Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a warmonger

Click here to see a picture of one at Steve Clemon's Washington Notes blog post on Cheney Attempting to Constrain Bush's Choices on Iran Conflict: Staff Engaged in Insubordination Against President Bush 05/24/07.

This is always something to keep in mind when debates about weapons systems and sizing of military forces come up. Anything that can be used for legitimate purposes - national defense, so-called "humanitarian" interventions, disaster-relief missions - can also fall under the control of people like Dick Cheney and be used for other purposes.

It's far, far easier to create a catastrophe like the Iraq War - or a war with Iran - than to clean up the consequences. Far, far easier.

If you are having the problem of sleeping too much, this is the kind of thing that can really keep sane people awake at night:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This is the nexus between Cheneyist militarism and Christian fundamentalist fanaticism: a suicidal impulse to push for escalating war in the Middle East.

Dark Lord Cheney would really like to try to do this. But it would be an expansion of the already disastrously lost Iraq War. It couldn't possibly lead to either the neocon utopia of peace and democracy all across the Middle East or to the Second Coming of Christ. It could lead to a rapid distintegration of the American military position in Iraq. It might provide some extra cash for oil barons somehow. And Halliburton is certain to get more overpriced contracts out of it, if it happens.

Do we really want to live in Dick Cheney's world where diplomacy becomes purely a matter of military threats and our only foreign allies are Israeli hardliners? It sounds like a horror to me.

To return to my original point, we always, always have to remember than any military capabilities we have can fall under the control of a man like Dick Cheney. And nothing good has so far come out of Dick Cheney's foreign policy - at least nothing good for ordinary Americans.

Tags: cheney, iraq war, iran war