Exceptional: Why the World Needs A Powerful America - Book on Global Leadership & US Foreign Policy | Perfect for Political Science Students & International Relations Enthusiasts

Review Cheney Book, Exceptional 13 Sep 2015 *****This is an excellent book. The writing is clear and concise. The first historic part is a fun read, and I really liked the narrative writing style.The first 100 pages is a low resolution account of history as it pertains to the title of the book. “Yes,” they say, “America has been exceptional for centuries.” The Cheney’s recognize the mangling of historical teaching in our schools for the last two or three generations, thus exposing our children to a badly warped indoctrination regarding actual economic and social truths. The result is almost complete citizen ignorance of the factors driving our country over the last 350 years to the exalted heights of intelligence, wealth, and power unknown anywhere else in the world. By the same token, the vast majority of our people have not a clue regarding the way to get back to what made us so exceptional in the first place. The authors write of many instances where the United States, generally alone in the leadership and handling of crisis was able to rectify horrendous conditions all over the world, raising the prospects of millions. They point out how our leadership used to recognize that our own security depended on stopping those powerful forces gone rogue. They, too, see how our exceptionalism is being purposefully relegated to the dust bin of history.The next 100 pages are mostly a catalog of sins concerning Barrack Obama’s purposive damage to our own military and friendly countries around the world. They also point to some of the times Obama has materially helped our enemies. Those of us closely watching the Washington shenanigans since Obama’s election notice the author’s holding back on uncounted counter-productive incidents by the president that are so well known. The authors could easily have added other incidences of at least one or two more orders of magnitude greater in number, including law breaking and the purposeful attack on our energy sector. Perhaps they gave Obama a pass because the aim of the book is to show our exceptionalism in progress, and less so our exceptionalism in error.I was not surprised to see a vilification of Dick Cheney in Amazons Book Reviews that exceeded even that of Richard Nixon in times past. Most of our citizens have been affected by the propaganda by Cheney’s political enemies who have owned the electronic and print media for a good part of the last half century. I hope the Cheney’s are not disheartened by such gullibility and lack of critical thinking in those diatribes accepted by so much of our citizenry. Many those citizens today are dedicated to the kind of thinking that is bringing about the destruction of our country. They will need to experience a lot of pain before anything in this book will change their minds. As in the case of the long dead Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex in the mid 1,500’s, historians of the future will eventually detect such political vilification excesses and recognize the patriotism and dedication shown by Dick Cheney’s career in a leadership position.