An unnamed figure serving in the White House once chided journalist Ron Suskind for living in the “reality-based world”, a state of mind inconsistent with the U.S.’s new status as an empire. It appears that former Vice President Dick Cheney is maintaining a scrupulous distance from that cursed land.

On Monday he criticized the Obama administration for failing to initiate a “quick airstrike” against Iran to retrieve its lost spy drone. When CBS’s Rebecca Jarvis asked him about a resulting potential war (CNN’s Erin Burnett somehow missed that one), Cheney made an eye for an eye argument and once again failed to think through the human, financial and political costs. He also said it would be a “simple operation.”

It should be unsurprising then, that while earlier discussing what he considers the successes of a war he backed and continues to defend, Cheney failed to mention that the real winner in Iraq was actually Iran. Not only did the U.S. eliminate one of Iran’s long-time enemies, it also opened the way for a friendly, Shia-led government to take power. What more could the Islamic Republic ask for?

Cheney must be familiar with Winston Churchill, the illustrious British statesman much admired by the U.S. right who said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

If only leading U.S. political figures–be they GOP presidential candidates or lawmakers–would take heed.