The quintessential example of the military industrial complex.
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.
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.
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.
"Just so you know", as it were.
Whittington was hospitalized and later recovered. The incident became a major news story, partly because the White House delayed releasing details for nearly a day, raising questions about transparency. Cheney later called the event “one of the worst days of my life” and publicly accepted responsibility.
The shooting has since become one of the most remembered and parodied moments of Cheney’s vice presidency.
Thats real power.
It's a pretty stark difference depending on the political alignment. Scan the tone of these comments, and then scan Castro's for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886
Jack Welch is also another that didn't receive much love here:
(and he certainly was not as controversial or brutal as Castro)
He may have eventually have 'found religion':
> Regarding shareholder value, Welch said in a Financial Times interview on the 2008 financial crisis, "On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."[69]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics
However this was probably much later and when his image was less influential; his earlier career and fame probably really helped accelerate financialisation, and was probably never reset by his later opinions (partly because they may not have been as widely publicized).
Though on climate change:
> Welch identified politically as a Republican.[66] He stated that global warming is "the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn't bring", and that it is a form of "mass neurosis".[67] Yet he said that every business must embrace green products and green ways of doing business, "whether you believe in global warming or not ... because the world wants these products".[68]
* Ibid
Rather odd to see this quote coming from Welch, the man who almost single-handedly destroyed the notion that corporations had a duty to employees, and society at large first, and shareholder value coming as a result of those.
His actions, and management style completely defined the era of corporate behaviour we live since the 1980s: the layoffs, the carelessness on axing whole departments of companies which underperformed for a couple of quarters, only looking through short-term financials, all the focus on quarterly reports and financialisation of the economy come from his "teachings".
It was very hard for me to believe he uttered these words, rot in hell, Jack.
Pretty much sums up his HN death post, while you'll find mostly praise for Castro.
You'd think Welch executed and tortured people and Castro was a saint.
"Yeah his fingerprints are all over every bad policy decision of the era but at least he shot an old lawyer in the face"
Probably a lot of permanent D.C. types lost track of whether to lionize or demonize the man in public (they always loved him privately)
Oh, what a tangled web ...
Castro was in a foreign country I’ve never been to, and did most of his stuff before I was even born. His death was largely a realization that somebody from the history books had still been alive.
Cheney, in contrast, fucked with my home while I was an adult. He and his cabal did massive damage to my country very recently. I’m not going to make travel arrangements to visit his grave so I can piss on it, but I am tempted to.
Cheney was a war profiteer who engineered wars that killed at least hundreds of thousands and probably over a million people.
I'd say the assessments are accurate. [^0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
You forgot the mention the political prisoners, torture, executions, and the authoritarian regime overall.
Thousands have risked their lives trying to escape it.
The juxtaposition of the comments between Welch and Castro is appalling.
Cheney and Castro are closer in terms that they both caused unnecessary death, but one gets praise upon death, and the other condemnation.
How many glorifying top comments did you scroll through to find him being called evil?
Fidel Castro executed and tortured people.
Jack Welch fired some people.
The general sentiment towards Welch's death was very negative.
The general sentiment towards Castro's death was very positive.
Does that clear things up?
You can't be arguing in good faith as it's clear as day the general sentiment difference between the posts.
HW Bush was the exception, but he raised taxes and generally pissed everyone off.
W and Trump are a return to form. Vance (channeling Thiel) and Stephen Miller are running the actual show.
And yet, the same person has advocated and pushed for greater powers to the presidency increasing the risks of such individual threats.
It's no coincidence that in the list of countries in the last 50 years that drifted from democracies to authoritarianism the tier of those that succeeded (the likes of Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua, Philippines, Turkey) are ALL presidential republics.
Poland, Hungary, India, Israel, while not being shy of power hungry smart individuals? None of them is a presidential republic. The play in such countries is the party-state identification, where the party takes control of key institutions, press and in the right situation can also grab more. But it's never as simple or easy as in presidential republics.
In fact, I think that Sri Lanka is the last fully parliamentary democracy to shit into full authoritarianism, and that happened almost 50 years ago.
I can't but wonder whether US citizens realize that the constitution is dated, written for different times and with much less experience and lessons to learn from other democracies. It shows all the cracks of presidential democracies:
- constitutions where 2 or more branches of government can claim public mandate through elections (in US case president + congress) which unavoidably clash, for no greater good.
- hard to impeach/remove branch. Say what you want about many democracies in Europe for changing governments frequently, but you're always one single majority vote away from having to resign.
- cult of personality. Presidential republics, by electing an individual instead of a parliament/coalition are much more prone to personality cults.
US has all of those ingredients and Cheney made sure to make these problems worse.
roenxi•3h ago
ngetchell•2h ago
It was solely due to speaking out against Trump.
ecshafer•2h ago
zitsarethecure•2h ago
throw0101c•1h ago
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
willvarfar•1h ago
ecshafer•45m ago
paulryanrogers•2h ago
dekken_•2h ago
To me it seems an issue of individuals, rather than "parties".
paulryanrogers•2h ago
That said, there is one party that is consistently hawk-ish and boasts about war spending. And there is another party which most often campaigns on reducing war spending.
dekken_•2h ago
Edit: this comment was made before the person I was responding to edited their post to include the second line.
quitspamming•2h ago
Maybe if you only look at the war on terror years, but look at WWI and WWII and most recently Ukraine. Both parties love Pentagon spending when it's _their_ war.
watwut•1h ago
quitspamming•1h ago