The man who believed that there was no limit to presidential power

One of the first pieces in the NRCarchive in which Dick Cheney figured, dates from December 4, 1990. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army had occupied Kuwait and the rest of the world is struggling with the question of what to do: impose sanctions or intervene militarily. In a hearing for the then Secretary of Defense before the US Senate, the then NRC correspondent noted that Cheney “said that military action offers a more certain outcome than a long-term embargo.”

It’s a simple summary of former Vice President Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney’s simple political beliefs that Monday at the age of 84 died. He believed that American supremacy was the panacea for geopolitical problems. It was a fellow Republican who put the minister into perspective in the same hearing. “History is littered with the bones of soldiers who thought they were going to fight a short war,” said Senator William Cohen.

It would fall on deaf ears. A month and a half later, President George HW Bush launched Operation Desert Storm, which wiped Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. This virtually painless victory for the US strengthened Cheney’s belief that military intervention was an efficient means. Only President Bush was stupid, Cheney thought, not to have finished the war by overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The series of wars that Cheney subsequently helped instigate would keep American troops away from home for approximately twenty years, cost the lives of almost 7,000 American soldiers and more than 800,000 people, including 335,000 civilians, according to an estimate from the Costs of War project from Brown University.

The geopolitical damage caused by the duo of President George W. Bush Jr. and Vice President Cheney has proven to be even more extensive. The Middle East has remained a hornet’s nest. Islamic State managed to build a terrorist state on the ruins of post-Saddam Iraq, but the movement was never completely defeated. And because the second invasion of Iraq (in 2003) was kicked off with a blatant lie by the US government – about weapons of mass destruction that Saddam did not appear to possess – the US’s credibility with its allies shriveled.

How did Cheney himself look back on those achievements? The documentary The World According to Dick Cheney (2013) starts with a list of questions that the ex-vice president does not find difficult. Favorite virtue? “Integrity.” What do you appreciate most in your friends? “Honesty.” Your favorite food? “Spaghetti.” What do you see as your main mistake? “My biggest mistake…” Cheney hesitates. “Um. I don’t usually spend that much time on my mistakes.” Another quote from Cheney: “If you want to be popular, become a movie star.”

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Most hated politician

Cheney was not popular. The sharp disagreements over Donald Trump have somewhat clouded the view of politics before him, but Dick Cheney was once the most hated politician in the United States. He was called the Prince of Darkness or Darth Vader, after the iconic villain Star Wars. “It doesn’t matter,” his wife reportedly told him. “It makes you more human.” When he left as vice president in early 2009, a paltry 13 percent of Americans gave him a passing grade.

And why would they give him a higher grade? In February 2007, journalist Wil Hylton summarized the sins of Dick Cheney in an article he styled an impeachment request. “He has been dishonest and deceitful and has consciously tried to undermine American democracy.”

That wasn’t a bad summary. Cheney had one mission: the American president should not be hindered by democratic delays in taking a stand against the outside world, whether it was the communists of his youth or the Muslims in his political heyday. The fact that his daughter and Republican representative Liz Cheney grew from a fierce Trump critic to a defender of democracy after the Capitol storming of January 6, 2021, shows how much it has come under even more pressure during the Trump years.

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As a student, Cheney was forced to drop out of the prestigious Yale University because he devoted most of his time to his “belief that beer was one of the essentials of life,” as he put it in his autobiography In my time describes. He would also not complete his studies at the university in his home state of Wyoming. He started working as a technician, climbing electricity poles to hang cables. This taught him two things, he later wrote: perfecting your skill and being proud of your work.

Cheney also wrote that during that time he was arrested twice for driving under the influence and ended up in jail. In every polished biography, this is the moment when the main character picks himself up and chooses the right path. Cheney and his wife Lynn choose the path that leads to Washington and politics. He attends an orientation program for political assistants and is impressed by one of the speakers, Donald Rumsfeld, then a representative from Illinois. When Cheney applies for a job with the representative who is nine years older, he initially rejects him. When Rumsfeld later gets a job in the White House under President Nixon, Cheney still joins his service. A fateful collaboration is born.

The two conservatives remain connected by a thread throughout their careers. The couples Dick and Lynn and Don and Joyce also hang out outside of work. They take trips together, they fish together – Cheney’s favorite pastime. Thanks to Rumsfeld, Cheney eventually becomes chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. Cheney makes Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush. Together they will shape the American response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The ‘War on Terror‘ is their war, and it is as traumatizing for the United States as the Vietnam War. Society is torn apart by it and many presidents after that, up to Joe Biden in 2021, have to deal with its consequences.

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Legal obstacles

When Bush Jr. was looking for a candidate for vice president in the 2000 election year, the candidate, inexperienced in Washington politics, ended up with the ultimate insider Cheney. After his work for Nixon and Ford, Cheney served in the House of Representatives for eleven years, during which time he rose to become one of the leaders of the Republican Party. Under Bush Jr.’s father, Cheney was Minister of Defense and as such was closely involved in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. While the colorful generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell took the public credit for the lightning-quick victory, Cheney remained in the background.

Cheney initially says ‘no’ to Bush Jr., but is willing to look for the right candidate for him. Three months later he found it: himself. The fact that he had a top job at oil multinational Halliburton, that he was “really conservative”, as he himself said, are not obstacles to Cheney’s candidacy. At most, the fact that by that time he had already suffered several heart attacks and had three bypasses – a special circumstance for a vice president who, after all, is proverbially is just one heartbeat of the presidency. In 2012, Cheney would receive a new heart through a transplant.

Cheney made it clear to Bush in 2000 that he did not want a traditional vice presidency. “I will not become the man who goes to the funerals. I want to be a serious partner in decisions about domestic and foreign policy,” he says, according to the biography The Angler. The Bush-Cheney partnership is quickly qualified as one co-presidency.

Heritage

The strength of Cheney’s influence is evident from the Iraq war. While US intelligence agencies determine that Saddam Hussein was not hiding weapons of mass destruction or had ties to Al Qaeda, Cheney continues to steadfastly maintain that this is the case. The result: on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell, now Secretary of State, addresses the United Nations with ‘proof’ that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It’s a moment that Cheney and Rumsfeld have been pushing for. Some allies are persuaded by this to support the American invasion of Iraq, including the Netherlands led by Prime Minister Balkenende. Ultimately, the US can create a so-called coalition of the willing presenting 48 countries, including Micronesia, Mongolia and Eritrea. Allies such as France and Canada refuse to support the invasion.

The failure of the invasion soon becomes clear: the American troops find no weapons of mass destruction and the hastily constructed ‘democracy’ in Iraq never really comes to life. The decision to disband the Iraqi army appears to be fertile ground for the foundation of the IS caliphate.

Although the ultimate responsibility lay with President Bush, it was clear that his Vice President was the architect. Shortly before his retirement, Cheney said in 2008 that the invasion had been “the right decision” and that the interrogation methods that Americans had used on terrorist suspects, such as the infamous waterboardingwere not a form of torture. In doing so, he once again fully committed his signature to two cases that had seriously damaged American credibility in the world. That is the most important legacy of political player Dick Cheney.

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