In April of 2025, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage died. Given that his was not a household name his death didn't receive a lot of coverage though most major outlets picked up the story. He had played an important role in the Bush administration serving as Colin Powell's #2. Previously he had held other second tier positions within Republican politics. He was probably best known for his connections to the Vietnam War. Armitage played a prominent role in the 2014 PBS film Last Days in Vietnam, as well as the 2025 Netflix Turning Point series on the war.
Hailed by many as heroic and even humanitarian, he was known for his activities during the evacuation of South Vietnam in 1975, and his role in the Valerie Plame scandal in 2003.
If you follow his post-naval career, it reads like the dossier of a CIA agent. Given that he was part of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam - a mass assassination and torture campaign run by the CIA, it's not implausible to believe this. This is despite his denials. And yet even well known CIA officers have suggested he was part of the Agency. He was at the very least a hardcore soldier doing three tours and while in country went native, dressing, speaking, and eating like a local. Everything about him screams special ops.
After 9/11, he acted in the role of enforcer, threatening Pakistan's Musharraf if he didn't cooperate with US stratagems vis-a'-vis Afghanistan.
He would in his later years oppose Donald Trump but worked assiduously for an administration that set the stage for Trump with its approach to Unity Executive power.
He also denied having any part in Iran-Contra even though his name comes up in connection to drug smuggling and other black-ops. During the same decade (the 1980's) he was also accused of Vietnam-era drug smuggling by both US and Burmese figures. This would also be in keeping with an Agency agenda connected to the secret war in Laos, its connection to the Golden Triangle, the CIA and outlets like Air America. Ultimately the lawsuits collapsed - a familiar enough story for those who have looked into similar issues and accusations.
Despite the couple of minor 'official' blemishes, this career criminal received overwhelming accolade. The Empire and its mouthpieces will always honour its heroes.
The same is true with Richard Cheney, the former Vice-President under George W Bush, Secretary of Defense under George HW Bush, and Chief-of-Staff under Gerald Ford. Many view Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as prime movers within the Ford administration in opposition to a figure like Kissinger (who stood for Detente), but more importantly they laboured to restore power to the Executive - as Congress had waxed bold in the wake of Watergate. This push for unitary executive power would come back into play during their time in the George W Bush administration.
Bush himself has lamented Cheney's death and suggested America has suffered a great loss, and undoubtedly the flags will all come down to half-mast in remembrance. And yet how soon the public forgets that Cheney was a militarist schemer who played a critical role in the farcical 1989 Panama Invasion and the 1991 and 2003 Iraq Wars - including the US genocide committed there throughout the 1990's and up to the 2003 invasion. Cheney was a key player in PNAC - the Project for a New American Century, the Neo-Conservative cabal that sought to secure American power by regime change and unitary executive action.
Corrupt at almost every turn, the former Halliburton CEO played a critical role in not just the Bush team's theft of the 2000 election, but the post-9/11 regime of kidnap, torture, assassination, and wars that would leave hundreds of thousand dead and would in turn spawn spin-off wars that would leave a larger death toll of well over a million. Cheney is rightly viewed as the most powerful Vice-President in American history and even before the 2000 election dispute was settled, he was already maneuvering behind the scenes - orchestrating the power structure within the incoming Bush administration. It was clear (even then) that he was running circles around his boss and would shape and steer the bumbling Bush.
He was a criminal and monster who should have spent his last days in a prison cell along with Bush and several other figures associated with the regime - a few of them having now died.
Instead he will be honoured and many Christians will play a part in this - curtailed only by the fact that he fell out so severely with Trump in light of his daughter's opposition to him - which led to her ousting from congress.
He lied with abandon to support his agenda, the wars, and policies he supported - and yet would later recoil at the presence of the serial liar Donald Trump and his unabashed abuse of power. It's rather ironic to say the least. Cheney's sneer ended up staring him in the face.
It was hard not to feel a degree of outrage at the death of Donald Rumsfeld in 2021 - something akin to Robert McNamara's death in 2009. These men were deceitful (and deluded) architects of barbarism and mass murder and did not deserve to die in peace. When Armitage died earlier this year, I made a note of it as a lot of memories flooded my mind. I was taken back to the 1990's and early 2000's and all the events of those years. When Cheney died today, it was too much and I spent a fair bit of the day remembering and reviewing all the evil of those now distant days (which seem like yesterday to me) and especially how I watched and witnessed so many Christians fall prey to the deceit.
It's yet another shame and disgrace that the United Methodist Church tolerated one such as Cheney. Rumsfeld professed to be Roman Catholic.
While many pitied Colin Powell (who died a few months after his antagonist Rumsfeld in 2021), I did not. In my book his reputation was sullied long before his absurd and discredited presentation at the UN in February 2003, which was used to further sell and justify the Iraq invasion the following month. Powell may have seemed the wise and restrained statesman by the Bush era, but he had already made his mark during Vietnam - as an advisor during the Kennedy years, and later as Chief of Staff for the 23rd Infantry Division. The My Lai Massacre was perpetrated by members of that command and Powell played a role in the attempted cover-up. Powell would later play his deceitful part in the 1983 Grenada Invasion, the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the Iran-Contra Scandal. After his tenure as National Security Advisor under Reagan, he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under GHW Bush and in that role played an important part in the murderous Panama invasion and the deceitful Gulf War. The one moral feather in his cap - his opposition to Madeleine Albright over the insertion of US military forces into Bosnia. This was in 1993 and when coupled with the growing Somalia debacle it would lead to his early resignation. But he remained engaged, playing his part in US interference in Haitian politics, and eventually landing in the Bush administration and as such he will be forever connected to the crimes (and WMD lies) associated with that era. He remained within the Episcopalian fold.
All these men have now stood before the Judgment Seat of God and have answered for their sins and for some, the false Christianity they embraced. While some professed to be Christians, it is abundantly clear (as our Lord stated in Matthew 7.15-23) that these men in fact were alienated from and hostile to New Testament Christianity. They were given over to idolatry and for them Christianity only had utility in so far as it affirmed and justified their worship of mammon and their service to the pseudo-Zion that is the American Empire. The shallow tarnished glory it offers is the only reward they will ever know. It should make us tremble and reflect. How easy it is to be deceived and to sell your soul.