JD Vance set off certain elements of the Republican Party on Thursday with a blistering critique of Liz Cheney. As RedState reported, Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris, citing Donald Trump as a danger to the country.
The former congresswoman has long been out of the good graces of most Republicans following her joining of hands with Nancy Pelosi for the January 6th Committee. That committee was later exposed as having suppressed and manipulated evidence to present a one-sided, highly politicized narrative. That included not sharing testimony corroborating Trump’s claim that he asked for the National Guard to be deployed.
SEE: Bombshell Hearing Scheduled, Three D.C. National Guardsmen Set to Expose January 6th Committee
Vance lit into Cheney following the endorsement, going after her over her foreign policy.
VANCE: Well, maybe the best thing, not the very best thing, but a very good thing I can say about the next presidency of Donald Trump is that he’s going to make sure people like Liz Cheney are laughed out of the Oval Office instead of rewarded. Because this is a person whose entire career has been about sending other peoples’ children off to fight and die for her military conflicts and her ridiculous ideas that somehow we were going to turn Afghanistan, a country that doesn’t even have running water in a lot of places, into a thriving liberal democracy and for that, Liz Cheney was willing to kill thousands of your children.
Liz Cheney, you know what, I think it’s the best thing in the world that she’s supporting Kamala Harris. You are right, blessed are the peacemakers. Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney make very, very interesting partners. They get rich when America’s sons and daughters go off to die. They get rich when America loses wars instead of winning wars, and they get rich when America gets weaker in the world. We want American strength, American security, and most importantly, peace.
What Vance is saying is not exactly novel. Critiques of Cheney’s foreign policy from the right have been happening long before Donald Trump even became a political issue. Still, some in the GOP find any discussion of the moral and practical legitimacy of America’s various foreign conflicts to be off-limits.
Perhaps I’m just “the worst people,” but while I could nitpick a few things Vance said, I don’t see what’s “revolting” about his overall message. Cheney has vehemently pushed disastrous foreign conflicts (and trashed those who opposed them) that have led to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people dying unnecessarily. As I wrote back in 2023, I do believe there is a real moral question about someone who does that while showing zero regret.
It’s just astonishing to me that someone like Cheney, whose direct policy initiatives have legitimately led to the slaughter of millions of people in Libya, Iraq, and Syria, can still pretend to hold some type of moral high ground. We are talking about a woman who, instead of opposing the bombing of Libya, pushed then-President Barack Obama to do even more. As a result, Libya is now hell on earth and the world’s largest modern-day slave market.
The results in Syria were just as bad, with a pointless civil war supported by the United States killing well over half a million people, and not once has Cheney ever shown any regret. Do you know what you call someone who causes such suffering and death, yet shows no remorse? You call them a sociopath.
Perhaps one could defend the nation-building exercise in Afghanistan given Al Qaeda was using it as a haven. Cheney’s vehement, often vicious support for foreign conflicts goes much further than that, though. As I posited above, I find Libya and Syria to be the most egregious examples. There was no plan to ensure regime change in Syria. Instead, the United States allied with literal Islamist rebels, including jihadists from groups like the Al-Nusra Front, to prolong and widen a civil war that ended up killing over half a million people.
And for what? So Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Liz Cheney could sound tough on CNN? Those people that died were real people. They had families and friends. They shouldn’t have been used as faceless fodder in wars that were propagated by some of the most vapid, selfish people on earth.
I understand that when you say that, people immediately want to accuse you of supporting dictators. The world is not black and white, though. In places like the Middle East and North Africa, the choices very often boil down to limiting the loss of life while accepting the least worst outcome. Have the outcomes ensured by Cheney’s foreign policy in Libya and Syria been better or worse than the status quo? I don’t think any sane person could suggest anything but the latter. Libya has become a modern-day slave state and Syria is still controlled by Bashar al-Assad while radical Islamist terrorists now control large portions of the country.
In short, I think it’s not only not “revolting” to point out these moral and practical failures, but I think it’s necessary. Lastly, part of the objection to Vance’s words is no doubt his suggestion that people like Cheney have gotten rich off these various wars. Is that untrue, though? Has Cheney not made lots of money due to a political rise built on the back of her supposed foreign policy chops? One doesn’t even need to dig into her investments to come to that conclusion. Lots of politicians have gained notoriety and money over the years while taking no responsibility for their roles in getting so many people killed. That is as morally repugnant as anything Donald Trump has done, flawed of a person as he may be.
