To Preserve, Protect and Defend

 To Preserve, Protect, and Destroy by Matthew D. Saeman is a political espionage novel with a bit of sci-fi thrown into the plot. The book opens on Mars where the US is in the early stages of a long-term plan to make Mars habitable for humans. The astronaut team is in the early stages of creating a mining project for precious minerals when a geologist discovered a rock with some odd properties. As he began to examine the rock and do some testing, it exploded with an incredible force that wiped out all evidence of the presence of the entire mining operation, killing all persons who were present.

Meanwhile on Earth, there was turmoil in the Middle East. Abu al-Hussein had recently brutally attacked and conquered all counties in the area (think ISIS magnified 100 fold) and then create a powerful and threatening force to other countries. At a NATO meeting U.S. President Dowd spoke aggressively about al-Hussein, warned that he was a security threat the likes of Hitler and that he had to militarily stopped. When Dowd sent a secret team of special forces to assassinate al-Hussein, the attempt was betrayed by a double agent, and the team was captured and brutally killed. One agent was spared, Jack Blythe, so he could personally inform and warn the President. Jack had been forced to watch the beheading of his best friend. He carried a videotape of the beheading to the President.

 

The President, perhaps the world’s most successful and deviant narcissist who was embarrassed by al-Hussein’s success and ridicule of the attempts to kill him, enacted his own plan to get even. An emergency vehicle had been sent to Mars to look for more such rocks, allegedly to keep them from devious use and to make the planet safe for human exploration. However, unknown to most other people who were engaged in the effort to secure the dangerous rocks, even though it would cost the lives of millions of innocent people, it was Dowd’s plan to use that explosive Martian force to wipe out all countries in the Middle East that were associated with terrorism. Dowd wanted to crash the ship loaded with the rocks into Iran. Jack was quickly put on the ship to Mars, along with some other team special force members who were in on the plan. It was a suicide mission, and their surviving family members were to be economically rewarded.

 

Meanwhile, there was disharmony among the new geologist on the mission, the special forces, and the astronauts. There was conflict between Dowd and the team at NASA. Meanwhile, Dowd continued to be successful politically by putting an innocent and trustworthy face on his attempts to deal with the Mars disaster and the Middle East troubles.

 

Although I’m not typically a sci-fi fan, the emphasis in this book was on the danger of decision making by a narcissist who only put his own needs forward as being important, who had no empathy for the rest of humanity. No doubt this is an extreme version of the current political climate as the US nears the next presidential election, but the novel successfully indicates the danger of having such a character in the White House. This book gets my strong recommendation – please read it before the 2024 election.