Pity the Poor President

I was appalled by this Q&A between ABC news correspondent Martha Raddatz and Vice President Dick Cheney. It’s fairly typical of a political interview, in that Cheney appears to be answering the questions he wished she had asked, but is also marked for his callous indifference to the suffering of the families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. It is the president (a man who as a youth blew up frogs with firecrackers for recreation) who suffers the most.

Cheney is a sociopath, in my humble opinion, but more so Bush, who has caused the loss of not just four thousand Americans, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. There’s a hall of fame for men like him, but I dare not say it here. Godwin, you know.

MR: I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. Just what effect do you think it has on our country?

DC: The president carries the biggest burden, obviously. He’s the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans. But we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer armed force, who voluntarily put on the uniform to go in harms’ way for the rest of us.

MR: Well, when you talk about the all-volunteer force, some of these soldiers, airmen, marines, have been on two, three, four, some of them more than that, deployments. Do you think when they volunteered they had any idea there’d be so many deployments, or stop-loss? Some of those who want to get out can’t get out because of the stop-loss.

DC: A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will seee developments. For example, 911 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country.

Not a word about the families, not an expression of sympathy. It’s not unlike his answer to the question about recent polls that show two-thirds of the country being opposed to the war:

“So?”

It comes down to this: Public opinion is interesting, and I’m sure many government and corporate officials refer to it now and then. But it has no bearing on policy.