Obama the Villain in Exceptional

Here's the book, which I hope to start reading as soon as this weekend, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And at the New York Times, "Review: In ‘Exceptional,’ the Cheneys Make Obama the Villain":

Former presidents may keep quiet about those who occupy the White House once they leave, but the code clearly does not extend to vice presidents. Nearly seven years after leaving office, Dick Cheney has produced a book that amounts to a stinging indictment of President Obama as an ineffectual, America-hating, military-destroying, soft-on-terrorism appeaser whose tenure has damaged the country.

It is a case he prosecutes relentlessly. To the witness stand, Mr. Cheney and his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, summon the ghosts of presidents past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan, to testify to the greatness of America and what they call the bipartisan postwar tradition of muscular leadership on the world stage.

This is a tradition Mr. Obama has shirked, the writers argue, making him a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. “The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling,” they write in “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” “It is without historical precedent. He has set us on a path of decline so steep that reversing direction will not be easy.”

But while styled as a condemnation of Mr. Obama, this book — appearing just as the Republican primary contest is getting underway in earnest — is actually a prod to the Republicans seeking to succeed him. Although Mr. Cheney noted during a speech in Washington this week that he is no longer running for office, he clearly is seeking to influence those who are.

The Cheneys are championing a strain of national security conservatism that waned even within their own party because of the flawed intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion in 2003 and the later travails of the occupation. Even Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush has said that if he had been president, he would not have authorized the invasion had he known then what he knows now, a position shared by other Republican candidates.

And yet, the post-Iraq isolationist streak that seemed on the ascendance for a while has also begun to fade with the rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Syria and Iraq and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Although today’s candidates are not showcasing the unpopular Mr. Cheney in their campaigns, they are, to some extent, voicing a more hawkish message on foreign policy, especially amid the debate over Mr. Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

Whether Mr. Cheney is the right messenger for the moment is open to question. While even some Democrats agree with his criticisms of Mr. Obama — that he has given away too much to Iran, that he has not done enough to help Ukraine against Russia, that his withdrawal from Iraq paved the way for the Islamic State — Mr. Cheney all but invites the “well, what-about-you” counterargument...

Okay, yeah, what about you?

The Bush administration's foreign policy looks better with each passing day. For example, see Glenn Reynolds, "SO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DID ALL THE STUFF THEY ACCUSED BUSH OF DOING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS, BUSH WON THE WAR, AND THEY LOST IT."

They lost it alright.

But back to the New York Times.