Oderint dum Metuant

The Dark One came out of his undisclosed bunker to warn us all that President Obama is leading us in to a complacency that will result in a terrorist nuclear or biological incident. He just wants to keep us safe... 

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.
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The choice, he alleged, reflects a naive mindset among the new team in Washington: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”
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Cheney said “the ultimate threat to the country” is “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter – a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is deployed in the middle of an American city.

“That’s the one that would involve the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and the one you have to spend a hell of a lot of time guarding against,” he said.

“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt. Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.” 

I won't get into what a Dick he is, trying to justify his regime's tactics as some cure-all for an imaginary threat. I do find it interesting how Cheney uses Caligula's philosophy about letting the world hate you as long as they fear you. If Cheney would open up his book of "The Prince," he might find that there's another aspect.

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

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Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. ... But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.
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Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.

Yeah... I don't think that the Sith Lord took council of that recommendation. This speech, a bit over two years old, points out why Cheney's "let them fear us" philosophy really screwed up our ability to deal with the international community. But as for fearing the next terrorist nuke/bio incident, I advise you not to give into Cheney's fearmongering - not because it can't happen, but rather that 1) it's really, really improbable, and 2) with increased law enforcement and international cooperation, we can head off practically all external terrorist threats. And without banks of radiological and biological detectors all over the country, to boot!

UPDATE: The Olbermann Speakth from the Real World.

Comments

[Joe]

I prefer Huxley's vision of control to the total-fear attitude:

"... we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to love their servitude. People can be made to enjoy a state of affairs which by any decent standard they ought not to enjoy. And these methods, I think, are a real refinement on the older methods of terror, because they combine methods of terror with methods of acceptance."

[James]

...and I would add that the key to that state is the manipulation of language, by which the powerful distort reality. "Assassination" becomes "targeted killings;" missiles that flatten villages are "precision weapons" but shoe bombs are "weapons of mass destruction;" and, of course, torture is now "coercive interrogation," a deceptive term Politico enthusiastically endorses.

[Joe]

James, I also love the subtleties of when allies "die" and enemies are "killed". Neurolinguistic programming like that knows full well that cockroaches and slugs don't ever "die" but are "killed". Such a human term as "die" doesn't befit the enemy.

In addition, I loved the whole "homicide bomber" term years ago from certain media outlets. Any bombing is a homicide bombing. Taking the enemy out of the equation. Not that I object to it, but it's done as though we're too stupid to notice that it's a retarded attempt to sway opinion.