Richard Bruce Cheney, better known as Dick Cheney, was an important figure in the history of Republican politics and in the history of United States politics in general. Vice president for two terms under President George W. Bush, between 2001 and 2009, Cheney worked behind the scenes “to keep America safe” and do what he considered to be “the right thing.” He will be remembered for the decisive role he played in US military strategy and action.
Dick Cheney was chosen in 2001 by George W. Bush (son of President George HW Bush) to be vice president, due to his long ties with his family and his experience in politics. Decades later, and looking at history, the Republican is considered the main supporter of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and one of the architects of the so-called “war against terrorism”, following the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon (Department of Defense) in Washington.
It was, in fact, Cheney who took command while the head of state was away from Washington — Bush was visiting an elementary school in Florida at the time of the attack. “When the President got on the line, I informed him that the Pentagon had been hit and urged him to stay away from Washington. The city was under attack and the White House was a target. I understood that he didn’t want to appear to be running away, but he shouldn’t be present until we knew more about what was going on,” Cheney recalled in his memoir “In My Time,” published in 2011.
“I stayed up until the morning thinking about what the attack meant and how we should respond. We were in a new era and we needed an entirely new strategy to keep America safe. The first war of the 21st century would not simply be a conflict between nations, between armies. It would, above all, be a war against terrorists who operated in the shadows, feared no deterrence and would use any weapon they could get to destroy us.”
The 9/11 attack changed the way the Bush administration (and the world) looked at national security. Congress then approved the Patriot Act (Patriotic Law, in a free translation), so that the Government could collect as much information as possible about the perpetrators of the attack. As soon as they discovered that it had been perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden, the Armed Forces were sent to Afghanistan, where the Islamic terrorist organization was known to be operating with the permission of the Taliban. Hundreds of suspects were captured and placed in prisons at a Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.