bill_schubert | Thank Dick Cheney

All day I kept imagining what would happen if the military were to get involved. Not the National Guard but a Division of armed troops in the capital to support the President. There are, I'm aware, a lot of members of the armed forces who would cheer such an eventuality. It happens in other countries. We are not so exceptional as we think.

But with amazing prescience, Dick Cheney and his brethren sent out a letter explaining to the senior leadership of the armed forces that they should sit on their hands and not be involved. This was the most amazing letter I've heard of in my life. It may well have changed the course of history but the events of the past four years have been so chaotic it seemed to be business as usual.

The Department of Defense secretaries letter was absolutely not business as usual. I served under Cheney in the 80's and only later came to really resent him and his politics and his march to near war.

But, today, I can not convey how important his actions were to the integrity of our democracy. So I salute him.

I'll denigrate him and his ideas next week. This week I have a lot of respect for him.