkenness. He couldn't possibly like himself.

Mr. Cheney, with his perpetual sneer -- a face full of arrogance veiled with a cheap, gruff sense of humor and a posed-so-lovely wife -- couldn't possibly love himself either. It would be far too humiliating.

Richard Perle, who appears almost on his last legs with disease, black circles crawling under his pupil-less eyes, is perhaps the most obvious of this genus. Is he dying from his evil -- or thriving?

So many of these men and women surround our President and have surrounded past presidents -- and could not possibly love themselves. Thus they seek pleasure in adoring "things" and unprecedented power.

[Faygo Kid]

3. Another attempt to hijack God for the neo-con agenda

Offensive is a word that hardly does it justice, but it begins to be more and more apparent that to be opposed to this administration in 2004 will be to be labeled both treasonous AND anti-God's word. Rove's strategy is becoming clear. We can't let them label us as such. That's why I posted a hurray for Gov. Granholm elsewhere who threw Christ's message back into the face of these religious right hypocrites. We need more of the same!

[cliss]

4. I suppose that sometime,

in some board meeting at a long table, as they were involved with hours-long discussion and "groupthink", they eventually came up with some good covers for what they were about to do.

"It's good for the country". Yes, think of it. We're helping ALL Americans. We're going to build PROSPERITY; their children will thank us for it. We're the best country in the world, and we need to stay the best.

I'm sure this is exactly what Tony Blair thought too, as he signed on the dotted line to commit british troops in the march to war. "It's for the Union Jack", he thought. "Proudly has our flag waved on our merchant ships over the seven seas, as we were the pride of Europe, with colonies in every corner of the globe." He felt that he was doing it for his England, assuring prosperity for generations to come.

Then, I recall Bush's words as he was hastily departing for Africa, when the Uranium incident was threatening to become a huge scandal. Some upstart reporter asked him if the 16 words in his SOTU was a lie. "It doesn't matter, because we got rid of Saddam".

What Bush meant here was, the end justified the means. He sincerely from his heart did not think that was a problem, because they had an agenda, and the path they took to get there really did not matter.

But it did matter, in the end.