Quotes to close a decade

DemWit brings you quotes to close out a decade, eight years of which were dominated by a president who surrounded himself with a cabal of neoconservatives hell-bent on empire building in the Middle East.

The following quotes are from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer in response to former Vice President (and neocon) Dick Cheney’s scathing criticism of the Obama administration.

Cheney, who has been more visible on the talk show circuit than he ever was in the White House, castigated Obama yesterday for “pretending we are not at war” and making our country “less safe” from terrorists.

This from an administration which so badly bungled our foreign policy that it came close to destroying the United States’ image in the world and whose unnecessary war in Iraq diverted our attention from the real threat - a diversion which cost us dearly in blood and treasure.

I choose these quotes from Mr. Pfeiffer, because I believe they mark a new direction for the next decade in how we handle the threat against not only us but the world.

Pfeiffer wrote on the official White House blog:

"It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer."

(…)

"To put it simply: this president is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies (in Iraq) to be attacking the president."

(…)

"There are numerous … public statements that explicitly state we are at war (against al Qaeda). The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last administration – we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

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DemWit welcomes a new era and closes the old with a quote which defines Dick Cheney – one from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”