Dick Cheney's new book: a '324-page broadside' that blasts Obama

After a sobering tour of the devastation reportedly wrought by Obama and Clinton, Cheney offers a ray of hope in the form of the 2016 election.

'Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America,' by Dick and Liz Cheney, hits bookstore shelves this week.

If former vice president Dick Cheney was willing to criticize his own colleagues in the Bush administration in his last book, "In My Time," you can safely assume he won't hesitate to excoriate President Obama in his newest book.

"Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America," by Dick and Liz Cheney, hits shelves Tuesday. It's being called a "324-page broadside" that blasts Obama for weakening America's position in the world.

“The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling. It is without historical precedent. He has set us on a path of decline so steep that reversing direction will not be easy.”

The book begins with the rearmament of America in 1939 under FDR and George Marshall. For the next 70 years, the Cheneys claim, America asserted its strength and was the most powerful nation on earth, to the good of all. Until Obama came into office, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, endangering and diminishing America's role in the world.

“For the most part, until the administration of Barack Obama, we delivered,” they wrote, arguing that Obama, who Cheney once called "the worst president history has seen," has “departed from this 75-year, largely bipartisan tradition of ensuring America’s pre-eminence and strength.”

As evidence, the Cheneys cite the Iran deal, which they liken to the infamous Munich agreement in 1938 that sought to appease Adolf Hitler.

"Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal," they wrote. "The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

The father-daughter pair also revisit the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Cheney championed then – and now.

In an interview with USA Today, he dismissed any claims that the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein paved the way for turmoil in the region and the rise of the Islamic State.

"I don't believe it," he told USA Today. "We had Iraq in good shape until he [Obama] withdrew all the forces and refused to leave a stay-behind force that would have been able to support the Iraqis."

And he weighs in on Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, calling it a "deadly serious" security breach.

After a sobering tour of the devastation reportedly wrought by Obama and Clinton, Cheney offers a ray of hope in the form of the 2016 election.

American global leadership "can be ours again," write the Cheneys, if voters choose the next president "wisely."

Readers can see an excerpt of the book in The Wall Street Journal.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Dick Cheney's new book: a '324-page broadside' that blasts Obama
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0902/Dick-Cheney-s-new-book-a-324-page-broadside-that-blasts-Obama
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe