Darth Cheney is getting full marks for his media offensive against the 'liberal egghead' Obama. The mission the Sith Lord decided to accept is to force the former law professor onto the ropes of alleged foreign policy naivete. Darth apparently makes 44 nervous, because he is dancing to his right to avoid the onslaught. Cheney may be left swinging at the shadow of his own regime as 44 embraces preventative detention, supports domestic spying, resumes military commissions, extends the life of the Guantanamo gulag, slows withdrawal from Iraq, seeks a military victory in Afghanistan, and denies legal process to terror suspects held at US military installations there. (Have I left a flip-flop out?) It is a sad, but revealing commentary on the realities of American imperialism that an author of the immoral torture and detention policy which violates the law of nations receives a national media platform to espouse his strange apocalyptic fantasy, rather than answer under oath for his war crimes in a court of law. In the movie allegory the princess cogently observes, "So this is how democracy dies, to the sound of thunderous applause."[image: in Star Wars, Darth Sideous addresses the Galactic Senate.]