You are not in peril if you do not spend the price of three Starbuck's coffees and do not download Bob Woodward's new book Peril to your kindle. Do not buy it. We are going to use a technical legal term here- it sucks. Unless that is, you are interested on reading on and on and on about President Biden's budget negotiations over a Covid aid package and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin's demands the bill have a $300.00 and not $400.00 cap on unemployment payments (spoiler alert: At one point Manchin, a democrat, was so upset with the Biden white house he said "they can kiss my ass." Double spoiler alert- the bill is passed). Want to know how much President Biden agonized over the decision to remove all troops from Afghanistan? (Spoiler alert- some, but maybe not as much as you might think) then maybe you will like this book.
Chairman Miley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gets a lot of play (spoiler alert- he thinks Trump is "batshit crazy) and the normal craziness of the Trump WH is covered, but nothing ground breaking, as other books have covered this- earlier and better.
The writing stinks. It is short and clipped- for example: Trump was irate. Don't worry Giuliani and others assured him, we still have another play.
Mike Pence.
That's how it plays out on the page. The space. The new line. The name of the VP.
To repeat- the book breaks no new ground, The writing is weak. During two unprecedented years in our nation's history, Woodward has somehow stumbled on the boring stuff. Woodward is trading on his good name.
If you want to read the really good books on the dysfunction of Trump in his last years, try "I Alone Can Fix It" by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker and/or Landside, by Michael Woolf, who has other books on the Trump era, including Fire and Fury and Siege. Each of these books (I Alone Can Fix It and Landslide) provide excellent insight to the Trump response to the pandemic (weak, disbelieving, and disheveled) and his defense of his second impeachment (unbelievably dysfunctional).
Read Peril at your own peril.
Woodward is notorious for making it up as he goes along. I will never forget his interviewing William Casey in a hospital room as he lay dying and putting it in a book. Casey's family and friends who were at his bedside at the time of his death called it a total fabrication. Woodward never explained how he managed to go undercover and pull off this act of sleuthmanship. His work on Watergate and Nixon was always way overrated. Even Ben Bradlee admitted that their work played zero role in Nixon's Greek Tragedy of a downfall. What amazes me about this contretemps is that a chairman of the JCS would talk to him at all and do so without clearing it with the president.
ReplyDeleteNo epilogue in the book about Biden and Milley droning five children under ten years old in order to save face int their disastrous Afghanistan defeat?
ReplyDeleteI think we should probably look this square in the face: our president and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, both tremendously wealthy, both acting in our name, oversaw a reckless decision to fire a missile which burned five kids to death while they rode in a car.
And did it to cap off a twenty year disastrous war. And then faced zero consequence.
Nuthin.
They each hate the Orange Man, so the media will carry their water, and a nation of liberals who frothed at the mouth about warmongering in 2003 will say nothing.
Imagine the consequences some sick soul would face in a Miami courtroom if he burned five kids to death. But Biden's portrait hangs in our courthouse.
Disgusting.
Dear Wednesday, October 06, 2021 3:04:00 PM;
ReplyDelete"Disgusting?" No. What is disgusting in staying in an unwinnable asian land war. You are an advocate for war, yet you complain about a few babies getting burned by fire. Do you know what war is? War is burning babies, murdering mothers, and the unleashing of famine and disease. Remaining in an Afghanistan war means we would have burned up more babies.
Morally, war may be justified. If you are a lawyer you understand that sometimes the horrible act of murder can be justified. Saving the life of an innocent threatened by a malefactor, defense of others, is one such justification. War can be just. Self defense against an act of aggression is a just war. Even in a just war, innocent babies are lit on fire, burned beyond all recognition, or incinerated in a radioactive blast. Cf. Dresden, Nagasaki (1945).
War, as Sherman put it, is hell. Innocents are murdered. Bombs go astray, intelligence is false, officers act incompetently and "collateral" damage happens. Even the best trained, most professional military arm makes mistakes. In war, mistakes result in the death and maiming of innocents. Shit happens.
As we were leaving, we were attacked. We struck back. Did we get the right folks? Who cares, it is a war. When a nation is at way it fights and fighting imperils innocents. The death of innocent men, women, and children is an unavoidable effect of war.
Biden was right. The other guy set a day to get out, and keeping the timetable was the right thing to do.
Kid
Every time I would see the portrait of the lying orange conman hanging in the federal courthouse I would almost vomit. This deranged, self promoting fascist seeking clown needs to be indicted for January 6th as well as numerous other stunts he did or tried to do. This goes for his enablers and cult leaders as well. Thankfully we now have a sane empathic man in office who believes in the constitution and puts the country above himself.
ReplyDeletePeril is the worse of the books that covered the end of farce that was the Trump administration. Nightmare is good and right up with the two you mentioned. The problem for your Trump loving commentators is that every detail in all 4 books was garnered from either Trump or the people who he hired or nominated. Our local Trump worshippers can lie to themselves all they want but nobody that worked for Trump in a substantial capacity denies that he was a wacko.
ReplyDeleteI vaguely agree with 3:04, but not for the reasons he would hope. I agree that the missile of which he complains offends morality. Here is where 3:04 will probably disagree with me - Everything about our occupation of Afghanistan also offends morality and every day that we remained increased the likelihood of especially barbaric outrages like that missile strike. That's why we should have gotten out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, with as much speed as possible, and that, on balance, Biden's "recklessly fast" withdrawal was the only thing to be done. For those who think that this is a partisan response, please accept that Biden's withdrawal was, in effect, execution of Trump's plan for withdrawal and I applauded Trump's plan then just as I accept Biden's execution of that plan now. What's more, Obama's greatest failing was not having the courage to do what he surely knew needed to be done in Afghanistan, which was to get out.
ReplyDeleteWithdrawal from Afghanistan was one of the few genuine bi-partisan victories in recent years and was orchestrated by two no less unlikely bed fellows than Trump and Biden.
Great post
Delete3:04:00 - The orange man is easy to hate, literally the worst president ever. His actions killed countless lives, some in other countries and in America still counting the dead. We are soo much better off and will be more so if the Dems abolish the filibuster and shove it all down the Rs throats. Hopefully they will add justices to the SC and bring it along with our other institutions of government out from the dark ages. Oh, and put the orange man and his family behind bars.
ReplyDeleteI'm just sitting here very content that all you libs are owned.
ReplyDeleteReagan: sent troops to Lebanon, Grenada, Libya.
ReplyDeleteGHWB: Iraq, Panama
Slick Willy: Haiti, Balkans
GWB: Iraq, Afghanistan
Obama: Libya, Syria
Orange Man: Didn't invade anywhere, didnt ramp up troop presence anywhere, fought with generals to bring troops home
Biden: to his credit, carried Trump's ball over the goal line in Afghanistan. That is not what I've criticized him for. Ive criticized him for making a clusterfuck out of it. Would Trump have done the same or worse? Who knows.... he's not president anymore. Biden must be judged on his own merits, and the withdrawal was a disaster, in which Americans and their allies were abandoned and left behind. And Milley, libs' new hero, was in charge of the whole thing.
When the global community was shocked by the method in which the withdrawal was managed, the US orchestrated a "payback" for the murder of 12 servicemen by droning a civilian car that carried 5 children. "Kissimmee Kid" tells us that to object to this is to "complain about a few babies being burned".
"trialmaster" is so incapable of empathy for these children killed by Biden and Milley that he must robotically change the topic back to the previous president, the only one his masters allow him to think bad thoughts about. Must be comforting for him never to field an adult thought.
It's no wonder the country is falling apart, even as the party these two vote for controls the WH, and both houses of Congress. Those who vote Democrat are so incapable of critical thought, so rabid in their defense of the status quo, so terrified of being part of any out-group, that the murder of children is countenanced, so long as they are able to signal their membership in The Party and their loyalty to The Supreme Leader. Had Trump droned kids, I would have posted the same outrage. Im obviously a Republican and I will join anyone in condemning W's disastrous wars.
But you -- can you manage to see Clinton held accountable for bombing a wedding? Hillary held accountable for her Syria policy, which led the deaths of tens of thousands? You no doubt know the name George Floyd. Can you name one of the Afghan children that were just incinerated in your name? By a Democrat?
The NPC meme is incredibly apt. You are as incapable of independent thought as anyone in history. And one day you will take your place among Salem witch-hunters, Spanish inquisitors, and Stasi and Nazi informants. The Party's always right, the OrangeMan's always wrong. Youre the good guy, never breaking a sweat, with nothing on the line. Got it.
Kissimmee kid: "Did we get the right folks? Who cares, it is a war."
ReplyDeleteStupidest comment of all time
3:40...........You almost had me. I thought your comment was thoughtful, fair, and largely accurate, until I read the sentences attacking all of those voting democrats and comparing them to "Salem witch-hunters, Spanish inquisitors, and Stasi and Nazi informants."
ReplyDeleteThe problem in this country isn't Democrats alone. Members of both parties, indeed the parties themselves and many independents, seem incapable or unwilling to engage in rationale, constructive conversation free of hyperbole for any significant length of time. Sorry to see you fall into that trap.
The whole thing is depressing. And, constraining. Nothing changes when so many makes things personal and takes things personally.
BTDT
BTDT nailed it.
ReplyDelete