As difficult as it may be, when assessing Cheney's actions [...], it's important to resist the temptation to blame it on Cheney's individual "evilness." While immensely fun, explaining Cheney's behavior as "evil" is too simple. More to the point, it reduces complex social phenomena to fairy-tale morality narratives. In the terrorism context for instance, words like "evil" are often lazy shortcuts that people use to avoid grappling with the complexities and structural causes of the problem.

Similarly, dismissing Cheney as "evil" is too easy. Cheney is not some one-time moral aberration, he is the product of deeper, more structural flaws in the American political system. For that reason, we can expect future Cheneys if these fundamental flaws aren't recognized and addressed.

— publius, "Cheney: Beyond Good and Evil"