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The former Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Representative for the state of Wyoming, Richard B. "Dick" Cheney (1941 - 2025) was laid to rest today and I have thoughts.
On one hand I have a lot of genuine respect for the man. He had principles and he stuck to them. He didn't try to hedge, or weasel out, he bit the bullet. I don't think that anyone can reasonably claim that they never new where they stood with Dick Cheney. As Ed Morrissey says "RIP to an American Original". On the other hand his legacy is complicated.
For those too young to remember the 2000 election, Cheney was viewed one of the elder statesmen of the Republican party and what we might call today an "enlightened centrist". He and George Bush Jr. (son of Former president George HW Bush) were presented as a return to the norms of civility and collegiality after the chaos, acrimony, and culture-warring that had defined much the Clinton administration. The idea was that by embracing "Compassionate Conservativism" the conflict between traditional conservatives and what we would recognize today as the proto-woke could be resolved. It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. The 2000 election was decided by the supreme court which put both sides on edge, and then 8 months later everything would go up in smoke with the two towers.
This brings us Cheney's legacy. Cheney sought to change the world through democratic reforms imposed by American arms. He was the chief Architect of global war on terror and an ardent supporter of the wider trend of "globalization", give the Communists or the Jihadis a taste of McDonalds and they'll come around to our way of thinking. Again, It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. And because Cheney had been all in, because he hadn't tried to hedge, or weasel out, because the establishment/centrist wings of both parties had adopted his model and backed his every play, there was nowhere to deflect to when everything went to shit both at home and abroad.
He could not claim that "Real Neoliberalism/Compassionate Conservativism has never been tried" or that he only got to implement half of his intended foreign policy because the "enlightened centrists" had been given everything they wanted. The plan was tried, and it failed. Not only did it fail, it failed so spectacularly that many prior supporters including myself turned away in revulsion asking ourselves "what have we done?". Cheney's Legacy is ultimately one of failure. One that would set the conditions for the rise of both the Tea Party and Trump as well as the accelerationist woke at the expense of the of the sort of norms-based centrism espoused by publications like The Bulwark and The Atlantic and Cheney himself.
At the same time, I can not help but see his passing as the passing of an era, and I am not going to wish ill upon the dead.
Much hay is currently being made in certain circles about whether Trump and Vance were snubbing him by not attending the funeral or if they were specifically not invited, but I feel like it's a bullshit distraction, I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that they never knew where they stood with Dick Cheney
Rest In Peace Dick.
Did he fail? They lied about WMD so why wouldn't he lie about his other causes for the war?
He enriched the military industrial complex which was lacking a justification for its budget in 2003. He swamped Europe with migrants pushing the agenda of mass migration and cheap imported labour. He destroyed several countries in the middle east making them easy to bully and extract resources from. Not only that, but he got ordinary republicans on board with creating a surveillance state that knows more about its citizens than stasi did. In his new toasty warm dwelling he probably looks up at Earth with pride as he effectively achieved what he wanted, a global police state run by the US which culture is consumerism.
It is absurd slander to suggest that the war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or anywhere else is “responsible” for mass immigration to Europe.
Many Muslim migrants to Europe arrived as guest workers from places like Pakistan and Turkey that were at peace at the time of mass emigration; they arrived in large numbers decades before 9/11.
Many recent migrants come from places like Eritrea, Congo, India and Somalia which, while sometimes subject to localized conflicts, people leave mainly for economic reasons. The average Somali doesn’t move to Sweden to “flee war”, they move for an easier, better and more comfortable life. The “war” framework is literally buying into the leftist idea that they are legitimate refugees.
During the entire history of global colonialism countries routinely invaded, conquered, sacked and otherwise reassembled the affairs of countless other countries (including much of the Middle East) with zero mass immigration to Europe. You can just say “no”. Dick Cheney didn’t make Sweden the “humanitarian superpower”. He didn’t make Angela Merkel say “wir schaffen das”. China doesn’t have all of Burma and Mongolia walk in because people know there’s no hope there and they will be returned.
The most expensive outlay in the War on Terror (the Iraq invasion) was a humanitarian success. Certainly there were issues (like the brief ISIS thing) and there is a good case to be made that it was a bad deal fiscally for the US (I agree with this assessment), but Iraq today is far more prosperous than it was in 2003. Dollar denominated GDP is up over 1000% (so in real terms), GDP per capita is up 4x even though oil has been in a slump since 2014 (indicating again real economic growth rather than just higher resource revenues). Baghdad is a boomtown now.
It isn't a universal law that invading a country will create a refugee crisis but both Libya and Syria were dams holding back the tide. Gaddafi quite explicitly said as much, and it's become abundantly clear that he wasn't lying. Unless the Europeans are willing to sink migrant boats by the thousands and let them all drown then simply "saying no" is about as effective as a 5'2 woman "saying no" to a 7' felon. Furthermore, overthrowing these regimes created an enormous power vacuum that created chaos in neighboring countries too. For example, the Sahel only became a hotbed of terrorism after Gaddafi fell and his weapons were smuggled over to the local Al Qaeda affiliates.
Yeah if you brush over the brutal sectarian conflict and ISIS to only look at per capita GDP then it looks great.
West Germany had higher per capita GDP in 1955 than Germany in 1935 too, are we to conclude that Hitler was a humanitarian success?
You won't need that much. If you kill couple of boats the rest won't set sail at all. And I think that with drone tech advancing so much - creating a solar powered unmanned submarine that will just ram them with private funding is feasible.
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