War
“In his latest book War, Woodward’s obvious purpose is to help Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 election.”
By now readers of Bob Woodward’s books should be familiar with his standard template. Woodward interviews administration officials and other interested parties on “deep background,” without revealing who provided certain pieces of information. He then repeats what his sources tell him and shapes the narrative in a way that serves his purpose, which he claims is to provide readers with a first snapshot of history. In his latest book War, Woodward’s obvious purpose is to help Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 election.
Woodward is more open about this purpose than usual in War. Virtually every reference to Trump is negative. Woodward toward the end of the book writes: “Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president.”
Woodward, of course, owes his reputation as a reporter and his success as an author to the Watergate affair, where he and his colleague at the Washington Post Carl Bernstein helped Democrats in Congress and the partisan Special Counsel’s Office bring down Republican President Richard Nixon. The British historian Paul Johnson in Modern Times characterized Watergate as a “media putsch” of Nixon. Geoff Shepard has presented compelling evidence in three books that the Woodward-Bernstein account of Watergate is at best very incomplete, and at worst far from accurate.
And in War, while Woodward notes some mistakes and errors of the Biden-Harris administration (most notably the debacle in leaving Afghanistan), Woodward concludes that Biden and his team (which includes Harris) “will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.” His proof: that is what some members of Biden’s national security team told him on “deep background.”
Woodward portrays President Biden as an engaged, fully-alert, decisive leader. This is what Biden’s team told him on deep background. Woodward notes that Biden was not interviewed for the book, so all of the Biden quotes that show him as an alert, decisive leader during discussions of Ukraine or the Middle East were provided by Biden’s team on deep background. Woodward accepts them at face value, even though it later became evident that Biden’s team had been something less than transparent about the president’s declining cognitive abilities. Woodward mentions Biden’s decline, of course, but claims that it only became evident in mid or late 2023.
War claims to chronicle the Biden administration’s responses to the Russia-Ukraine war and various conflicts in the Middle East, especially Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel’s response to the attack, and the widening of the war in the Middle East to include Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. Woodward tells the story from the perspective of Secretary of State Antony Blinkin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and, on occasion, Vice President Harris. Harris, in the few instances where she appears in the book, is invariably portrayed as statesmanlike.
If Trump is the number one villain in Woodward’s book, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a close second. Woodward’s narrative of the Middle East war is that time after time, Netanyahu had to be reined-in by Biden or Blinkin or Harris so as to avoid a wider war. Sometimes Biden and Blinkin succeeded, and sometimes they didn’t. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israelis and some Americans, and Israel’s military response in Gaza, the Biden team repeatedly pressured Netanyahu’s government to provide humanitarian aid to their enemy’s population in the midst of war, and to promote a two-state solution for the Palestinians.
Woodward’s portrayal of the Biden administration’s response to the Russia-Ukraine War also accepts the administration’s perspective on that conflict. There is no discussion of the history of NATO enlargement dating back to the 1990s that was at the root of this conflict, though Woodward does note that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his closest advisers were deeply opposed to NATO enlargement, especially if it was to include Ukraine, and that Biden’s CIA Director William Burns warned the Bush administration in 2008 that inviting Ukraine into NATO was a “red line” for all Russians.
Woodward accepts the Munich analogy used by Biden’s team to justify the massive military assistance the U.S. has provided to Ukraine and its refusal to promote a reasonable ceasefire option, despite the risk of a wider European war that could include use of nuclear weapons. Here, again, the Biden team gets high marks from Woodward, even though it failed miserably to deter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Throughout the book, Woodward contrasts Biden’s statesmanlike approach to Trump’s erratic and “dangerous” mindset when it comes to foreign policy issues. Yet, Woodward has no explanation for a world mostly at peace under Trump and a world in constant turmoil under Biden. Statesmen are rightly judged not by intentions, but by consequences. But that would not fit Woodward’s purpose in writing this book and the book’s release just a few weeks before the 2024 election.