I know it’s unusual for a former vice president to set himself against the incoming administration, as has Dick Cheney. I don’t know if there’s historical precedent, but my recent memory is that there seems to be an unspoken rule that they step aside, and let some time go by before they start making public criticisms.

At a very sensitive time, Dick Cheney has been loudly telling the press and anyone who will listen how much better he would handle the war in Afghanistan. Every time he gets really hawkish, I think of what he said about his own war–Vietnam. He famously had ‘other priorities’, and won five draft deferments.

A lot of young men avoided the draft one way or another. It was an unpopular war for unclear cause. That’s a whole other story in itself.

But a man who used every means available to avoid the risk and sacrifice endured by other young men less privileged, a man who is beyond the call, who, unlike Vice President Biden, has no child serving in the military– that man enthusiastically calls for more troops to be sent into harms way.

Not only Cheney, but his daughter, accuse President Obama of being insufficiently committed to the security of our nation. A family of armchair generals and war profiteers.

Eric L. Wattree on Daily Kos takes the press to task for ignoring recent history…

Dick Cheney is walking around demanding that we place our troops in harm’s way like a veteran who begged for combat, then won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service. The way he’s strutting around, lecturing America and saber-rattling for war, one would never know that when the nation called for him to serve, he ran like a weasel on high potency steroids to avoid military service – and the mainstream media is just as gutless for not pointing that out.

I hope there is a plan to end the war in Afghanistan, I hope it is not our generation’s Big Muddy.