Former Vice President Richard Cheney has been lambasted since he left office for his strident criticism of the Obama administration. Leading members of an administration are expected maintain decorum and hold back on criticism of their successors for at least a year. Daniel Drezner, the largely conservative foreign policy expert, usually defends Cheney for doing so on the principle that Cheney feels strongly enough about Obama’s policy to speak out. But even Drezner seems to have reached the limit with Cheney’s brazenly self-serving, propagandizing and lies.

So I’m inclined to cut Cheney some slack for his decision to speak out. On the other hand, when we read the Politico interview, Cheney’s actual sins come out:

“Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating (emphasis added).”

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I dare any Cheney supporter to make the argument that Afghanistan was hunky-dory until January 20, 2009, at which point things went to hell in a handbasket.

For the rest of us on the Planet Earth, there’s no way to read that passage and not come to one of two possible conclusions:

—Richard B. Cheney is a liar;

—Richard B. Cheney is so unconnected from reality that it is impossible to trust anything he says.

I don’t mind that Cheney speaks up for what he thinks is right — I mind that he’s a liar.

This matter raises two points — one of which is not that Dick Cheney is a liar, which is incontestable fact.

The first is that the problems Britain and America face now are as a direct consequence of the Bush administration’s decision to divert men and materiel from Afghanistan to Iraq. It’s worth remembering why we are in Afghanistan, because the official line on this matter has shifted so many times that that it has become the most nebulous of concepts. NATO went into Afghanistan because its government was providing shelter to those who perpetrated a horrifying terrorist attack on a NATO member. It wasn’t to nation build, improve women’s rights, or reduce the supply of heroin to the west (noble causes as they are). But, just as the job was almost done, and with Bin Laden and the Taleban and Al Qaeda leadership in within grasping distance, the Bush administration and their supine British partners decided fighting a largely unrelated war against Iraq was more important. The criminals of the century escaped; the Taleban could regroup and start an insurgency campaign against a strategically drifting and materially starved military coalition in the country.

It also, however, highlights the second problem, which is that Obama back home faces an opposition that has completely abandoned the notion of “Loyal Opposition” and will literally do or say anything to attack the President.

That isn’t to say that Obama is faultless. The Parallax Brief sees all kinds of gaps and contradictions in the President’s decision on Afghanistan, but key to understanding how we reached this point is to understand the problems created by what Cheney represents: the Obama administration faces a fantastically expensive (politically, economically, emotionally) COIN war (which are almost invariably lost by advanced western democracies) without a particularly compelling mission against a political backdrop where a hysterical opposition is willing to stoop to outright lies and rabble rousing.