“After the 9/11 attacks… Vice President Cheney instantly recognized the abject failure of the decade-long strategy of treating jihadist terrorism as a mere crime problem to be dealt with by prosecution in the civil courts. He was the most energetic force in inducing the nation to move to a war footing… This was a deeply controversial strategy at the time…

“Yet, nearly a quarter century later, there has been no recurrence of 9/11 (despite tireless jihadist plots and threats). Our security, particularly the sharing of intelligence across the military, the intelligence community, and our domestic security services is night-and-day superior to where we stood at the turn of the century… Naturally, when there were excesses, as there inevitably are in war, he caught the slings and arrows. But he understood that security was elemental to a free, flourishing society.”

‍Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review

Some argue, “His highpoint was serving as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War when America repelled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. But Cheney and his aides, including Paul Wolfowitz, became obsessed with the idea of toppling Saddam himself from power. This idee fixe led Cheney to empower the neocons after 9/11, when America failed to capture Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and instead focused its effort on concocting a fictitious case for war in Iraq…  

“Cheney and his cohort succumbed to paranoia, seeking to tie Saddam by whatever means necessary to the attack on the Twin Towers. This was fantasy. But it issued in a war that turned into a debacle. At the summit of their power and influence the neocons were discredited by a bungled crusade to implant democracy in the arid soil of the Middle East.”
Jacob Heilbrunn, Spectator World