The REAL Fearmongers

It was a term that we heard far too often during the Bush-Cheney years...and even now, with the former vice president's courageous, unapologetic campaign on behalf of the policies that kept us safe for 8 years, it's still being tossed around by those on the Left. Oh, they say, that Dick Cheney, he's just fear-mongering.

Here's the problem: the word fearmonger refers to someone who, according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary, is "inclined to raise or excite alarms especially needlessly." It's hard for me to see how repeatedly emphasizing the threat that radical Islamic terrorists pose to our nation's security and ideals constitutes a "needless" excitation of fear or alarm. Unless, of course, you subscribe to the view that radical Islamist ideology and its foot-terrorists (they most definitely don't deserve the foot-"soldier" label- don't get me going on the inanity of arguing that the Geneva Conventions legally apply to these barbarians) are NOT truly threatening to the United States of America. If you take that view, then you'll love the decisions to close Gitmo, ship terrorists onto US soil, and arbitrarily award a full civilian trial to these war criminals.

There's someone out there right now who fits the fearmonger definition far better than Dick Cheney. Here are three hints:

- He warned the American people that if we didn't pass a "stimulus" bill urgently, unemployment would go sky-high...all the way to...8%. Except that it reached double digits after the bill passed. Oops.

- He has continuously told not only Americans, but those around the world who listened to him at Copenhagen (now fittingly being called Nopenhagen), that we need to take drastic, immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions or else face imminent, certain doom for our planet.

- He informed us that our current American health care system is unsustainable, doomed by skyrocketing costs that will cripple our nation unless we overhaul it immediately and allow the government a greater role in allocating health coverage.

The Bush administration, and Dick Cheney in particular, were a bunch of fearmongers? Please. Barack Obama has only been in office for a year, and he is already the keeper of fearmongering. Hey, at least he's mastered something!