Why Bob Woodward’s ‘Rage’ is a lie constructed on a lie, and what Trump vs ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’ actually is about

Bob Woodward’s new insider account of the Trump administration, ‘Rage’, particulars the multi-faceted controversies surrounding President Trump’s method to governance – none extra so than his relationship with the navy.

Bob Woodward is a legendary reporter whose expertise for getting insiders to discuss probably the most delicate issues in authorities dates again to Watergate and the Nixon presidency. His most up-to-date presidential expose, ‘Rage’, touches on a variety of controversies, from the coronavirus pandemic to points referring to conflict, and the promise of conflict.

It’s Trump’s tortured relationship with the navy that stands out probably the most, particularly as informed by means of the eyes of former Secretary of Protection Jim ‘Mad Canine’ Mattis, a retired marine common. It’s clear that Bob Woodward spent hours talking with Mattis – the insights, feelings and inner voice captured within the e book present a stage of intimacy that might solely be reached by means of in-depth interviews, and Woodward has a well-earned status for getting individuals to talk to him.

The e book makes it clear that Mattis seen Trump as a menace to the US’ standing because the defender of a rules-based order – constructed on the again of decades-old alliances – that had been in place for the reason that finish of the Second World Conflict. 

It additionally makes it clear that Mattis and the navy officers he oversaw positioned defending this order above implementing the need of the American individuals, as expressed by means of the free and truthful election that elevated Donald Trump to the place of commander-in-chief. Briefly, Mattis and his coterie of generals knew greatest, and when the president dared situation an order or instruction that conflicted with their imaginative and prescient of how the world ought to work, they’d do their greatest to undermine this order, all of the whereas confirming to the president that it was being adopted.

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The navy is trapped in an inherited actuality divorced from the current

This development was on show in Woodward’s telling of Trump’s efforts to forge higher relations with North Korea. At each flip, Mattis and his navy commanders sought to isolate the president from the fact on the bottom, briefing him solely on what they thought he wanted to know, and retaining him in the dead of night about what was actually occurring. 

In a telling passage, Woodward takes us into the thoughts of Jim Mattis as he contemplates the horrors of a nuclear conflict with North Korea, and the duty he believed he shouldered when it got here to creating the exhausting determination as as to whether nuclear weapons must be used or not. Constitutionally, the choice was the president’s alone to make, one thing Mattis begrudgingly acknowledges. However in Mattis’ world, he, as secretary of protection, can be the one who influenced that call.

Mattis, together with the opposite common officers described by Woodward, is clearly gripped with what can solely be described because the ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’. 

What defines this ‘syndrome’ is probably greatest captured within the phrases of Emma Sky, the feminine peace activist-turned adviser to Normal Ray Odierno, the one-time commander of US forces in Iraq. In a frank give-and-take captured by Ms. Sky in her e book ‘The Unravelling’, Odierno spoke of the worth he positioned on the navy’s willingness to defend “freedom” wherever on the planet. “There’s,” he mentioned, “nobody who understands extra the significance of liberty and freedom in all its kinds than those that journey the world to defend it.”

Ms. Sky responded in usually direct vogue: “In the future, I’ll have you ever admit that the [Iraq] conflict was a nasty thought, that the administration was led by a radical neocon program, that the US’s standing on the planet has gone down vastly, and that we’re far much less protected than we have been earlier than 9/11.”

Odierno would don’t have anything of it. “It should by no means occur whereas I’m the commander of troopers in Iraq.”

“To guide troopers in battle,” Ms. Sky famous, “a commander needed to consider within the trigger.” Left unsaid was the apparent: even when the trigger was morally and intellectually unsound.

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This, greater than something, is probably the most harmful factor concerning the ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’ as captured by Bob Woodward – the truth that the navy is trapped in an inherited actuality divorced from the current, pushed by precepts which don’t have anything to with what’s, however slightly by what the navy commanders consider must be. The unyielding notion that the US navy is a power for good turns into little greater than meaningless drivel when juxtaposed with the fact that the mission being executed is inherently flawed.

The ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’ lends itself to dishonesty and, worse, to self-delusion. It’s one factor to lie; it’s one other altogether to consider the lie as reality. 

No single common had the braveness to inform Trump allegations in opposition to Syria have been a hoax 

The cruise missile assault on Syria in early April 2017 stands out as a working example. The assault was ordered in response to allegations that Syria had dropped a bomb containing the sarin nerve agent on a city – Khan Shaykhun – that was managed by Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic militants. 

Trump was led to consider that the 59 cruise missiles launched in opposition to Shayrat Airbase – the place the Su-22 plane alleged to have dropped the bombs have been primarily based – destroyed Syria’s functionality to hold out the same assault sooner or later. When proven post-strike imagery during which the runways have been clearly untouched, Trump was outraged, lashing out at Secretary of Protection Mattis in a convention name. “I can’t consider you didn’t destroy the runway!”, Woodward stories the president shouting.

“Mr. President,” Mattis responds within the textual content, “they’d rebuild the runway in 24 hours, and it could have little impact on their capability to deploy weapons. We destroyed the potential to deploy weapons” for months, Mattis mentioned.

“That was the mission the president had authorised,” Woodward writes, clearly channeling Mattis, “they usually had succeeded.”

The issue with this passage is that it’s a lie. There is no such thing as a doubt that Bob Woodward has the audio tape of Jim Mattis saying this stuff. However none of it’s true. Mattis knew it when he spoke to Woodward, and Woodward knew it when he wrote the e book.

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There was no confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria at Khan Shaykhun. Certainly, the forensic proof obtainable concerning the assault factors to the incident being a false flag effort – a profitable one, it seems – on the a part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists to impress a US navy strike in opposition to Syria. No targets associated to both the manufacturing, storage or dealing with of chemical weapons have been hit by the US cruise missiles, if for no different motive than no such targets might exist if Syria didn’t possess and/or use a chemical weapon in opposition to Khan Shaykhun.

Furthermore, the US failed to provide a story of causality which offered some underlying logic to the targets that have been struck at Khan Shaykhun – “Right here is the place the chemical weapons have been saved, right here is the place the chemical weapons have been crammed, right here is the place the chemical weapons have been loaded onto the plane.” As a substitute, 59 cruise missiles struck empty plane hangars, destroying derelict plane, and killing at the very least 4 Syrian troopers and as much as 9 civilians.

The following morning, the identical Su-22 plane that have been alleged to have bombed Khan Shaykhun have been as soon as once more taking off from Shayrat Air Base – lower than 24 hours after the US cruise missiles struck that facility. President Trump had each motive to be outraged by the outcomes.

However the President ought to have been outraged by the processes behind the assault, the place navy commanders, totally troubled by ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’, supplied up options that solved nothing for issues that didn’t exist. Not a single common (or admiral) had the braveness to inform the president that the allegations in opposition to Syria have been a hoax, and navy response was not solely not wanted, however can be singularly counterproductive.

However that’s not how generals and admirals – or colonels and lieutenant colonels – are wired. That type of introspective honesty can not occur whereas they’re in command.

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Deceptive the American public  

Bob Woodward is aware of this reality, however he selected to not give it a voice in his e book, as a result of to take action would disrupt the pre-scripted narrative that he had constructed, round which he bent and twisted the phrases of these he interviewed – together with the president and Jim Mattis. As such, ‘Rage’ is, in impact, a lie constructed on a lie. It’s one factor for politicians and people in energy to control the reality to their benefit. It’s one thing altogether completely different for journalists to report one thing as true that they know to be a lie.

On the again cowl of ‘Rage’, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert Caro is quoted from a speech he gave about Bob Woodward. “Bob Woodward,” Caro notes, “an incredible reporter. What is a superb reporter? Somebody who by no means stops attempting to get as near the reality as potential.”

After studying ‘Rage’, one can not assist however conclude the other – that Bob Woodward has written a quantity which pointedly ignores the reality. As a substitute, he offers voice to a lie of his personal assemble, predicated on the flawed accounts of sources inflicted with ‘Army Messiah Syndrome’, whose phrases embrace a fantasy world populated by navy members fulfilling missions far faraway from the frequent good of their fellow residents – and sometimes at battle with the acknowledged intent and instruction of the civilian management they ostensibly serve. In doing so, Woodward is as complicit because the generals and former generals he quotes in deceptive the American public about problems with basic significance.       

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