Cheney: A role model for America's youth?

How many Princeton students are aware that Vice President Dick Cheney, who so eagerly marketed the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 on TV talk shows as something like cakewalk, had only a decade earlier predicted that such a venture would engender precisely the mayhem and bloodbath we see in Iraq today? Given the calamity he so gravely foresaw in 1991 and then played such a crucial part to bring about, one may ask whether the vice president had any moral compunction over flip-flopping so easily on a matter of such grave consequences. What moral lesson might a professor of ethics and public policy extract from the vice president's conduct?

The vice president made his dire prognosis in 1991, then in his role as President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense. Asked on ABC's "This Week" why America should not liberate all of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, whom Bush Sr. had called "worse than Hitler," Cheney replied: "I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shia government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Baath party, would it be fundamentalist Islamic? I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all."

It is fair to ask the vice president what events between 1991 and 2003 led him to market the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 as a cakewalk, a catchword made famous in early 2002 by Kenneth Adelman, then a vocal member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld '54's Defense Advisory Board. Was it reasonable to suppose that the Sunnis and Shiites could achieve in 2003 what had seemed impossible in 1991, namely, to form an effective, harmonious and democratic government, especially after the Sunnis had so brutally suppressed the Shiites throughout the 1990s in the wake of their unsuccessful revolt against Saddam Hussein? Would the Shiites' predictable thirst for vengeance be stilled by the joy of liberation, in a region well known for century old vendettas?

The vice president might answer that what had changed over the decade were not conditions in Iraq, but the fact that, in 2003. the United States was faced with an epic struggle against terrorism in which Iraq played a central part. If so, then it is fair to ask him why, given the crucial importance of victory for the United States in that quest, the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was planned by the administration as if it would be a cakewalk, against the sage advice of battle-hardened generals, such as General Eric Shinseki or retired Marine Corps General Anthony C. Zinni, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command. In his book "Battle Ready," Zinni wrote: "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption." Did the vice president ever speak out against that irresponsible strategy?

To illustrate the consequences of that dereliction of duty, in late 2003 the media reported that there were not enough troops in Iraq even to guard Saddam Hussein's lethal ammunition dumps. Iraqi insurgents could use these unguarded dumps as the analogue of giant Wal-Marts without a checkout counter. However inadvertently, the administration effectively supported our enemy's troops, even as our own troops found themselves in Iraq for months on end without adequate armor and equipment.

In the wake of his disgraceful peccadillo with Monica Lewinsky, former President Bill Clinton was properly admonished that our nation's top political leaders are to act as moral role models for America's youth. In the light of Cheney's facile flipflop on Iraq, which has had such horrible consequences for so many Americans and Iraqis, it can properly be asked what role model he presents to America's youth. Uwe E. Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a professor in the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhard@princeton.edu.