Liz Cheney at the Freedom Flame: Educating Obama

Liz Cheney gave the the keynote address at the Center for Security Policy’s Freedom Flame Award Dinner in New York City. She saluted ‘The Manhattan Seven’ (Amanda Bowman, Tim Brown, Debra Burlingame, Aaron Harison, Andy McCarthy, Beth Gilinsky and Sgt. Tim Sumner) who fought this past year against the Obama-Holder decision to try KSM and other 9/11 masterminds in a Manhattan courtroom.

The text of Ms. Cheney’s speech is below.

Here is a follow-up interview on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney.

Remarks by Liz Cheney at the Freedom Flame 2010

It’s a tremendous honor to be here. So many folks who know about the important work that the Center for Security Policy does and to be here to help honor these eight tremendous Americans for everything that they’ve done. The Manhattan 7 are the ones I’m most familiar with and these seven men and women, when they heard that there was going to be the potential trial of a terrorist right here in New York City and not just any terrorist, but Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11. They didn’t just sit back and accept it. They stood up for their city and they stood up for their country and they stood up for the memory of all of those brave Americans who died on that horrific day. And the Manhattan 7 deserve all of our gratitude and our praise for what they did.

Now I know that all of us here tonight are brought together by a really great and vital mission. And that’s defending the freedom and the security of this great nation. And I can tell you that in that cause, there’s no organization that has done more than the Center for Security Policy and Frank Gaffney. I am grateful for the work that they do everyday. I was pleased and proud to be at your dinner in Washington when my dad received the Freedom Flame. And I do bring with me greetings tonight from my dad, Dick Cheney. People –people do ask me what he’s up to these days. He has been quiet for a little bit. And I know that makes some people very nervous. But I can tell you that he is hard at work on his memoirs. Which is a project that I’m working with him on. As his daughter, it’s just a very special project. And as someone who cares deeply about American history and about policy, it’s just a tremendous blessing for me. And I can tell you that the frankness and the directness and the no nonsense approach that I think you’re all familiar with, coming from him, is something that will clearly come through in his memoirs. Now he is writing his memoirs on yellow legal pads. And all of us in the family have tried to convince him to use a laptop, but he’s not having it. He’s a little set in his ways.

You probably know that for the time he was vice-president he didn’t have a Blackberry. He didn’t do e-mail. He didn’t have access, really, to the Internet–to computers. And I hate to disappoint you, but he does use all of those things now. I get e-mails from him every once in awhile and he’s gotten much better and much more proficient. For the first few months that he started sending e-mails, he would begin every message to me with the words, “Dear Liz, this is your father speaking.” But he now is, for the most part, in retirement. He’s getting a little bit better at the e-mail. But he hasn’t, as you know, been quiet for the whole time that he’s been out of office. When president Obama came into office and started reversing vital national security policies and then revealing classified techniques to our enemies and threatening to prosecute the CIA officers who kept us safe after 9-11, my dad couldn’t sit silently. He is not the type to let that kind of thing go unanswered. When he did speak out, the media liked to play it up as some sort of a confrontation between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama. But I prefer to think of it as a constructive dialogue between a two-term vice-president and a one-term president.

We have had seventeen months now to watch this president in office. And I have to tell you that, particularly in recent days, but too many times over the last few months, I’ve been reminded of that ad, I think we probably all remember, from the 2008 primary campaign. And it was a Hillary Clinton ad. It was the ad where she cautioned that the next president would have to deal with crises. And he’d have to deal with crises that came in three a.m. phone calls. Well, she had that right. And the tests of leadership do keep coming for this president. And what we’ve learned is that lectures and seminars are no substitute for decisive action and moral clarity. The last seventeen months, sadly, have been a period of drift and confusion for the country. And it seems to me clearer and clearer that the Obama doctrine has three prongs. Apologize for America. Abandon our allies. And appease our enemies.

Now, let’s start with our allies. And how this doctrine operates in the most dangerous part of the world. Like our other allies, our friends in Israel have seen their loyalty answered by incompetence and arrogance. The shabby reception that Prime Minister Netanyahu received at the White House several months ago was disgraceful. And meanwhile, the administration has signed onto a review of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Now this document doesn’t bother to mention Iran, but singles out the state of Israel. And the United States government signed onto that criticism. And earlier this month, we all watched the flotilla incident near Gaza. I don’t have to tell the people in this room that Israel conducts a blockade of Gaza to prevent a self-declared enemy from importing weapons that it plans to use to destroy the state of Israel and to kill Israeli civilians. The blockade is entirely lawful. And the attempt to violate it is something that Israel had every right to stop.

We have all become very used to the kind of anti-Israel propaganda out of the United Nations and from the international community that was the response to Israel’s action. But what was truly stunning was to see the United States sign on to that criticism. There is no question at this moment in time but that the right thing for the United States to do is to stand with our ally in Israel. To stand with them firmly and faithfully and without apology.  And just at the moment when this alliance is most sorely needed, the Obama administration is not practicing solidarity with the state of Israel. Instead, they’re moving to separate America and Israel. And president Obama has demonstrated repeatedly that he fails to understand the most important part of the relationship between the United States and Israel. And that is that the world is more secure, America is more secure, when there’s no daylight between America and Israel.

Israel, unfortunately, is not the only ally that’s been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment. Last year, the Obama administration reversed course and canceled the missile defense program that the Czechs and the Poles had agreed to host. They canceled the program because the Russians complained about it. Now when president Obama talked about reversing course in foreign policy during the presidential campaign, I don’t think any of us really grasped exactly how far he would take it. Suddenly, friends are treated with suspicion. And adversaries are accorded every benefit of the doubt.  There’s a saying in the Middle East that it is more dangerous to be America’s friend than it is to be America’s enemy. And I fear very much that in the age of Obama, that’s proving to be true.

This misplacing of priorities extends even to America’s own nuclear defenses. In the past, as many of you know, presidents of both parties, Republican and Democrat, have been committed to our nuclear deterrent. They’ve sent a very clear message to our enemies that a chemical or a biological weapons attack on this nation could be met with and likely would be met with a nuclear response. Well, president Obama’s new nuclear strategy removes that deterrence. He’s now told the world we’ll never again use our nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a chemical or a biological attack. His new nuclear strategy also says we won’t produce any new nuclear weapons. We won’t produce any new generation of weapons. And it says we’ll never use our nuclear deterrence to prevent a massive conventional attack either against the United States or against our allies. Apparently, the president really believes what he said, which is that if America disarms, if America reduces the size of our nuclear weapons stockpile, then our enemies–the Iranians and the North Koreans–will be convinced to do the same.

And while he is working to limit our own freedom of movement and freedom of action, the Iranian mullahs are making daily, steady progress towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. The president likes to say he’s doing everything possible to prevent that from happening. But that is just about as convincing as all of the deadlines he has put on the Iranian regime and then allowed them to ignore again and again and again. In this administration’s dealings with Iran, including the sanctions that we just saw passed last week, the deadlines are meaningless, the sanctions are worthless, and the speeches are pointless. There is no enticement that can convince the Iranians to give up their quest for a nuclear weapon. Because there’s nothing that the international community or the United States can offer them that is worth more to them than that nuclear weapon. And sanctions like the ones we’ve seen passed at the UN just buy time for the Iranian regime. The dangers grow to us and to our allies with every hour we waste. The only way that diplomacy will succeed in convincing the Iranians to turn away from their nuclear program is if they believe, without a doubt, that if they fail to take those steps diplomatically, the United States will take military action to stop their nuclear program. And today, they do not believe that.

On this issue and on so many others, when our own security is in the balance, I think it’s critically important for Republicans and for Democrats to speak with one voice. And I think there’s a particularly important message we should all send to president Obama in this regard. President Obama, stop apologizing for this great nation and start defending her.

Last year, as Frank mentioned, along with Debra Burlingame and Bill Kristol and Aaron Harrison, who’s one of the other honorees this evening, I founded a group called Keep America Safe. And there is no cause that should be less partisan than that. When the president does the right thing, when he takes steps that enhance America’s security, we should support him. And we should ask others to do the same. I believe the troop surge in Afghanistan was the right thing to do. And I believe that America has the potential now to win in Iraq. And we ought to support the president every time he takes steps that lead towards victory in both of those conflicts. But we have serious disagreements with this president in many other national security areas. To start with, we have to keep reminding him that foreign terrorists do not have Constitutional rights. We also need to continue to remind this president that Guantanamo Bay is a safe, secure, just, humane place to hold terrorists and we want the terrorists there, not here. And there is no way that we’re going to win this war without intelligence. Yet in the time that president Obama has been in office, he’s diminished our capabilities to gather that intelligence. He stopped the enhanced interrogation program. And then he revealed the techniques in that program to our enemies.

Yet at the same time, the administration set out to investigate and possibly prosecute the CIA officers who kept us safe after 9-11. And even now, the administration seems confused about just who the enemy is. So let’s help them out. Attorney General Holder and president Obama, the men and women who captured and interrogated terrorists after 9-11 are patriots. They do not deserve to be scorned and hounded. They deserve to be thanked and honored for protecting this great nation.

At Keep America Safe, with the help of some wonderful friends like Andy McCarthy, another honoree this evening, we’re also keeping the spotlight on attorneys who have rushed to the defense of terrorists. Now these attorneys consider themselves part of the Guantanamo Bar. And I have to think that even their clients must be amazed at the zeal with which they have been representing them. We’ve learned about one lawyer who was caught as he drew a map of the Guantanamo Bay facility, complete with the location of the guard towers, and then attempted to give it to his terrorist client in a cell at Guantanamo. We’ve learned about other lawyers, part of the John Adams Project, who are stalking CIA officers, taking their pictures, and showing the pictures to the terrorists, helping to identify CIA officers for their terrorist clients. Now there are some who say, we don’t have any right to ask questions about the work that lawyers have done on behalf of their clients. We have no right to inquire or criticize. But let me say that as a lawyer myself, I do not believe that a law license puts anyone above question or criticism. And those who say that we can’t ask these questions are wrong. As a matter of law. As a matter of policy. And as a matter of national security. Attorney General Holder says that the detainee lawyers are quote patriots. Because they were representing, quote, the unpopular. Well, for the record, unpopular is not the word I think most Americans would use to describe terrorists. And if the attorney general’s looking for patriots and heroes to bravely defend, I suggest he start with the Americans who have fought, captured, held, and interrogated these terrorists and helped keep the American people safe.

Not even halfway into the Obama administration, there are some very grave challenges that have gotten worse. And our friends and our adversaries around the world are unfortunately sensing weakness. As Americans, we have a responsibility to keep hoping for the best and to support the president whenever we can. But we also have a responsibility that when we have serious disagreements that prevent that support, we have to state our convictions clearly and offer a better course for this country.

One of the great thinkers of our time is Charles Krauthammer. And many of you may have heard Charles last October in a talk he gave at the Manhattan Institute here in New York. Charles talked about the decline of America. But he reminded us that decline is a choice. We don’t have to be in decline. But, unfortunately, decline is a path that this president has put us on. Now if you believe that decline is a choice, as I do, you might also believe that the opposite is true. That American ascendancy, American revival, America leadership, is a choice we can make. But I believe that it’s more than that. Those things, American leadership and our ascendancy, add up to a moral obligation. We cannot choose to lead. We don’t have the luxury not to lead. Because there is no other nation on earth with the capacity that we have by virtue of our principles, our history, our beliefs, our values, our resources, and our freedom, that can lead. And along with those strengths, we have people with conviction and courage like the eight brave men and women we’re honoring here tonight.

Not long ago, the people of this city were told that they had no choice but to watch and endure a spectacle like no other with the leading plotter of 9-11 brought to trial in lower Manhattan. It had all been decided, we were told. And those who dared object were dismissed as lacking faith in the American system. But then Tim and Beth and Tim and Amanda and Andy and Debra and Aaron showed the attorney general how things are really meant to work in a free country. Rarely has the machinery of the federal government been more quickly reversed. And when it was all over, New Yorkers were spared from a painless–a painful and needless ordeal. And our cause gained examples that we all can follow in the men and women we’re honoring tonight.  I myself gained new friends. I cherish those new friendships and the chance that I have to work day in and day out with many of those men and women. They and their fellow honorees are the kind of people that we need in this cause and their success should make all of us confident for the great work ahead of us. Thank you very much.