Cheney claims only U.S. defends freedom in the world?

By Lee Russ

Friday, October 20, 2006 at 04:34 PM

Most thinking people I know get a physical reaction to the sight and sound of our esteemed Vice President. In a speech in Indiana today, he certainly demonstrated one reason for the instinctual alarm: that is one arrogant and self-righteous son-of-a-gun.

From the White House official transcript of the speech:

We are their prime target. They hate us, they hate our country, they hate the liberties for which we stand. They want to destroy our way of life, so that freedom no longer has a home and a defender in this world.

Destroy us and freedom will "no longer [have] a defender in this world?"  Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the man actually said that the U.S. is not only the "home" of freedom, but that we are the only defender of freedom in the world.

Probably plays like gangbusters with the home-grown military crowd.  Pretty insulting to the rest of the world, however.  I fear it's just another nail in the coffin of our image among the rest of the world.

It's part of a long string of self-righteousness to which our leaders are, or pretend to be, blind:

Only we defend freedom.

Only we can be trusted to have a gargantuan supply of nuclear weapons.

Only we should be exempt from the world Court.

Only we should decide whether other countries' leaders are acceptable.

The fastest way to corruption is to believe that you cannot be corrupted.  When you have such a high opinion of yourself that you completely avoid self-criticism, you inevitably stray into believing that all external criticism is motivated by ill will.  Believing that you can do no wrong inevitably produces great wrong.  Believing that your motives, and only your motives, are pure, inevitably corrupts your motives.

We are not far from the point at which "only we" shall be completely isolated from and feared by all other nations.  If only Mr. Cheney could have managed to have other priorities when he was asked to serve as Vice President.