"Like
with a horse, Powell is always able to lead
Bush to the water. But just as he is about to
put his head down, Cheney up in the saddle says,
'Un-uh,' and yanks up the reins before Bush
can drink the water. That's my image of how
it goes," said Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
describing the power relationship between George
Bush and Dick Cheney in a recent interview with
the National Journal.
The
image of the president of the United States
as a tame horse, saddled up and ridden by his
own vice president, may seem overblown, but
Biden is not alone in his assessment of the
White House's internal dynamics. When it comes
to foreign policy, Cheney is increasingly seen
as holding the reins in the power circles within
Washington.
While
the mainstream media mostly continue to cast
Bush as the captain of his ship, hints that
Cheney is the dominant figure shaping Washington's
diplomatic policy have become too numerous to
ignore. A recent Washington Post article assessing
Condoleezza Rice's performance as national security
adviser revealed a most stunning example of
this lopsided state of affairs. According to
the Post, Bush had ordered Cabinet officials
not to give any preferential treatment to Ahmed
Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) when
U.S. forces moved into Iraq last spring. But
soon after, in flagrant violation of his directive,
the Pentagon flew Chalabi and 600 of his armed
followers into southern Iraq in early April,
"with the approval of the vice president."
It
would not be the first or last time that Cheney
simply ignored his commander-in-chief. The extent
of Cheney's power is not surprising given the
degree to which Bush relied on him during his
presidential campaign and in the administration's
early days. And the fact that Cheney, who was
asked by Bush to recommend his running mate
in 2000, picked himself for the job reveals
that he expected to wield extraordinary power
if Bush won the election.
Cheney's
dominance has been the decisive factor in the
ongoing battle between the Pentagon and the
State Department over U.S. foreign policy. Secretary
of State Colin Powell, according to Biden's
account, has sometimes talked Bush into pursuing
a more conciliatory foreign-policy line, as
he has done with North Korea or the United Nations
from time to time. But thus far Cheney's views
have always won out in the long run.
Enforcing
policy discipline, especially in a divided administration,
is ordinarily the task of the national security
adviser. But Rice, an academic whose substantive
knowledge of foreign policy is largely confined
to the Soviet Union and Russia, has not been
equal to the job. Her failure combined with
Bush's own passivity and inexperience has enabled
Cheney to dominate the policy process, particularly
with respect to the Middle East where Cheney's
views are almost entirely consistent with those
of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
A
Republican right-winger, Cheney is surrounded
by neo-conservatives, many with close ties to
Israel's Likud Party. Even before Sept. 11,
Cheney had endorsed Israel's selective assassination
policy -- even as the State Department was busy
denouncing it. One year later, Cheney told Israel's
defense minister, albeit privately, that he
thought Palestinian President Yasser Arafat
"should be hanged." Biden told reporters in
October, "If you look at Afghanistan, if you
look at the (Israeli-Palestinian peace) road
map, if you look at Iraq, if you look at bilateral
and multilateral dealings with the Europeans,
just as Powell looks like he will stitch the
garment back together again, Cheney goes to
the Heritage Foundation and re-enunciates the
policy of preemption."
Cheney
has played a much more important role than Rice
since the early days of the administration,
despite her closer personal relationship with
the president. It was Cheney's choices that
prevailed in the appointment of both cabinet
and sub-cabinet national-security officials,
beginning with that of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense
Secretary. Not only did Cheney personally intervene
to ensure that Powell's best friend, Richard
Armitage, was denied the deputy defense secretary
position, but he also secured the post for his
own protégé, Paul Wolfowitz. Moreover, it was
Cheney who insisted that the ultra-unilateralist
John Bolton be placed in a top State Department
arms job -- a position from which Bolton has
consistently pursued policies that run counter
to Powell's own views.
Moreover,
Cheney's own national-security staff is the
largest ever employed by a vice president. Its
members have largely been chosen for both their
ideological affinity with their boss and proven
Washington experience. "They play to win," said
one State Department official. Cheney's chief
of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, a Washington lawyer and Wolfowitz
protégé, is considered a far more skilled and
experienced bureaucratic and political operator
than Rice. With several of his political allies
on Rice's own staff -- , including deputy national
security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle East
director Elliott Abrams -- Libby "is able to
run circles around Condi," noted a former NSC
official .
Cheney's
muscle is most apparent in shaping the White
House's Iraq policy. He played a key role in
assigning responsibility for post-war reconstruction
to the Pentagon, a major departure from the
long-standing tradition to giving the State
Department the lead in such areas. Similarly,
Cheney backed the Pentagon's decision to entirely
exclude the State Department from the planning
process. The State Department's mammoth "Future
of Iraq Project," which pulled together hundreds
of Iraqi expatriates and other experts to come
up with a detailed plan for the post-war reconstruction
of Iraq, was simply ignored and so was Tom Warrick,
a highly regarded Iraq specialist who oversaw
the project.
According
to retired intelligence officers, Cheney and
Libby played the decisive role in distorting
the intelligence used to make Bush's case for
war. Libby made frequent trips to the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the run-up to the
Iraq war, pressuring analysts in include questionable
evidence supplied by the INC and Rumsfeld-led
hawks.
More
recently, it was Cheney who led the effort to
deny Powell the authority to negotiate a new
UN Security Council resolution that would have
reduced the Pentagon's control over the political
transition in Iraq, even though the president
initially approved such a deal.
The
vice president is currently working within the
White House to resist congressional pressure
to reduce Pentagon's control over Iraq policy
and to oust several senior hawks in the DoD.
Beginning with Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy Douglas Feith, the neoconservatives in
the Pentagon are under fire for misleading Congress
on both the evidence used to justify the war
and the post-war situation.
Cheney's
clout has even elicited rebukes from the Hill.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman
Richard Lugar and Joe Biden, the Committee's
ranking Democrat, explicitly mentioned the vice
president as part of their bipartisan appeal
to Bush, asking him to take control over his
foreign policy.
"I
would say, Mr. President, take charge. Take
charge ... Let your secretary of defense, state,
and your vice president know 'This is my policy,
any one of you that divert from the policy is
off the team,'" said Biden on NBC's 'Meet the
Press' in early October. Lugar, a staunch, albeit
moderate Republican, appearing on the same show
echoed the sentiment, adding, "The president
has to be president. That means the president
over the vice president and over these secretaries."
Recent
announcements that Rice has hired Robert Blackwill,
Bush's former ambassador to India and reputedly
a skilled bureaucratic and Republican infighter
himself, as her top deputy and that she is heading
up a new, inter-agency Iraq Stabilization Group,
are designed to create the appearance that she
is at last taking charge of the country's foreign
policy. So far, however, there is little evidence
that Cheney is prepared to turn over control
of his favorite hobbyhorse.
Jim
Lobe writes on foreign policy for AlterNet,
Inter Press Services, TomPaine.com and Foreign
Policy in Focus.
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