Dark Lord Dick Cheney has passed away

There is a coincidental but very appropriate that the news of Dick Cheney’s passing on November 3 mingling closely in time with the very notable Democratic elections victories on November 4. Dick Cheney is responsible for more damage to democracy and the rule of law than almost anyone else. And the encouraging anti-Trump, anti-Republican voting gives real hope that democratic sentiments will succeed in beating back Trump’s drastic authoritarian turn.

A Mississippi Free Press story dramatizes the election news: (1)

Democracy Now! provides this 12-minute obituary report with a very appropriate title, "’The Dark Side’: Dick Cheney's Legacy from Iraq Invasion to U.S. Torture Program.” (2)

The “dark side” reference comes from Cheney’s arguably most notorious comment included in the first minute of the report.

We also have to work, sort of, the dark side if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows and in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies if we're going to be successful.

This “dark side” work included a gruesome. lawless torture program that added new words to the American vocabulary, like “Abu Ghuraib” and “extraordinary rendition.” The Cheney-Bush Administration created a gray zone – or, better put, a law-free zone - in the US-controlled Guantanamo Bay used for long-term imprisonment and torture of those imprisoned there with no due process.

Jane Mayer did an important book called The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (2008). She quotes Alberto Mora, who served as the General Counsel of the US Navy. Mora was called in by the head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) over concern about the torture program. Mayer wrote about Mora’s response when he looked at the evidence on the torture of a prisoner named Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantanamo:

Mora said, "l was appalled by the whole thing. lt was clearly abusive and assaultive. It was also clear it would get worse. It could lead to creep, where if the violence didn't work well, they would double it[.]",,,. In Mora's view, the state-sanctioned cruelty was also "clearly contrary to everything we were ever taught about American values."

Looking back, Mora believed that the media had focused too narrowly on allegations of U.S.-sanctioned torture. Waterboarding, in particular, was covered as the sine qua non of criminality. As he saw it, the authorization of cruelty was equally pernicious. "To my mind, there's no moral or practical distinction," he said. "If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. lt destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America-even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It's a transformative issue.' [my emphasis] (p. 219)

And the cruelty was the main point. And it was part of the purpose of the torture program was to acclimate the American public and Republican voters in particular to not only hearing about sadistic cruelty being inflicted on The Enemy, but celebrating it. Donald Trump is carrying forward that approach even an even more public way, with both his ICE raids deliberately directed primarily against Latinos and his public bragging about illegal attacks on fishing boats, completely with video of the killings.

The fraudulent justification for the Iraq War was also a major project of Dark Lord Cheney during his Vice-Presidency.

Cheney’s actions were in pursuit of a key project of his, one literally subversive of the US Constitution, which is known as the Unitary Executive theory, one which the current rightwing Supreme Court has accepted in large part. This essentially holds that the President is an elected dictator and can wield power as President as he or she sees fit. Michael Evans of the Times of London describes this theory and also talks about Cheney’s foreign policy: (3)

Dick Cheney and his similarly-minded daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, became very critical of Donald Trump’s government. It’s a safe assumption that a big reason, probably the main reason, was Trump’s obviously incompetent foreign policy that also departed (in Trump’s erratic way) from the rhetoric of neoconservative foreign policy militarism.

But there are few if any individuals that played a bigger role in paving the way for Trump’s authoritarian rule than Dick Cheney.

Notes:

(1) Mississippi Democrats Break Republican Senate Supermajority, Flipping 3 Legislative Seats. Mississippi Free Press 11/05/2025. <https://www.mississippifreepress.org/mississippi-democrats-break-republican-senate-supermajority-flipping-3-legislative-seats/> (Accessed: 2025-05-11).

(2) Democracy Now! YouTube channel 11/04/2025. <https://youtu.be/-hdtuu2QeC8?si=glANmS7vCZhvY7O4> (Accessed: 2025-05-11).

(3) Trump 'secretly probably admired Dick Cheney' despite vice-president condemning the MAGA movement. Times Radio YouTube channel 11/05/2025. <https://youtu.be/H7OXYK3p4GQ?si=jqxEyWVXywvlm9qR> (Accessed: 2025-05-11).