The Secret Life of Hawks

Last night, the infamous unnamed relative and I engaged in a little tete a tete about Kerry's alleged "flip-flopping" and wound up in a heated exchange about the Iraq War (Iraq is like a powerful magnet in political conversations these days, as all roads in the tri-state area lead to New York). I asked the relative for one example of said "flip-flopping" and he/she named Kerry's initial vote for the war, and his new stance, which is ostensibly against the war. When I countered with the recent Senate Intelligence Report about the CIA's blunders on Iraq intelligence that apparently misled the entire Congress (as well as much of the nation) about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he/she asked why the CIA would provide erroneous evidence. I personally believe that the Administration, in league with Tenet, pressured individual agents to produce the evidence that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld needed to pursue a war they conceived well before 9/11. Again, nameless relative queries, "Why?"

While I have not come up with a complete psychological profile of all the players involved, I have done some investigation of Cheney's motives and have found that while he may tout US national security in a critical energy-producing region, his near-apoplectic obsession with Iraq tells a different story. His paramount need to invade, expressed in his and his allies' position papers for over decade under the auspices of the Project for the New American Century, is too visceral, too manic domino theory, to fit in with mere strategic thinking. Besides, if Middle East security was what he wanted, he might have worked a tad harder on shoring up the border between Iran and Iraq after the invasion was complete. And he and his pals would have been articulating a plan for post-war Iraq that after the first Gulf War would have gone beyond economic sanctions and in this war would have taken into account the difficulty of maintaining an occupation in a chaotic and increasingly hostile country that has no education in democratic self-rule and whose economy and infrastructure are a disaster.

There appear to be several factors at work on Cheney's consciousness: money, loyalty, power, and rage. As for the first, Cheney's direct monetary gain from continued ties with Halliburton in a perpetual war state is not entirely obvious. This 2003 CBS article stated that "The vice president's Halliburton benefits include three batches of stock options comprising 433,333 shares. He also has a 401(k) retirement account valued at between $1,001 and $15,000 dollars." But according to the wikipedia, "Cheney sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the company, but retained 433,333 stock options worth about $8 million. Cheney arranged for the profits to be donated to charity, placed the options in a charitable trust, and relinquished control over them." Allegedly, he also took out an insurance policy to cover his yearly stipend should the company go bankrupt.

Putting the options in a charitable trust while he is Vice President does not guarantee that he will never lay his hands on the future proceeds. Given his small current fortune, Cheney and a team of lawyers may able to extricate the money from the trust after his service to the country is complete. But even if Cheney permanently gives away the proceeds of any future sale of the options, he still has considerable personal interest in seeing Halliburton succeed. After all, money doesn't just buy cool stuff, dollars translate into power. And when you head a "charitable" trust (where the recipients could be the NRA and the RNC for all we know) of nearly $13 million dollars (Halliburton is trading at about $29.53) in stock options, you have some interest in seeing that company behind the options stays in biz.

Nevertheless, greed alone does not tell the whole story. In fact, I think avarice is only one of Cheney's nefarious motivations. I don't pretend to understand the man - I think he is a shadowy Machiavellian character who, like Nixon, serves a number of sinister masters. Connected to the money flowing out of Halliburton is also a kind of filial loyalty both to the personified corporation and to the company's employees that worked with Cheney both before and during his tenure as CEO. Cheney, like Bush and other similar far right-wingers, takes loyalty to the club very seriously. His loyalties in invading Iraq are manifold: completion of the first Bush's war, vengeance for the son, securing of contracts and oil for his business associates, and realization of his neo-con friends' dream.

As for power, the intimations of war began during the crucial mid-term elections. The glaze of fear from 9/11 had worn thin. Bush had asked people to return to normal, and as people are wont to do, so they did. Threats about WMD and ties to Al Qaeda ensured that the public would vote with their hearts in their throats, and most of the advertising in the close contests of 2002 demonstrate the success of the fear-mongering strategy amply. A Republican majority, now wide in the House and finally re-established in the Senate, would ensure easy passage of Administration favorites like the Partial Birth Abortion Bill, more unnecessary corporate tax cuts, limitless extensions of the Patriot Act, and so on. Cheney, in his quiet and insidious fashion, would be at the helm with Bush, as co-chair of a mighty right-wing company. And given Cheney's expertise in the region and his advocacy of an invasion for many years, he would see a surge in his influence, particularly if the war was quick and clean.

The rage factor is perhaps more tenuous but compelling nonetheless. Cheney has a strange relationship with armed conflict - he has been a hawk since the Vietnam War yet has never had an interest in taking up a weapon (other than political power) to defend his country. Cheney took no less than five draft deferments to wriggle out of Vietnam. He has historically preferred the military route as a solution to any geopolitical problem, and he advanced numerous spending increases for the military during his tenure as congressman. And he apparently sees no connection between crime and availability of weaponry - he was only one of four congressmen who voted against bans on plastic guns which could be smuggled into airports and armor-piercing bullets. He has this decade-old obsession with Iraq, dating from his time as the Secretary of Defense under Bush pere. And let us not forget about his recent f-word outburst directed at Leahy on the Senate floor. If Cheney had a therapist, he would know he has an anger management problem. Perhaps Iraq is just the path of least resistance for the river of rage that flows steadily underneath the smirk and wonkish monotone. Dick Cheney...angry batman, kick and hit.