{"id":313,"date":"2007-07-10T09:08:32","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T13:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=313"},"modified":"2007-07-10T09:10:35","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T13:10:35","slug":"remembering-cheney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Cheney"},"content":{"rendered":"
Cheney<\/title>Cheney’s critics are busy sculpting the contours of a narrative that will, they hope, guide popular perceptions of the vice president’s legacy.<\/p>\n<p>According to the prevailing wisdom, the issue at the center of the storm appears to be Executive Power, specifically Cheney’s attempt to buttress the power of the executive branch relative to the legislature and the judiciary.<\/p>\n<p>The production of this narrative about<em> forms<\/em> of power<em> <\/em>may be accurate and important, but it may also function to obscure some significant <em> substantive<\/em> issues at the heart of the Cheney administration–not least, US foreign policy in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>On July 9, 2007, the <em>New York Times<\/em> published an Op-Ed penned by Sean Wilentz–“<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/07\/09\/opinion\/09wilentz.html?n=Top\/Opinion\/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed\/Op-Ed\/Contributors&pagewanted=all\">Mr. Cheney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Minority Report<\/a>“–that reminded readers that Cheney was already focused on the defense of “executive prerogatives” during the Iran-Contra investigations of the Reagan era.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Cheney the congressman believed that Congress had usurped executive \tprerogatives. He saw the Iran-contra investigation not as an effort to get \tto the bottom of possible abuses of power but as a power play by \tCongressional Democrats to seize duties and responsibilities that \tconstitutionally belonged to the president.<\/p>\n<p>At the conclusion of the hearings, a dissenting minority report codified \tthese views. The report\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chief author was a former resident fellow at the \tAmerican Enterprise Institute, Michael J. Malbin, who was chosen by Mr. \tCheney as a member of the committee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s minority staff. Another member of the \tminority\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legal staff, David S. Addington, is now the vice president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \tchief of staff…<\/p>\n<p>The Reagan administration, according to the report, had erred by failing to \toffer a stronger, principled defense of what Mr. Cheney and others \tconsidered its full constitutional powers…<\/p>\n<p>The report made a point of invoking the framers. It cited snippets from the \tFederalist Papers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like Alexander Hamilton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarks endorsing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153energy in \tthe executive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in order to argue that the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s long-acknowledged \tprerogatives had only recently been usurped by a reckless Democratic \tCongress.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, the report made the case for presidential primacy over foreign \trelations. It cited as precedent the Supreme Court\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1936 ruling in United \tStates v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, which referred to the \t\u00e2\u20ac\u0153exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal \tgovernment in the field of international relations.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wilentz is, of course, correct to suggest that the Cheney’s “minority report” concerned itself with issues of constitutional authority.\u00c2\u00a0 And Cheney is undoubtedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=5068457\">committed to enhancing the power of the presidency<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But Cheney’s legacy cannot be reduced to his views on presidential authority.<\/p>\n<p>There is also the <em>substance<\/em> of US foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>It’s about the war, stupid!<\/p>\n<p>The war in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 De-Baathification and the advent of Shiite political dominance in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 The potential military intervention in Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 The extraordinary attempt to remake the balance of power in the Gulf and the larger Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>And the escalation of Great Power rivalry between the US and Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney’s legacy is not (only) about the accumulation of <em>formal<\/em> power; it is about the <em>exercise of power<\/em> in extraordinary geopolitical strategic ventures.<\/p>\n<p>Wilensky doesn’t mention it, but the minority <a href=\"http:\/\/coursesa.matrix.msu.edu\/~hst203\/documents\/irancontra.html\"> report<\/a> on Iran-Contra, for example, also weighed in on the substance of foreign policy, including US relations with Israel and Iran.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The potential <strong>geopolitical importance of Iran for the United States \twould be obvious to anyone who looks at a map<\/strong>. Despite Iran’s \timportance, the United States was taken by surprise when the Shah fell in \t1979, because it had not developed an adequate human intelligence capability \tthere. Our hearings have established that essentially nothing had been done \tto cure this failure by the mid-1980’s. Then, the United States was \tapproached by Israel in 1985 with a proposal that the United States \tacquiesce in some minor Israeli arms sales to Iran. This proposal came at a \ttime when the United States was already considering the advisability of such \tsales. <strong>For long term, strategic reasons, the United States had to improve \trelationships with at least some of the currently important factions in Iran<\/strong>….<\/p>\n<p>The Iran initiative involved two governments that had sharp differences \tbetween them. There were also very sharp internal divisions in both Iran and \tthe United States about how to begin narrowing the differences between the \ttwo countries. In such a situation, the margin between narrow failure and \tsuccess can seem much wider after the fact than it does during the \tdiscussions. While the initial contacts developed by Israel and used by the \tUnited States do not appear likely to have led to a long-term relationship, \twe cannot rule out the possibility that negotiations with the Second Channel \tmight have turned out differently. At this stage, we never will know what \tmight have been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This report appears to suggest that Cheney was once interesting in improving relationships with factions of the incumbent Iranian regime–a position that he continued to <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=263\">defend during the 1990s<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney certainly <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=290\"> appears to have changed his mind<\/a> about US relations with Iran, as he did about US relations with Iraq and, perhaps, <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=56\">Saudi Arabia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Did Cheney do everything in his power to enhance presidential authority, to say nothing of his own personal power?\u00c2\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n<p>But Cheney also took the US into a war with Iraq that folks like Al Gore now <a href=\"http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/node\/9481\">call<\/a> “an utter disaster, this was the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States.”<\/p>\n<p>You wouldn’t even know that the US ever <em>went to war with Iraq<\/em> to judge from the recent <em>Washington Post<\/em> four-part series, “<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/\">Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency<\/a>.”<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post <\/em>series makes almost <em>no<\/em> mention of Iraq!<\/p>\n<p>“<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/chapters\/chapter_1\/\">Part 1<\/a>” of the series–a backgrounder on Cheney–says only this about Iraq:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A shooting accident in Texas, and increasing gaps between his rhetoric \tand <strong>events in Iraq<\/strong>, have exposed him to ridicule and approval ratings \tin the teens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The other 3 parts say <em>less<\/em> about Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Like <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/chapters\/pushing_the_envelope_on_presi\/\"> Part 2<\/a> of the series–“<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/chapters\/pushing_the_envelope_on_presi\/\">Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power<\/a>“–takes up the same constitutional themes about the formal rights of executive privilege emphasized by Wilentz in his <em> New York Times<\/em> Op-Ed.<\/p>\n<p>Part 1 of the<em> Post<\/em> series promises to a <em>substantive<\/em> look at particular<em> <\/em>policies, but the examples are drawn from domestic affairs:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Cheney has served as gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of \tCabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals \tand regulator in chief of water flows in his native West.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, these are the issues that dominate the discussion of policy in <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/chapters\/a_strong_push_from_back_stage\/\"> Part 3<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/chapters\/leaving_no_tracks\/index.html\"> Part 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post<\/em> offers supplements that include a profile of “key players” identified as a “<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/cheney\/about\/cast_of_characters\/\">Cast of Characters<\/a>.”<\/p>\n<p>Lots of Cheney aides are profiled–including his top legal adviser David S. Addington and former domestic policy adviser Cesar Conda.<\/p>\n<p>No mention is made of any of Cheney’s <em>top foreign policy advisers<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 On foreign policy, the <em>Post<\/em> never gets beyond Brian V. McCormack, a young man who once served as Cheney’s “personal aide” and progressed to assignments in the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq and then on the White House staff.<\/p>\n<p>There is no mention of the current Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2005\/10\/20051031-2.html\">John P. Hannah<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 [Profile <a href=\"http:\/\/rightweb.irc-online.org\/profile\/2926\">here<\/a>; In a report from the early 1990s when Hannah served as Deputy Director of Research under Martin Indyk at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hannah was identified as “specializing in Soviet Policy in the Middle East.” (“Restoring the Balance: U.S. Strategy and the Gulf Crisis: An Initial Report of The Washington Institute’s Strategic Study Group,” 1991, p.44)]<\/p>\n<p>And, more to the point, there is no mention of <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=301\">David Wurmser<\/a>, Cheney’s top Middle East adviser.<\/p>\n<p>Have you not <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=212\">met the Wurmsers<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>You really should.<\/p>\n<p>David Wurmser (formerly of the American Enterprise Institute) is married to Meyrav Wurmser (of the Hudson Institute).\u00c2\u00a0 Both wrote Ph.D. Dissertations during the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a small taste that give a sense of their interests:<\/p>\n<p>David Wurmser, “The Evolution of Israeli Grand Strategy, Strategy and Tactics and the Confluence with Classic Democratic Philosophy” (Johns Hopkins University, 1990).<\/p>\n<p>Meyrav Wurmser, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: The Case of the Israeli Likud Party” (George Washington University, 1998).<\/p>\n<p>My hunch is that Cheney isn’t primarily interested in the Wurmser family for their ideas about the US constitution and executive privilege.<\/p>\n<p>For all of Cheney’s influence as the water czar from Wyoming, the vice president’s legacy cannot be fully understood in terms of either domestic policy or formal constitutional rights issues.<\/p>\n<p>The most enduring contours of Cheney’s legacy may well reside in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>But you wouldn’t know it from recent, premature efforts to “remember” Cheney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CheneyCheney’s critics are busy sculpting the contours of a narrative that will, they hope, guide popular perceptions of the vice president’s legacy. According to the prevailing wisdom, the issue at the center of the storm appears to be Executive Power, specifically Cheney’s attempt to buttress the power of the executive branch relative to the legislature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}