Echoes of power

The death last week of former US Vice President Dick Cheney preceded Iraq’s parliamentary election, the seventh since the 2003 US war which was championed by Cheney. The coincidence has prompted some Washington pundits to examine his controversial career and malign legacy. Others wrote of his rise to become the most powerful vice president in US history (2002-2009) after serving as President Gerald Ford’s chief-of-staff in the 1970s, a member of the US House of Representatives and defence secretary during the 1991 Gulf war and the US invasion of Panama. A staunch Republican, he made his name as the architect of the defunct US “war on terror” following the Sep. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

This war’s initial operations were launched in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban and al-Qaeda were based. These operations were expanded into blameless Iraq and continued until 2011, with follow up operations until 2021 and in Afghanistan until the US complete withdrawal in 2021. The results of US interventions were a decade of deadly chaos in Iraq and US defeat in Afghanistan by the Taliban which continues its oppressive rule of that country.

Cheney was among neo-conservatives who founded the Project for the New American Century calling for US global leadership and pressed George W Bush’s administration to wage war on Iraq in 1991. As defence secretary he directed the United States invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East in 1991. Cheney urged the US to attack Iraq in 2003 on the false claims that Baghdad possessed banned weapons of mass destruction and had close ties to al-Qaeda. These accusations were meant to justify that war on Iraq. It was argued by pro-Israeli officials that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had prevented the Arabs from making peace with Israel. The spurious slogan became: the route to Arab peace with Israel led through Baghdad.

Writing in Middle East Eye, Mohamed Elmasry stated, “Cheney’s role in the invasion of Iraq is arguably his most consequential criminal act.” Elmasry quoted public intellectual Noam Chomsky who “argued that the war constituted ‘the deadliest act of aggressive warfare in our century, and a strong candidate for the worst crime committed in the last 30 years.’”

Cheney’s war created a decade of unrest in Iraq, the core country of the Eastern Arab World, where al-Qaeda affiliate Daesh rose and seized control of Mosul in northern Iraq and areas of northern Syria. This compelled the US to belatedly form a coalition to defeat Daesh (2014-2019) although its remnants continue to haunt the desert areas between Syria and Iraq and attack troops and civilians.

Elmasry also cited reliable sources who said the Iraqi death toll was half a million and Brown University which reported that the occupation of Iraq and “war on terror” killed more than 4.5 million people. This accounts for one million violent deaths and 3.5 million indirect deaths. The wars also killed 7,000 US troops and 8,000 contractors, according to Brown’s study

Cheney was partly responsible for establishing US use of torture and enforced disap-pearance programmes as tools of the “war on terror.” He was associated with the Patriot Act, the Associated Press reported. This enabled the government to “spy on its own citizens,” the American Civil Liberties Union charged. This law allowed the government to seize private phone and computer records without judicial warrants. Favouring business over the planet’s health Cheney also undermined and reduced measures to reduce greenhouse gases.

Cheney was an armchair warrior. He received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, four as he was attending university. However, he was expelled from Yale and flunked out of the University of Wyoming. His fifth deferment, granted in January 1966, was a “hardship” deferment for having a child or for causing hardship to dependents. This kept him from being drafted until he turned 26 in January 1967. By then it was too late.

While in office, Cheney paved the way for the authoritarian presidency of Donald Trump. Cheney believed the 1973 War Powers Act limited the president’s power to declare war without the permission of Congress. He argued the president should have the right to act effectively when faced with a challenge to national security. This doctrine is now being used by Trump to justify attacks on ships off Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal drugs to the US.

A life-long Republican, Cheney said in 2022, “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than [Republican] Donald Trump.” Cheney made this surprising statement after his daughter legislator Liz Cheney, joined nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Cheney stated. Democrat Joe Biden was elected.

Photo: TNS