Thomas DiLorenzo writes:
Since I’m giving a talk on “The Curse of American Exceptionalism” next week at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey, I thought I should take a look at Dick Cheney’s new book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. Co-authored with his daughter Liz, it’s basically a 260-page bitch-fest about how the Obama administration has allegedly eviscerated the U.S. military. This of course is one gigantic lie, but not as big a lie as the one Cheney peddled to “justify” the invasion of Iraq. I”m not reviewing the book at this time, but only offering LRC readers a glimpse of what the Moral Conscience of the Republican Party would like the next Republican President to do in terms of foreign policy. Here is a small sampling of some of Cheney’s suggestions from a latter chapter entitled “Restoring American Power”:
“Repeal the Budget Control Act” in order to spend even more on the military; “Reverse cuts to the size of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps” [of course there have been no cuts]; “invest in technologies necessary to maintain our military superiority”; “upgrade America’s offensive and defensive cyber-cababilities”; “develop and build a robust, modern, and effective missile defense system”; “modernize and upgrade our aging nuclear arsenal”; “dedicate the American forces necessary to prevail” [huh? where? to do what?]; “rebuild our alliance with Israel”; “provide military assistance directly to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces”; “develop an effective air campaign [i.e. bomb ‘em back to the stone age] to deny ISIS sanctuary in Syria, as well as Iraq”; “halt the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan”; “restore authority to the NSA . . . “; “reinstitute the enhanced interrogation program [i.e., torturing of prisoners]; “recognize Iran as America’s enemy”; “stop all cash payments under way or planned to Iran”; “block Iran’s use of the international financial system”; “expand our military presence in Asia”; “task the Department of Defense with developing a new regional defense strategy for Asia”; “restore and reinvigorate the NATO alliance”; “restore the missile defense system that President Obama canceled in Poland”; provide additional military assistance to Ukraine”; “impose additional sanctions on Russia”; “allocate funds for research and development for the Pershing III intermediate-range ballistic missile”; “reestablish the primacy of America’s nuclear arsenal.”
This is just a sampling. As is required of all books written by warmongering neocons, the Cheneys (what a sweet and charming father/daughter duo) end with a quote of Abraham Lincoln. Americans are “the last, best hope of Earth,” they say in the title to the Epilogue. That was pure bullshit when Abe said it in 1862, and still is today.
Would libertarians be so kind as to factor into the criticism of "American Exceptionalism" that a lot of Right-Wingers simply mean, by that phrase, that America is (was) exceptional to the extent that it championed free markets?
ReplyDeleteSo, when Reagan warned (yes, I know about the Reagan Autopsy by Rothbard) that if freedom was lost here, there'd be no other place to run, THAT'S the idea behind "American Exceptionalism", for a lot of us.
Not this new, commie, notion, that America should rule the world. Nobody I know believes this.
I think the historical context of Reagan's statement was that the USG was the most powerful force opposing the Soviet Union in a so-called cold war that was at the time frequently described as a struggle between freedom and tyranny. Apart from that specific context, I think nationalist exceptionalism is common among many countries as appropriate patriotic dogma, so many Americans are not alone in this. By the way, is America equivalent to the USG? The USG did not invent free markets, nor does it currently champion a free market that is really free from government interference.
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