“Maybe I had a brain tumor.”
That was NBC News anchorman Brian Williams in 2015, desperately fishing for an explanation when his ever-evolving fantasy claims on national television about his combat experience in the Iraq War were finally exposed.
But it wasn’t a brain tumor. In my new book, THE EMPIRE OF LIES: Fragments from the Memory Hole, I identify Williams as just one more example of a strange malady I call “Combat Envy.” It doesn’t appear in any standard psychiatric diagnostic manual, but it should. It is a more common and dangerous syndrome than you might suspect. War hero posturing has also proven to be a valuable tool in manufacturing support for the global American military empire’s needless wars.
In a bizarre episode, combat envy was instrumental in bequeathing the empire its most strident – some might say unhinged – warmonger, John McCain.
Senator McCain, the former naval aviator and prisoner of war, long distinguished himself for his bellicosity, constantly calling for U.S. military interventions around the globe. Among the countries that McCain demanded the US invade, bomb, or destabilize are Syria, Iraq (repeatedly), Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo, Nigeria, Bosnia, Iran, Georgia, Sudan, Mali, and perhaps China.
McCain was so identified with a happy trigger finger that he became an easy target for parody. The satirical newspaper The Daily Currant was spot on when it “reported on” McCain calling for the invasion and bombing of Belgium because of its defeat of the United States at the World Cup:
“Belgium is a rogue state whose outrageous behavior at the World Cup was a show of aggression toward the United States, for which President Obama must respond immediately with military force,” McCain told Fox News this morning. “In fact, I believe that anything less than a swift invasion and regime change in Belgium would show weakness to our enemies.
When McCain moved to Arizona in the early 1980s with an eye out for a winnable congressional seat, it was as though he was adopted by Darrow “Duke” Tully, the powerful publisher of the state’s two largest daily newspapers, The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette. Feared by opponents, the Duke wasn’t afraid to throw his weight around and put the considerable resources of the newspapers in the service of his pet projects.
“I tell Arizona what to think,” Tully bragged in public.
Although McCain was a newcomer to the state, Tully pulled out all the stops for him in a 1982 congressional race. Recounting events 25 years later, the Republic wrote that McCain was a star in the pages of the paper: “[A senior newspaper executive] characterized Tully as McCain’s PR man, hosting dinners to introduce him to the Valley’s movers and shakers. McCain wrote guest columns for the Republic. In one of them, McCain gave a sentimental account of Christmas in Hanoi. Tully became godfather to one of McCain’s children.”
Thanks to Tully’s relentless arm-twisting and power-brokering and the influence of the Republic, McCain was able to garner a narrow win in a crowded primary and went on to an easy general election victory in the heavily Republican congressional district.
The newspaper kingmaker and the candidate had bonded over war stories. “Upon meeting McCain, Tully regaled him with stories of his own military service as an Air Force pilot in Korea and Vietnam,” recounts the newspaper.
But in retrospect, it is clear that there was something to Tully’s infatuation with McCain that was much deeper, much darker. It finally blew wide open for everyone to see three years after McCain was first elected. It was another case of combat envy.
For years, Duke Tully had been lying. He had not been an Air Force pilot. He told stories of having been shot down from the skies in Korea and tales from 100 missions in Vietnam. But Tully had never been in the military, much less flown fighters or anything else in Korea or Vietnam. It was a deceit that involved countless complications and a vast, tangled web of details. There were pictures, plaques, and awards on his walls. All fakes. Like some strange cross-dressing compulsion, for years Tully had been showing up at veterans’ gatherings and at military social events in his Air Force dress uniform, wearing a chest full of decorations and sporting the rank of lieutenant colonel.
It was all a lie. There were no combat exploits. There was no Purple Heart, no Distinguished Flying Cross, no Vietnam Gallantry Cross. There was only a pathological case of combat envy. It had drawn Tully to McCain like a moth to a flame.
When his 30-year charade exploded into public view, Tully resigned in scandal and disgrace and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. Until then, Tully was a powerful sponsor of the ambitious McCain. The men, who had first met in 1980, socialized with their families and even vacationed together. Tully was named the godfather of McCain’s daughter, Meghan, the ubiquitous pop media commentator born in 1984.
Since McCain had the knowledge, life experiences, contacts, and associations of an actual combat pilot and Annapolis graduate, it is impossible to believe that throughout their years of closeness, he hadn’t seen through the brazen charade of Tully’s war stories. I have asked people close to the events how that could be explained and have only been answered with a shrug. No one claims McCain did not know about Tully’s pathetic deception. But McCain didn’t want to know. It was a symbiotic relationship, Tully’s combat envy and the ambitious McCain’s war penchant; they smelled each other. Having launched McCain’s political career, Duke Tully had an impact on the national debate and the U.S. military empire that has lingered for decades.
Although John McCain died in 2018, his name lives on in the infamy of his jingoism. "McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi," wrote Pat Buchanan during McCain’s presidential run. Perhaps anticipating President Trump’s flip-flop on his opposition to regime change wars, commentator Tom Woods famously quipped that "no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.” Although none have McCain’s legendary explosive and vulgar temper, his epigoni remain to vex us, most notably the neocon Lindsey Graham.
EMPIRE OF LIES: Fragments from the Memory Hole describes others exhibiting combat envy, media figures, and politicians alike. Equally important, it depicts the accompanying mythic elements of war’s glory (unlike war’s brutal sensory reality) that must be conjured with parades, flags, and flyovers, brass bands, and bunting intended to make chests swell and hearts pound and march the public into more imperial carnage.
We would all be better off, safer, and more prosperous if the destructive psychological deficits and profound personal complexes of the afflicted, those of would-be presidents, actual presidents, and leading media figures, weren’t permitted to play out unquestioned on the world stage. Nor can the endless war lies of our warlords be left to flame out, disappearing forever down the memory hole. To know our trajectory, where we have been, must not be forgotten.
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