As we get the drip, drip, drip, news of the various goings on between the Republicans, Oath Keepers, Fox News, Proud Boys, and Trump Family on and around January 6th, I’m getting the eerie feeling that when the eight hearings are held in June, Americans will be told by the aforementioned, “Yeah, we did it. It’s old news. You all heard if before. Time to move on”. The Media will downplay it all and find something new and sexy to focus on, just as it ignored Ginni & Clarence Thomas and directed our attention to Jada & Will Smith.
Perhaps the Democrats should buy time on Netflix and present the hearings on a binge worthy schedule with cliff hangers at the end of each, leading to the next. Maybe then the American people will watch this and take it seriously, but even then, I have my doubts.
I’m reminded of the media “outrage” about the war crimes of the George W. Bush administration and the utter refusal to do anything about them when the Democrats next took control. The GOP control of the congress was a great excuse to do nothing while the crimes were fresh — and it was “time to move on” when the Democrats were in a position to act on their words.
Am I the only one who sees the irony in the media lionization of Liz Cheney twenty years later? Richard Cheney was the architect of that illegal 2003 war and the primary perpetrator of the many well-documented war crimes. Can anyone imagine the daughter of Hitler being held up as a hero in Germany in the 1960s?
NOTHING substantive is going to happen to the criminals that lead the GOP.
If you are white and wealthy in this nation, you do whatever you like.
Why not hold up the daughter of Hitler in the 60s if she turned out to be a strong voice for reckoning with the Nazi past and nipping in the bud the slightest hint that such might return? Corruption of blood is forbidden by the Constitution and we should keep it out of our moral judgements as well.
I’m not talking about “blood corruption”. Ms. Cheney had a long and well-documented history prior to recent events.
Ms. Cheney was a state department official (“Deputy assistant secretary of state for near-eastern affairs”) during her father’s administration. This was a post various sources — including Paul Krugman — say was created specifically for her. There were various reports at the time that this posting reflected a desire by the Vice President to have more direct influence on State Department policy. Mr. Cheney ran the government and state department as if it were his own family business.
I’ve seen no indication that Ms. Cheney has in any way repudiated the well-documented war crimes of her father and his administration.
It is ironic indeed that all this is forgotten. Given her long and pervasive advocacy of extremist right-wing policies, it is difficult to see how she can credibly lead any effort to attack the various abuses of today’s GOP.
Ms Cheney spent a lifetime creating the monster that she now finds it advantageous to attack.
For now I’ll settle for her still being a democrat. Sometimes you praise and criticize the same person for different things. People are not all good or all evil. Her current claim to fame is being an all-too-rare Republican who is willing to consistently stand up to Trump, the big lie, and the January 6th insurrection. If I were a Republican talking to other Republicans I would probably defend her voting record as still being very in line with the party on policy matters and in no way a RINO. You have consistently harped on how much of an existential threat you see the aftermath of 1/6 and the attempts of Republicans to do at least that much again. Don’t you think we should take all the help we can get? I’m very much in agreement with the statement Deval Patrick often made that we should not have to agree on everything before we work together on anything. Liz Cheney is a very conservative Republican; she also still believes that when her side loses an election that should be honored. It is still possible to be both and that should be respected.
I’m glad that she is doing what she is doing and I welcome her stances.
It is the media lionization of her that sticks in my craw.
I will go to my grave believing that the decision of we Democrats — and therefore America — to ignore the illegal invasion of Iraq and the war crimes that America committed during and after that invasion play a HUGE rule in the awful events that have unfolded since then.
When George W. Bush and Richard Cheney committed those crimes and were not punished, that behavior was normalized for dictators like Donald Trump and, to some extent, Vladimir Putin.
Any case that anybody ever brings against Vladimir Putin — if that ever happens — would be MUCH stronger if George W. Bush and Richard Cheney had been prosecuted, convicted, and punished for their crimes.
Whatever it was America and our allies built in the Nuremberg trials is proving to be a sand castle that crumbles in the rain. Even at the time, some critics derided it as nothing more than victor’s “justice” — show trials presented as propaganda.
It is difficult for me to hear news broadcasts deriding Russia for using cluster bombs when America INVENTED the technology.
As awful as the attacks on cities in the Ukraine have been, how do they differ from — for example — the fire-bombing of Dresden? There were no military targets in Dresden.
I hope that we are able somehow get through this Ukraine war without provoking WWIII. I hope that we are somehow able to put down this insurrection.
I am absolutely convinced that our position today would be MUCH MUCH stronger if we had held our own leaders to the same high standard we set at Nuremberg.
We are paying the price for not doing that.
It’s a bit difficult to complain about an “illegal” war in Iraq when Congress (with many Democratic votes) approved the AUMF.
We bombed Dresden for the same reason we bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or that Sherman engaged in a strategy of total destruction of Georgia. We were already at war that the other side provoked. It is therefore very consistent to condemn Putin for actions in Ukraine as part of a war he himself provoked out of whole cloth.
It is not difficult at all. The AUMF was a propaganda piece enabled by lies and deception. Those lies and that deception should have been investigated by Congress and wasn’t.
So you argue that a “war crime” does not exist if the victims deserved their fate by living in a nation whose dictator started a war? I don’t think that’s what the international definition says.
As I understand it, a war crime occurs when civilians are murdered by military action when there is no military target or objective. Targeting a hospital full of patients or a grade school full of children is surely a war crime even if that hospital or grade school is in Russian soil in 2022.
The argument for Nagasaki and Hiroshima was, as I understand it, that the civilian toll of the two nuclear attacks would be markedly lower than the civilian toll of a protracted invasion with conventional forces. A parallel argument was made about the anticipated military casualty count of the two alternatives.
Rightly or wrongly, the Truman administration believed that Japan would fight to the bitter end in a conventional weapon scenario.
There was no such argument made for Dresden. The motivation for Dresden was to weaken the German will to fight. By modern standards, it is no different from the attacks on Kyiv or Mariupol currently described as “war crimes” by western media.
The morality of Sherman’s march to the sea has been hotly debated since it happened. I know of no legitimate sources who claim that it was OK because “they [the South] started the war”.
I doubt the media will downplay it. These hearings I think are designed to attract them. The media love stories like this.