Do you remember the exact moment when Dick Cheney earned the moniker ‘Darth Cheney’?
On September 16, 2001, Vice President Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and talked about what it will take to deal with the terrorism threat: “…We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world,” Cheney said. “A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion …”
In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, while trying to coerce his son Luke Skywalker into becoming his apprentice, Vader tells him to “know the power of the dark side.” Within the theology of the Star Wars universe, ‘The Dark Side’ is a force of nature that can be tapped through the channeling of all strong emotions, including love. In Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Yoda warns a young Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) that he is at risk of going over to The Dark Side: “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.”
There is no doubt that fear is what led Darth Vader to eventually embrace The Dark Side. And it appears that Dick Cheney, who was never a shrinking violet, was led down the same path by the events of September 11, 2001. In response to the terrorist attacks, Cheney developed the One Percent Doctrine, as Ron Suskind has explained:
“Even if there’s just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty. It’s not about ‘our analysis,’ as Cheney said. It’s about ‘our response.’ … Justified or not, fact-based or not, ‘our response’ is what matters. As to ‘evidence,’ the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn’t apply.”
The One Percent Doctrine isn’t rational. It’s based in a fear that overwhelms reason, leads to hatred, and results in suffering. In Star Wars theology, it would also bring about what it was intended to prevent. Vader initially went over to The Dark Side in an effort to prevent his wife from dying in childbirth. However, Vader’s own actions cause his wife to lose the will to live, and she dies after giving birth to the twins, Luke and Leia.
You can take Star Wars analogies too far, but the post-9/11 efforts to secure the nation and protect our way of life led this country to betray its principles: on torture, on habeas corpus, on not starting wars of aggression, on protection from unreasonable searches, etc. Cheney’s efforts (which were endorsed by the Boy Emperor) brought about much that they were ostensibly designed to prevent.
As the Senate Intelligence Committee reviews Cheney’s detention and interrogations programs, they would do well to keep these grand moral dimensions in mind.
As for Cheney, he should remember that Vader redeemed himself in the end. Maybe Cheney was just a bedwetter. Maybe his cowardice led him into evil. Maybe moral courage can lead him back before he dies.