Dick Cheney, America’s most powerful modern vice president and the architect of the “war on terror”, has died at 84. His loss of life closes a turbulent chapter in US politics that started within the smoke of the Twin Towers and outlined the nation’s posture for a technology. For Cheney, 9/11 was not merely a nationwide trauma; it was the second that turned worry into philosophy and management into doctrine.The “Cheney Doctrine”, because it got here to be identified, was constructed on three pillars: strike first, ask later, and grant the chief the facility to behave with out hesitation.
The morning that remade him
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Cheney was within the White Home whereas President George W. Bush was in Florida. As hijacked planes struck New York and Washington, the vp was ushered into the Presidential Emergency Operations Middle beneath the West Wing.In keeping with a report in The Washington Publish, Cheney authorised US fighter jets to shoot down any plane approaching the capital that refused to divert. “If it seems to be threatening, take it out,” he instructed a navy aide. Later, when requested about that call, he mentioned, “I wholeheartedly concurred within the determination that if the airplane wouldn’t divert … our pilots have been authorised to take them out.”In that subterranean bunker, Cheney’s worldview crystallised. The vp who had lengthy warned of unseen threats now confronted one in actual time. For him, survival demanded complete, pre-emptive energy.
Forging the doctrine
Pre-emption as preservationWithin the months after 9/11, Cheney argued that america may not anticipate proof earlier than appearing. “If now we have realized something from fashionable expertise, it’s this: the one strategy to defend this nation in opposition to terrorism is to remain on the offensive,” he mentioned in an October 2001 handle. That logic grew to become the ethical scaffolding for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the place suspicions of weapons of mass destruction changed verified intelligence.The unitary govtCheney had lengthy believed that the presidency had been weakened by Vietnam and Watergate. After 9/11, he sought to revive it to imperial energy. “We now have to work the darkish aspect, if you’ll,” he instructed Meet the Press. “Quite a lot of what must be carried out right here must be carried out quietly, with none dialogue.” The remark grew to become emblematic of the secrecy and centralisation that got here to outline post-9/11 Washington.Secrecy as safety
FILE – Protection Secretary Dick Cheney poses with a number of the U.S. Military troops stationed in southern Iraq on this Might 7, 1991 file picture. (AP Picture/Invoice Haber, File)
Cheney handled data like ammunition. In keeping with reviews, he resisted releasing data from his power job drive, categorized interrogation practices, and constructed what one aide referred to as a “shadow nationwide safety council”. He believed daylight may blind as a lot because it may illuminate.The value of vigilanceThe Cheney Doctrine had penalties. “Enhanced interrogation” grew to become the official euphemism for torture. Guantanamo Bay become an emblem of infinite detention. The Patriot Act vastly expanded home surveillance.When the Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that these strategies have been each brutal and ineffective, Cheney responded bluntly: “I’d do it once more in a minute.” He by no means apologised. “It was the proper factor to do then. I believed it then and I imagine it now,” he mentioned of the Iraq war. To him, remorse was weak point, a luxurious reserved for many who didn’t bear duty for nationwide safety.The irony of the afterlifeIn later years, Cheney was exiled from the occasion he as soon as outlined. His outdated ally Donald Rumsfeld was gone, George W. Bush had retreated to portray, and the Republican Social gathering had turned populist underneath Donald Trump, whom Cheney branded “a coward” and “the best risk to our republic”.In a ultimate act of political rise up, the person who as soon as embodied the laborious proper voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, citing “obligation to the Structure”. In keeping with these near him, he believed Trump’s defiance of the 2020 election was a higher hazard to the republic than any international enemy.The ultimate legacyCheney’s loss of life isn’t just the tip of a person however of an period when worry remade freedom and the road between safety and supremacy blurred. The doctrine he cast endures in drone wars, mass surveillance, and the idea that security outweighs transparency.For Dick Cheney, 9/11 didn’t change his politics. It accomplished them. It fused a long time of suspicion, conviction, and self-discipline into one unyielding creed: that America mustn’t ever wait to be struck once more.Even in loss of life, Cheney’s shadow lingers, a reminder that each democracy carries inside it the intuition to guard itself, even at the price of what makes it democratic.
