Michael Knowles

There is nothing in principle wrong with the use of torture to get information from terrorists.

There's nothing in principle wrong with that at all.

There is something wrong with using torture against enemy combatants who are wearing uniforms and who are abiding by the Geneva Conventions, which exist to protect civilians in times of war.

But as Mark Thiessen pointed out famously a dozen or so years ago, if you extend Geneva Convention protections to terrorists, you entirely undermine the Geneva Convention because you are taking away any inducement that a terrorist might have not to target civilians.

There's nothing wrong with that.

And as Antonin Scalia famously pointed out with Leslie Stahl, while it might be wrong, immoral to use torture to punish somebody, there is nothing in principle wrong with using torture against a terrorist to extract information.

Because that wouldn't be cruel and unusual punishment.

It would be easily defensible.

Anyway, all of that to say, how should we think about Dick Cheney today?

I know he's very unpopular in the Republican Party right now after having been

unpopular by the end of Bush's second term, having been quite popular at the beginning of Bush's second term, having been one of the most popular men in America when he was Secretary of Defense under George Bush I. What I'm going to tell you, and this ties in directly with my Richard Nixon library talk last night,

There will be a day to come when the right loves Dick Cheney again.

There will be a day to come when Dick Cheney's kind of grisly tough talk about defending American interests will be really cool.

And it will get aura cuts on TikTok and the kids will think he's the Rizzler.

That will happen.

He will come back into fashion.

There will be wisdom that the American right and maybe the American left learns from Dick Cheney.

that will happen in much the same way that we have seen happen with Richard Nixon.

When I was a kid, frankly, until 10 years or so ago, Richard Nixon was a footnote at best in the history of conservatism.

He was an embarrassment at worst.