> Upon his re-entry into politics, Cheney received a $35 million retirement package from oil services firm Halliburton, which he had run from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton became a leading government contractor during the Iraq war.
> Theres a high level of dislike for him probably justly earned.
Pretty much. At the same time, he didn't blow it all up. Cheney sits in the same class as figures like Kissinger. You can view them as Machiavellian overlords doing terrible things in pursuit of their personal agendas, sure.
But those agendas turn out... maybe not to be so terribly terrible in hindsight? I'm not saying the Iraq war wasn't a terrible mistake or that the end result of the fighting in Vietnam was worth the horrifying suffering of its people. But the post-war and post-cold-war USA hegemony was defined by a single nation with a strong executive able to wield these terrible powers to terrible effect, with really very little check on its external (or internal) actions.
And, again, they didn't blow it all up. And I think that counts for something. Especially in the current climate where we're looking at a much less temperate regime actively trying to blow it all up.
I guess I'm saying that I'd trust Cheney with the buttons and levers and know that my kids could fix what he broke. I'm not so confident now.
I think people disagree with you because you take the position that, because the worst that could happen (I'm assuming nuclear war or something else "unrecoverable"?), those people are not that bad. This is a bad faith argument, because the lower end of your badness scale is pretty much unrealistic. What has been unrecoverable in human history up to now? Does that mean that no person/ideology has been "terribly terrible"?
Your debating style in your thread is also very patronising, which doesn't help.
If you fail to see the perspective of all those killed, or of the whole of the Middle East region, but only choose to see it from the point of view of the US or humanity as a species, then of course you're right.
> you take the position that [...] those people are not that bad.
I genuinely can't see where you get this except by deliberately misconstruing. I'm saying that "bad" is a nuanced position, and that we (collectively, including all the oppressed groups you're imagining) got through the last century or so in a much better position than we might have had the leaders we picked (yes, including Cheney) been more reflective of the ones ruling the rest of the world.
> If you [...] see it from the point of view of [...] humanity as a species, then of course you're right.
Well... yeah? It sounds like you're admitting to some nuance, but want it not to reflect the world we actually live in? Well... it does.
Your argument seems to be that Cheney's culpability for hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, trillions of wasted dollars, and multiple regime changes in the Middle East were all kind of OK because they [checks notes] didn't end global US hegemony?
That's an incredibly Machiavellian take, on par with Alex Karp justifying the building of SkyNet/1984 because we can't lose our global leadership position.
The "checks notes" thing is a marker that you're about to argue with a straw man. Don't do that here, please.
The root cause of the terrible stuff you (and I) cite, is that the US has terrible power. Cheney used a little of that power to do terrible things, as did Kissinger. But notably neither attempted to create a circumstance where the ultimate authority over the use of that power rested anywhere other than with the American electorate. When it turned out that Americans wanted to do something different, they walked out the door and handed over the keys, peacefully and happily.
Things can go much, much worse. And in particular we're currently looking at a regime that seems decidedly unwilling to hand over the keys.
> The "checks notes" thing is a marker that you're about to argue with a straw man. Don't do that here, please.
It's a marker that your argument is so unbelievable, I had to go back and read it again to make sure I got it right.
> But notably neither attempted to create a circumstance where the ultimate authority over the use of that power rested anywhere other than with the American electorate.
Cheney famously lied to Congress and the American people about the pretext for the Iraq War. He is also most famous for unprecedented expansion of executive power. He launched multiple wars without Congressional approval, which is also unconstitutional.
> When it turned out that Americans wanted to do something different, they walked out the door and handed over the keys, peacefully and happily.
First of all, they stole the election from Gore. Gore was certainly partly to blame for folding so easily, but the GOP candidate's brother being the governor of Florida and manipulating the election is not a small factor in that "victory".
Second, "the next guy did something even more terrible" is not tantamount to "maybe not to be so terribly terrible in hindsight," as you put it.
When the US hegemony and (likely) the free world fall, we won't be able to trace it to a single act. It will have happened because of many unforgivable acts, many of which were effected by the Bush administration (including stealing the election from Gore and their horrendous SCOTUS appointments).
Nope, I got it. You were arguing that (an attempt at) ending the US republic is objectively worse than abusing it to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, to the point that Cheney can be viewed in retrospect as not that bad in comparison.
If and when the current regime succeeds at ending the republic, I would be willing to entertain that debate, especially considering that good things never come from an unpopular coup. But at this point, based on actual results, there is no one so much worse than Cheney that we can become nostalgic for Cheney.
just so you know this means you are pro-Cheney. the untold human suffering caused by those wars was in service of the system you are glad he didn't "blow up"
When I was younger I used to make the mistake that others had the same bit of humanity as me even if it wasn't obvious, that it must of existed somewhere within them. Then I learnt to accept that some people just suck and there isn't anything you can do about it. The only thing you can do is distance yourself from them.
If you must reduce the argument so far, then sure.
Khan and Caesar brought peace to millions. Life is complicated. But some worlds are worse than others, and Dick Cheney's actions sit solidly in the middle of the pack. They're part of the universe of discourse and action that the rest of us can live with and recover from. Not all leaders fit that mold.
Not to nerd out too much, but this is HN so it's probably OK. The Pax Romana/Mongolica concepts have wide support in academia. Unified government under despotic colonial powers was indeed the source of the immense social progress, and we simply have to treat with that. In fact, the rapid expansion of cross-eurasian trade under Mongol rule is arguably the proximate cause of the European renaissance, concentrating wealth in Italian trade centers designed to exploit the availability of those goods.
Does that make them good people or me a Yuan dynasty apologist? No. But it makes the world complicated and not well suited to the kind of quips that you're flinging at Cheney.
Again, we could do a lot worse. We may already have.
so, the wikipedia articles you shared show that pax romana and pax mongolica fostered trade. is increased trade worth genocide and mass slavery? I would lean to no but actually, you're comparing apples and oranges. why are you doing that?
nice job slipping "social progress" into your argument. I wonder what your sources actually say?
> Romans regarded peace not as an absence of war, but as a rare situation which existed when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist
I suspect that they were not lobbying to end any of these wars and were profiting greatly off of soldiers deaths.
Theres a high level of dislike for him probably justly earned.