2009 Keeper of the Flame Award: Dick Cheney

On October 21st in Washington, the Center for Security Policy hosted its annual Keeper of the Flame Award dinner. This year’s honoree was former Vice President Richard Cheney who used it as a platform for a major policy address – one that provided but the latest validation of the appropriateness of this recognition.

Mr. Cheney’s extraordinary public service was celebrated by nearly 400 Members of Congress, past and present members of the armed forces, business leaders, journalists and other security policy practitioners at the elegant gala held at Washington’s venerable Union Station.

The Vice President’s remarks constituted an authoritative and forceful critique of the conduct of national defense and foreign affairs under the Obama administration. They received world-wide attention thanks to the coverage given it by ABC News, C-SPAN, the Associated Press, Fox News and the Washington Post.

Particular note was made of Mr. Cheney’s warning that the White House appeared to be “dithering” over the strategy for the war in Afghanistan and his call upon President Barack Obama to “do what it takes to win.” Specifically, the Vice President declared: “Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries,” Cheney said.

Contesting comments by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to the effect that the Bush Administration had been adrift concerning the war in Afghanistan and that its successor had to start from scratch to develop a strategy for the 8-year-old war, Mr. Cheney observed that President Bush’s team had undertaken its own, comprehensive review of the war before leaving office and presented its findings to Obama’s transition team.

“They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt,” the former Vice President said. He wryly observed that the strategy Obama announced in March, however, bore a “striking resemblance” to what the Bush administration review had found.

Mr. Cheney expressed the view that the Obama administration could only be perceived as pulling back from, and blaming others for, its own failure to implement the strategy it had embraced earlier in the year – an assessment the Center for Security Policy shares.

Subsequently, President Obama finally released a new plan for Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it confirms, at least in part, Cheney’s prognosis. The revised “strategy” calls for a surge of 30,000 additional American troops into Afghanistan and a timeline for removing them starting in 18 months. Somehow, Mr. Obama seems to think he will be able to persuade Afghans to enlist in the fight on our behalf against some of their countrymen, knowing that they will soon be on their own.

As many security experts have already pointed out, Mr. Obama’s plan is not national-security strategy. It is a political strategy – one that is inherently incoherent and doomed to fail in military application. But, it gives the appearance of action and transparently serves the purpose of getting Afghanistan off the agenda, until after the congressional midterm elections.

Vice President Cheney also took exception to the Obama administration’s decision to drop plans begun by its predecessor for the deployment of missile defense interceptors in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic. He called the move “a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.” While President Obama has pledged to pursue instead a higher-tech system that is also more cost-effective, Mr. Cheney expressed the doubt shared by many, on both sides of the Atlantic:

“Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved just like that with apparently little if any consultation,” he said. “President Obama’s cancellation of America’s agreements with the Polish and Czech governments is a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Europeans.”

Mr. Cheney challenged, in particular, the underlying assumption of the President’s decision to scrap the “Third Site” in Europe: That this major strategic concession to the Kremlin would be rewarded by the Russians. He contended that those who try to placate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and accede to his wishes will get “nothing in return but trouble.”

Cheney was particularly passionate in expressing disappointment over the Obama administration’s zeal to hound intelligence officers and policy-makers who acted in the service of this country. That type of action, Cheney said, “Should be reserved for America’s enemies. And it certainly is not a good sign when the Justice Department is set on a political mission to discredit, disbar or otherwise persecute the very people who helped protect our nation in the years after 9/11.”

“We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys. We cannot hope to win a war by talking down our country and those who do its hardest work, the men and women of our military and intelligence services,” he said. “They are, after all, the true keepers of the flame.”