From one of America's lead attractive Secretaries of State ever, the limaceous lunatic, Madeline Allbright, comes one definition of the putative exceptional nation, America; If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.
But that description of America really only means it is a tall nation, not an exceptional one.
ABS thinks it is certain actions undertaken by America that make it exceptional, that make it different from, say, a normal nation.
Consider - Iran Air Flight 655, a commercial jet shot down by the U.S. military by mistake on July 3, 1988, killing all 290 civilians and crew on board, including 66 children.
Now, most normal nations would admit the crime and offer a public apology at, say, The United Nations.
But, America is an exceptional nation, not a normal nation, and so this happened about two years later.
2 VINCENNES OFFICERS GET MEDALS
By Molly Moore
April 23, 1990
The Navy has awarded special commendation medals for "meritorious service" to two of the top officers who were serving on the USS Vincennes at the time the cruiser shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf with 290 people aboard.
The citations for the special commendations to former Vincennes skipper Capt. Will Rogers III and Lt. Cmdr. Scott E. Lustig, who was the ship's weapons and combat systems officer, do not mention the downing of the aircraft on July 3, 1988, an error that took the lives of the plane's passengers and crew.
No, it was not an error. It was a crime.
The medals were awarded to the two men early last year.
Instead, the Navy citation to Rogers states, "The president of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Legion of Merit" -- the armed forces' second highest peacetime award -- "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer . . . from April 1987 to May 1989."
This is the sort of action descriptive of an Exceptional Nation, a nation that gives awards to mass murderers and claims the indefensible crime had merit worthy of awards.
THAT is an exceptional nation.