Former Vice President Cheney said Monday he doesn’t think President Obama believes in American exceptionalism.
“I don’t think that Barack Obama believes in the U.S. as an exceptional nation, and the whole concept that the world is a safer place, a more peaceful place, when the U.S. is powerful, able to in fact project its will in various places around the world,” Cheney said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
{mosads}Due to the U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East, and the slashed Pentagon budget, Cheney said, “Our adversaries no longer fear us. Our friends no longer trust us.”
“The bottom line is nobody cares much in the Middle East, at least anymore, what the U.S. thinks because we don’t keep our commitments. We don’t follow through.”
Cheney was a major architect of the Iraq War and U.S. invasion into Afghanistan. Critics of the Iraq operation, for example, have argued Cheney pushed for the invasion to finish the job of President George H.W. Bush in the Middle East.
He said he doesn’t support the interim deal with Iran over its nuclear program because the same Obama administration officials crafted the ObamaCare “if you like it, you can keep it” promise.
“The same people that brought us the, ‘You can keep your health insurance if you want,’ are telling us that have cut a great deal with Iran with respect to their nuclear program,” Cheney said. “I don’t believe it.”