Watching President Donald Trump describe the US Special Ops raid that led to the Islamic State founder Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s death in specific detail, I felt as if he was making a pitch for a Hollywood thriller to some studio heads. It was as if he was reading from the first draft of a screenplay to a bunch of skeptical suits.
Apart from everything else, what struck me was his description that Baghdadi, trapped inside a dead-end tunnel with his three children, was “whimpering, crying and screaming all the way.” He spoke about a US military dog chasing the 48-year-old as he “spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread.”
The dog was “talented” and “beautiful” who sustained some injuries but apparently survived.
It was almost as if Trump was setting up a shot. Clearly, the man revels in life as cinema or at least a television show.
I kept picturing him pacing up and down in front of inscrutable studio bosses as he laid out the movie’s treatment. The working title—‘The Night Raid on Idlib’.
Jokes aside, you can be certain that a movie or two will be made on this. It is unquestionably movie worthy from any angle. When that happens, there will be scenes where the actor playing Trump will have the lines already written out. “He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, “whimpering, crying and screaming all the way….He ignited his vest himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast, the tunnel had caved in on it in addition, but test results came certain, immediate and totally positive identification. It was him,” the president said without much emotion.
I am not sure how specific the presidential briefing was after the raid which he and his national security team watch in real time. Trump described the experience like, you guessed, “watching a movie.” It remains speculative whether he was specifically told that Baghdadi died “whimpering, crying and screaming all the way” or it was his cinematic interpretation.
Of course, Baghdadi deserved whatever came his way in his final moments and much more. The point is how much was that actually happened the way it was narrated.
For your benefit, I have even given a wide angle shot of the Situation Room in the White House from where the president and his team monitored the raid.
As an aside, even before Trump addressed the nation yesterday my post said this about its political consequence for him: “With that out of the way, Baghdadi’s death is symbolically powerful and something the US president can rightly brag about. My first unfiltered reaction to the news was that the killing hands Trump 2020 election even as it dilutes the growing intensity of his potential impeachment. On reflection, my reaction holds for now.”
David E. Sanger wrote in The New York Times today, “Mr. Trump seemed to be laying the predicate for his own campaign talking points on Sunday, when he recounted telling his own forces that “I want al-Baghdadi," rather than a string of deceased terrorist leaders who were “names I never heard of.” And clearly he is hoping that the success of the raid has a wider resonance: He sees the al-Baghdadi raid, some former Trump aides said, as a counterweight to the impeachment inquiry, which is based in part on an argument that he has shaped foreign policy for his political benefit.”
By some coincidence, just as the Abbottabad raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden took place in 2011, about a year before President Barack Obama’s reelection, the Baghdadi raid has come about a year before the 2020 presidential election.
