Cheney's Thousand-Yard Stare

By Joe Klein

"In less than a second, less time than it takes to tell," Dick Cheney mused last week, his quail-hunting expedition had gone "from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love--to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before." It was perhaps the most eloquent, emotionally unguarded moment from the notoriously buttoned-up Vice President. He seemed stunned, uncertain for once. And the haunted look in his eyes reminded me of what soldiers in Vietnam used to call the Thousand-Yard Stare--the paralytic shock that comes from seeing the impact that even low-caliber weaponry can have on human flesh.

The Vice President's hunting accident occasioned a familiar explosion of public inanity. We seem to have a primal need for these circuses; they are the postmodern equivalent of scapegoat sacrifice. There was the embarrassing, self-righteous reportorial melee in the White House pressroom. There was the predictable patter of late-night comedians, although the jokes didn't seem quite so funny this time; a man had been shot. There were the cable-news shouting sprees, most of which had to do with the public relations process--Had Cheney erred in not informing the press immediately?--rather than the substance of the case. There were the attempts to inflate the belated revelation of the accident into a metaphor for the arrogance and secrecy that have defined the Bush Administration. And yes, the Vice President's behavior did seem to be another manifestation of his well-known disdain for accountability.

But Cheney's stubborn diffidence may have been something else entirely: a consequence of the incoherence and confusion that come with emotional trauma, as well as an understandable desire to protect oneself and one's friends from the ravening horde at a moment of personal anguish.

The possibility of vice-presidential anguish was barely mentioned by most commentators at first. Cheney is a tough customer; Oprahfied "sharing" isn't his way. But then, there he was, with that haunted look in his Fox News interview, saying, "[T]he image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling ..." Hunting had given him "great pleasure" in the past, but he wasn't so sure now. In fact, he sounded a lot like the combat veterans I've spoken with over the years, for whom the living nightmare of firing a weapon under questionable circumstances is a constant theme.

"Cheney's the sort of guy who thinks in terms of black and white," former Senator Bob Kerrey, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said. "But now he's used a weapon the way a soldier often does, with unexpected results that come in shades of gray. Maybe now he'll have a better sense of what he has sent our troops out to do."

At 65, Cheney is too old to be a baby boomer, but his five draft deferments during the Vietnam War make him an honorary member of the tribe, as does his infamous explanation of why he didn't fight: "I had other priorities." The failure to serve--and the relative safety and affluence of our upbringing--has been a defining quality of so many baby boomers who have come to political power, and there have been consequences. Bill Clinton often seemed daunted and uncertain in his dealings with the military. Bush and Cheney have been the opposite. They rushed to war in Iraq without adequate cause or preparation. This is not to say that military service is a requirement for leadership in time of war; neither Abraham Lincoln nor Franklin Roosevelt was a combat veteran. But for 50 years there has been a growing cultural chasm between the military and the rest of society. Those of us who haven't served have a special responsibility to listen to and try to understand those who have. The most common complaint I've heard from troops recently returned from Iraq is that Americans are oblivious to what soldiers have to do every day over there. At the heart of that lament, inevitably, is the debilitating emotional cost of combat.

One valuable metaphor emerged last week. The New York Times described the possible legal charges that could be brought in a hunting accident. "Mr. Cheney could be charged with negligence, defined as failing to understand the dangers involved and disregarding them, or recklessness, defined as understanding the dangers and disregarding them." Which is perhaps the neatest summary I've seen of the public debate surrounding the Bush Administration's war in Iraq. Absent further evidence, the Administration seems guilty of negligence--a cavalier insensitivity to the unimaginable calamities that attend the use of lethal force. And while I have little faith that Cheney's awful experience at the Armstrong Ranch will change his views of war and peace, I do hope that it gives him pause and that he gains wisdom from the intimate knowledge that there are experiences other than "pleasure" that can attend the firing of a weapon.