Stephen Glain is a freelance journalist and author based in Paris. For two decades, as a correspondent for the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> and <em>Newsweek</em>, he covered Asia, the Middle East and the policy sausage factories of Washington, D.C. He is the author of two books: <em>Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World</em> (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) and <em>State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire</em> (Crown Books, 2011).

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

[caption id="attachment_55233558" align="alignleft" width="620"] A US Marine watches as an Osprey carrying US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta…