Lights and shadows of Dick Cheney, the man who devised the “war on terror” and the internal persecution after 9/11

His death has returned to the American headlines the photo of the “most powerful vice president” in the country’s history and one of the most controversial due, precisely, to his role as architect of United States foreign policy after the attacks of September 11, 2001; when terrorists Al Qaeda They hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The fourth, it should be remembered, ended up crashing into the ground in a field after the passenger tried to regain control of the device. Their two possible destinations were the White House and the Capitol.

That day not only left thousands of dead; It also put Washington on a war footing. And there was Cheney, named vice president of George W. Bush months before and someone willing to lead the nation thanks to the reputation for efficiency – of “someone who knows how to do things” – that he had within that time. Republican Party.

And that is why he will be remembered. For his defense of the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001 and, above all, for his defense of the invasion of Irak in 2003 arguing that the regime Saddam Hussein He had links with Al Qaeda (not true) and kept weapons of mass destruction (not true either).

An invasion, the latter, that many Americans were quick to consider both a strategic and humanitarian disaster – it claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, generated millions of refugees and cost around two trillion dollars – and which explains, in part and in the opinion of many experts, the rise to power of isolationist figures such as Donald Trump.

“He was not only the main architect of the war against terrorism,” he wrote Gregg CarlstromMiddle East correspondent for the magazine The Economistafter learning of his death “A direct line can be drawn between the wars and the unaccountable executive power that he promoted and the current political disaster we are experiencing in the United States.”

His confidence in all those war adventures drank, in part, from the successful Gulf War that the United States fought a decade earlier. That is: in 1991. After Iraqi forces invaded and annexed (by force) Kuwait and all its oil reserves. The Americans, at the head of an international coalition made up of thirty countries, managed to expel the Iraqis from the small emirate. Cheney, as US Secretary of Defense, was one of those responsible for the operation.

An anti-Trump ending

Domestically, Cheney will be remembered for greatly expanding the federal government’s powers to investigate, surveil and detain American citizens following the Al Qaeda attack. He did it under the pretext of ensuring national security. A decision that opened the ban on countless secret courts, wiretapping without a court order, the indefinite detention of suspects without hearings or charges and, also, interrogation methods that evaded the prohibitions on torture established in the Geneva Conventions.

Although there were protests, Cheney was firm and managed to keep those changes in place.

“He systematically defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition used in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11,” the agency said. Associated Press this Tuesday in his obituary. “He was not a supporter of transparency in government and was a great defender of the expansion of executive power,” he also wrote this Tuesday. Liz Wolfemagazine editor Reason.

Suffering from coronary problems for most of his adult life, Cheney suffered five heart attacks between 1978 and 2010 and had been wearing a device to regulate his heart rhythm since 2001. Then, in 2012, three years after retiring from politics, he underwent a successful heart transplant.

His public career could have stopped there, but in recent times he surprised everyone by stating that he would vote for the vice president. Kamala Harrisof the Democratic Partyin the 2024 elections. He stated this after defining Trump as “inept” and “a serious threat” to American democracy.

That announcement echoed a previous one launched by his daughter, Liz Cheneywho after having been a Republican Party congressman from Wyoming broke with Trump after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol perpetrated by his followers. She also stated that she would vote for Harris.