The Redhunter

Book Summary

I don't have time these days to do as full a summary as I used to, so following are just some highlights that I noted while reading the book.

Structure

As is typical of most autobiographies, the book is weighted so that most of it is about his time as Secretary of Defense and Vice President. Of it's 527 pages, only about 40 are about his childhood and high school, another hundred or so about his time in the Nixon and Ford White Houses and as a congressman from Wyoming, and then it's on to Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Another hundred pages are about his time out of power, and then we quickly move to the election campaign and George W Bush Administration, with all of the issues we are familiar with. As is also typical, the book starts off with his account of what he saw and did on the most important day of his life; in his case September 11, 2001.

Evaluation of Contemporaries

Many political figures use their memoirs to settle scores. Although Cheney criticizes some of his contemporaries, this is kept fairly sparse, and it's not really "settling scores" as the term is generally used. For major figures come under some criticism in the book:

Of the four, has the most critical view of Colon Powell, and even with him it's only in a few paragraphs here and there. During Desert Shield he notes that General Powell "seemed more comfortable talking about poll numbers than he was in recommending military options." To temper this, however, he notes that this was understandable in that one could say that Powell was simply trying to avoid another Vietnam. On the other hand, as a general Powell spent too much time talking politics and not enough developing military options for the president.

Cheney believes that the "watershed moment," in his relationship with the White House came in the spring of 2002 with his trip to the Middle East. Without authorization Powell had announced a Middle cast conference and had been forced to issue a retraction. Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, took it as a personal affront and relations went south from there. After this, Cheney notes, he he started hearing that the two were not only unsupportive of the president's policies, they "were openly disdainful of them."

Time and again Cheney heard that Powell was opposed to the war in Iraq. Yet at no point when they were in power did he ever actually hear it from Powell; not in any meeting, not in any memo. It seemed that Powell operated through leaks to the press.

Cheney wanted a harder line against North Korea, and thought that Secretary of State Condoleza Rice was dedicated to diplomacy for diplomacy's sake and lost sight of the objective. She made concession after concession and got nothing in return

Although George W. Bush is generally praised, Cheney does express disappointment with him near the end of of his second term. Cheney thought he was too accepting of Rice's recommendations, should have pardoned Scooter Libby, and a few other small things I can't quite remember the details on....

President Obama comes under some criticism for the obvious reasons. Obama criticized the Bush Administration's conduct of the War on Terror in ways Cheney thought unjust. He doesn't spend a lot of time on it, but in three of four pages Cheney pretty much says that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about.

Desert Shield / Desert Storm

Cheney leaves no doubt that he never thought that sanctions would work and that the military would have to be used to evict Saddam from Kuwait. In retrospect, it is hard to imagine that he was anything but correct. Yes, diplomatic pressure and sanctions were worth trying for a few months, but dragging them out would only delay the inevitable.

The other theme is that the Pentagon generals and admirals doubted at first that the president meant business with the buildup in the Gulf. General Schwartzkopf made clear that the first deployment of 200,000 or so troops was not sufficient to guarantee success. When Cheney made it clear that he would send as many troops as the generals thought necessary, they sat up and paid attention.

War on Terror

Much political hay was made of the alleged use of "torture" by the United States, with the liberals and Democrats joining the fray. Legitimate inquiry and questioning is fine, but most of the time it went overboard into a hate-America sentiment. Bluntly, it was and is used as a political tool by the kook left to attack America in general and the Bush Administration in particular.

Of all the methods we used, water boarding was arguably the most controversial. Cheney cites the statements some Air Force pilots who had been Vietnam POWs to bolster his case that water boarding was not torture. Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Leo Thorsness said that it was "harsh but not torture. Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Bud Day concurred, saying that "I am a supporter of water boarding. It is not torture. Torture is really hurting someone," and when asked what he would say to the CIA officer who used it on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he replied "You did the right thing."

No need to go into the whole controversy here, but suffice it to say that the use of harsh measures was controlled, used sparingly, and certainly got a lot of results. And despite what a few congressional Democrats have tried to say, the evidence is overwhelming that they were fully aware and supportive of the program when it was occurring.

Iraq and WMD

CIA Director George Tenant doesn't come in for any criticism for the mis-evaluation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. All the stories are in the book; the "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President. It's a slam dunk" and "most Iraqis will rejoice when Saddam is gone."

But Cheney's evaluation is the correct one; the analysts did the best they could with the information they had. As I have discussed ad nauseum here at Redhunter, Saddam was playing double (or triple) game; he tried to convince his countrymen and regional neighbors that he had WMD while simultaneously trying to convince the US and UN that he didn't have them. Given his history of deception (much of it quite successful), we took the contradictory signals as evidence of more deception and concluded that he had stockpiles of WMD. Far from evidence that "Bush lied," it is evidence of just how hard intelligence work is. More than that, what so many in the hate-Bush crowd forget is that the burden of proof was always on Saddam.

Further, while we did not find actual WMD, inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer concluded that "Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's WMD capability... after sanctions were removed," something that he was working hard to do and which would probably have been the end result anyway.

Resignation Attempts

Three times before the 2004 campaign got going he offered to take himself off the ticket. The first two times Bush brushed it aside, but the third time Cheney demanded he take it seriously. Cheney had seen enough of power, and was willing to give it up so that the larger goal of a second Bush term could be met.

Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld made the same offer to Bush (twice, actually) in the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations, and as with Cheney demanded that the president take it seriously. As with Cheney, Rumsfeld saw the larger objective.

Hard Core

Cheney was never one to back down on anything in the face of public pressure. He thought that Rumsfeld shouldn't have been asked to resign in 2004.

He also wanted a harder line against North Korea, and thought that Rice was dedicated to diplomacy for diplomacy's sake and lost sight of the objective. She made concession after concession and got nothing in return

When Israel presented us with irrefutable evidence that North Korea had supplied Syria with a nuclear reactor suited only for production of bomb-grade material, they told us that either we needed to attack it or they would. Alone in the cabinet, Cheney wanted an American attack.

My Take

As with most books about political figures, it's pretty simple; if you like Dick Cheney you will love this book, if you don't you'll hate it. If you're somewhere in the middle you will find it useful and helpful, if for no other reason than you'll come away with a better understanding of one of the most important politicians of our time.

To readers of this blog it's no revelation that I am an admirer of Mr. Cheney. He was more focused and principled than any of the presidents he served under, and certainly more than the Democrats in the intervening years. Our nation would be better off had they listed more closely to him. Even so, his council was accepted often enough so that our country, and thus the world, is the better for it.