War & Peace Quote by Dick Cheney

Cheney’s genius here is bureaucratic: he turns fear into a durable policy product. The phrase “from our perspective” sounds modest, even procedural, but it quietly claims authority over reality itself. If you accept the premise that their “perspective” is the governing lens, dissent becomes not disagreement but misperception.

Then comes the tell: “if you will.” It’s a conversational shrug stapled to “campaign of terror,” softening the escalation while still landing it. Cheney isn’t merely describing a threat; he’s normalizing an idea that will outlive any single attacker or battlefield. “Continuing enterprise” is corporate language—an operation with budgets, timelines, contractors, and an implied permanence. He doesn’t say emergency. He says ongoing business.

The subtext is a political logic built for endurance: if the war is continuous, extraordinary powers can be continuous. The enemy is defined not by a bounded state or a negotiated end point, but by a moving category: “people… still out there.” That vagueness is doing heavy lifting. It keeps the target set elastic, the horizon receding. You can’t measure victory against “still out there,” and that’s the point.

Context matters: post-9/11 America was primed for certainty and safety; Cheney offers certainty through indefinite action. It’s a rhetorical bridge from trauma to doctrine, converting a specific atrocity into an open-ended mandate. The language is calm, almost managerial—precisely because the stakes being smuggled in are enormous.