Conceived as a way to reestablish American power abroad and expand the power of the presidency at home, the war has also had the ancillary (and perhaps intended) effect of more or less permanently raising the price of oil, further enriching the family and friends of Cheney and George W. Bush.
Interestingly, none of these things translate into any tangible or measurable benefit on the ground in Iraq, nor do they have to: domestic and international politics and the commodities markets are all largely imaginary to begin with, with values and valuations determined as much by the psychology of those trading in them as by the facts of people’s lives or the real scarcity or demands for goods. One could argue that deposing Saddam Hussein is a measurable boon, but the lack of progress—and the lack of clear definitions of what progress even is in Iraq—since then obviates the decisive victories early on. One could easily counter that initial success in Iraq meant anything at all even then, as it posited no clear alternative. It was merely an exercise in American military might, the “Shock and Awe” doctrine developed by Colin Powell during the first Gulf War a decade-and-a-half before. But that was enough for Cheney, pointing out even more clearly the imaginary nature of the conflict: Cheney envisions a world much like that of the Cold War, except that “Islamo-fascists” replace “Godless Russkies” as the arch-enemy on the world stage. In this imaginary world, the enemy responds to like threats with like actions: if the US had a hydrogen bomb, then the Soviet Union had to have one too. If the Soviets had ICBMs, then the US had to develop its own arsenal.
But, of course, Islamic militancy is not like the Soviet Union: it does not have a singular political ideology; indeed, the Sunni/Shi’ia split in Iraq shows that it doesn’t even have a single theological standpoint, and probably shouldn’t even be referred to in the singular. Unlike the Soviets, militant Islamic elements have no single nation-state to secure and defend. The notion of a caliphate from Malaysia to Morocco that a few extremist clerics espouse is itself imaginary. For the most part, Muslim extremists don’t act as if they wish to convert us or control us, rhetoric notwithstanding; they act as if they seek revenge for past wrongs and want us to leave them alone, the suicide bombing not being the world’s most effective form of evangelism.
The war’s imaginary nature is part of the reason Cheney continues to claim that we can reach “victory” in Iraq. At least two of Cheney’s objectives have already been achieved. As far as he is concerned, these objectives were completed even before the first shot was fired when Congress granted Bush unprecedented domestic powers and oil prices began to rise in the leadup to the war. The actual invasion was a mere manifestation of these goals.
This is also why Cheney especially seems to view the American people’s support for the war as largely a problem in public relations, not a reaction against a seemingly pointless waste of human life and national wealth. Cheney continues to try to spin it on the Sunday morning talk shows because, to him, it only really amounts to spin: the war itself is an act of propaganda, an attempt to create in the minds of the rest of the world a world already envisioned in Dick Cheney’s own. What happens on the ground—who dies and who lives, what gets destroyed, how much oil really flows or fails to—doesn’t matter as long as the rest of the world begins to believe that what happened in Iraq, shining success or abysmal fiasco, could also happen to them. “Power,” as he understands it as an adjunct to fear, is restored either way.
That Cheney can also genuinely think—if he thinks at all—that the traumatized veterans, their brains addled and their limbs gone, have sacrificed themselves lovingly for this man’s vision, is the truly tragic, and very real, end.