Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney -- a book review

    This is a very hard review to write. Not because the book is not well-written. It is. It is very well-written. The language is direct and clear. The content is presented in a coherent, easy to follow way. Despite the great quantity of information presented, it is actually a pretty quick read. 

    And not because I think the book is unimportant. It is. In fact, it is so important for people in this country to read and read right now that I do not want to do anything that might cause  anyone NOT to read it.

    Today, as I write this, it is the 6th day of the year 2024. An election year. A year that very well may determine if my country, if this democracy, if this "government of the people, by the people, for the people," as Abraham Lincoln prayed "shall not perish from the earth."

    Let me say, right here. There are few policies that Cheney and I agree on. 

    Wikipedia quotes Lawrence R. Jacobs as saying "Cheney is an arch-conservative. She's a hard-edged, small government, lower taxes figure and a leading voice on national defense." And Jake Bernstein, "Liz Cheney is a true conservative in every sense of the word and she's only a moderate in relation to the radicalism that has seized the Republican party."

    Both Cheney and her husband, Philip Richard Perry, are attorneys with extensive experience in the government, which stood them in good stead for their work with the The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. They have five children, ages 17 down to 7. Which I think I can safely infer has given them some insight on time management. (Also there is one thing I can say that she and I have in common, we each have a daughter named Grace.)

     By accepting the position of Vice Chair of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Cheney put her life, the lives of her family, and of her staff in jeopardy.

     Cheney begins her book with the opening paragraph: "This is the story of the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution."

    The first part of the book is about the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol while Congress was meeting in joint session in the House Chamber to officially count the Electoral votes as certified by the states. Cheney gives details about what she was seeing inside the Capitol while it was happening. Of course she couldn't know what was going on outside, but they all knew they were in serious danger.

This was the view of the United States Capitol 

                    on January 6th, 2021.

And this.

                                                                                    And this.                                         

    I watched this in real time on television. On our PBS channel. Keeping in mind that I am a regular watcher of PBS's News Hour and feel like I know personally, which, of course I do not, the news people who were on the ground at the Capitol that day. It was terrifying. The crowd was so angry and violent, I truly feared for all the reporters there.

     I also watched the January 6th Congressional Hearings on TV. They presented information through video and testimony that I had not previously seen and heard. On the part of the panel, it was presented dispassionately, not as personal experience.

    But this book gives us, from Cheney's point of view, what Senators and Representatives and their staffs were experiencing without the emotional distance of the hearings.

    And after the Capitol was cleared of the mob, she describes walking through Statuary Hall,
     "the original chamber of the House of Representatives ... a room full of the
     history of our republic. Brass plaques on the floor mark the locations of the
     desks of presidents who served in the House, including Abraham Lincoln and
     John Quincy Adams. Statues of prominent Americans line the outer walls
     of the room. ...law enforcement officers in tactical gear were seated on the floor,
     leaning up against every statue and all around the walls of the room, exhausted
     from the battle they had fought to defend the Capitol. I walked around the room
     thanking them for what they had done.

     "One said to me, "Ma'am, I fought in Iraq and I have never encountered the
     violence I did out there today."

     Describing the actual assault is the hardest part of the book to read -- not because the words are big or fancy but because it hurts to realize this was perpetrated by Americans. 

     It was not the first time I experienced the danger to our democracy that can come from within.

     President John F. Kennedy was murdered on November 22, 1963, my 16th birthday.The assassin was an American. 

     The Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, including employees of my credit union where I had gone with
my 5-year-old daughter the week before to take care of some business. We could
easily have been there when Americans bombed it.

     Most of the rest of the book is about the Congressional investigation and hearings. It has the benefit of Cheney's law background and her determination to Honor and Defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

     She does name names. 

     Cheney ends her book with this warning:
     "In the era of Trump, certain members of Congress and other Trump enablers
      -- many of whom carry the Constitution in their pocket but seem
     to have never read it -- have attempted to hijack this phrase [we the
     people] to claim it gives them authority to subvert the rule of law or
     overturn the results of elections. They have preyed on the patriotism
     of millions of Americans. They are working to return to office the man
     responsible for January 6."

     Cheney exhorts us all:

     "We the people must stop them. We are the only thing that
     can stop them. This is more important than partisan politics. Every
     one of us -- Republicans, Democrates, Independents -- must work
     to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled,
     and collaborated with him are defeated.

     "This is the cause of our times."