Forever Wars: Dick Cheney and Dayton

Photo via White House Gallery

Michael Oliss | News Editor

Former Vice President and Haliburton CEO Dick Cheney died on Nov. 3 at 84 years old. He was known as one of the most controversial figures in modern American history due to his incredible power and wartime authority.

Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, saw a dramatic surge in Pentagon contracts after 2003, raising serious questions about conflicts of interest. The Guardian reported Cheney was still paid by the oil and fracking company even as he was making military decisions as VP.

By now, his life story is widely known. What is less understood is how profoundly Cheney shaped the history, foundation, and economy of Dayton. Like the wars he helped lead, the changes were lasting.

To understand the scope of his influence, we must go back in time—before “terrorism” was a household term, before “WMDs” and “they hate us for our freedom.” This is a brief history of how Cheney’s wartime actions shaped modern Dayton.

Dayton Before Conscription

In 2000, Dayton was struggling. Once a powerhouse of industry and innovation, the city had seen National Cash Register relocate to Atlanta, General Motors’ Moraine plant fall into disrepair, and residents move to Cincinnati and Columbus for better opportunities. Downtown storefronts sat empty, and Dayton’s middle class had largely vanished.

At the city’s edge, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base loomed. It had fewer than half of the employees that it does today. The lights stayed off at night. Since the Cold War ended, work had dried up for Wright-Patt. By then, it was better known for the museum it houses. Still, it was the only thing nationally relevant about Dayton in 2000.

During the Cold War, Wright-Patt drove the Dayton economy alongside GM, NCR, and other major employers. When Cold War funding disappeared, the city became increasingly dependent on the base. Without the Cold War, Wright-Patt’s influence waned, and Dayton faced an economic identity crisis.

In short: Dayton’s fortunes historically followed the rhythms of war. Less war meant less money; more war meant opportunity.

Then, on a clear September morning in New York, everything changed.

The Conscription of a City

Televisions in every diner, dorm, and classroom replayed the unimaginable: the September 11th Terrorist Attacks. Everyone remembers where they were. Everyone knows what happened.

Wright-Patt went on lockdown. UD paused classes. President George Bush became the first U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt to lead the nation through an attack on American soil. Right next to him, Vice President Dick Cheney quietly contemplated what was to come — for America, for Al Qaeda, and for himself. While America grieved as the shocking pictures and videos came to light, Dick Cheney looked to the future before anyone else knew what was happening.

Inside the Oval Office, Bush’s team struggled to determine a response. According to former officials, Cheney took decisive action, coordinating defense from the Presidential Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House.

Immediately after the attacks, Cheney, on his own, authorized the military to shoot down hijacked aircraft — an order that normally required the president’s direct approval. This was the start of his extraordinary wartime authority.

The attacks gave the Bush administration a moral and literal blank check. Cheney recognized the opportunity to reshape the U.S. economy around sustained military engagement. Dayton, long tied to war-driven industries, was poised to benefit.

Dayton’s War on Terror

From Washington, the flow of federal money began — a trillion-dollar artery pumping into cities that could serve the new mission. Dayton was perfectly positioned to become the pivotal cog in Cheney’s newly created war machine. Wright-Patt alone accounted for more than $15 billion in economic activity in the Dayton region, according to a 2019 Dayton Development Coalition study.

The base expanded rapidly. Budgets increased, research centers multiplied, and missions now included advanced R&D, logistics, and intelligence analysis.

Defense contractors followed the money to Dayton. Sierra Nevada, Leidos, and Booz Allen set up satellite operations. UD’s Research Institute, which was dwindling at the time, quietly became one of the nation’s largest defense R&D entities. Even private manufacturers pivoted — the hollowed-out factories of defunct automakers transitioned to the real money-makers: bombs, guns, missiles, and other things a land invasion of the Middle East would require.

The city’s economy roared back to life following America’s invasion of Afghanistan. Dayton, historically reliant on war, was back to its golden age of benefiting from new Cold War hysteria, proxy wars, and war-mongering politicians.

Local news said Dayton was going through a revitalization. In reality, it was the conscription of an entire city to fight a war that would last 20 years, result in hundreds of thousands dead, and a reconquering of Afghanistan by the Taliban as soon as America withdrew in 2021.

As wars expanded to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, each new front meant another flow of contracts. Another round of grants. Another expansion at Wright-Patt. Every explosion overseas sent an echo of opportunity through the Miami Valley. Dayton didn’t need to send soldiers; it only had to keep the machines running. Local universities — including UD — partnered with the Department of Defense as the region became increasingly intertwined with foreign wars.

The money arrived quietly and constantly. The war’s geography spanned continents, yet its economic gravity always circled back to American soil — to places like Dayton.

The local economy had been rewired. The civic bloodstream now pulsed with Pentagon contracts. Wright-Patt became the city’s sun; everything else orbited around it. The workforce that once built cash registers and car doors now built the hardware and software of endless war.

After the Forever Wars

9/11 and the wars that followed initially bolstered the Bush administration and were a major factor in George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. According to Gallup, Bush’s approval rating hovered between 40 and 50 percent in 2001, but directly after the attacks, it jumped to 90 percent. It remains the highest approval rating of any president in US history.

By the end of the Iraq War, Dayton’s economic interest was tied less to victory than to continuity. Peace meant layoffs; ceasefires meant smaller budgets. Compared to other Ohio cities, including Toledo, Cincinnati, and Akron, Dayton fared surprisingly well during the recession of Bush’s second term. In this sense, the War on Terror became as much an economic operating system as a military campaign. Dayton prospered, often quietly, from each expansion of military engagement and its associated funding.

Today, you can measure Cheney’s legacy in the Dayton skyline: the research towers, the aerospace offices, the quiet comfort of a community tied to the most profitable lost wars in U.S. history.

No one here declared war. No one here dropped bombs. But the region’s prosperity now rests on the assumption that someone, somewhere, will always need one.