A House Divided

by Adam Yoshida

  Stern was not alone that day. Almost simultaneously, some twenty-five other Israeli fighters, spread across the Egyptian and Syrian fronts, pulled the same move. In each case the 100KT free-fall nuclear bombs that they had dropped detonated in a perfect display of Israeli technical precision. Twenty-six Syrian and Egyptian army formations were shattered in an incident, leaving some two hundred thousand of their soldiers either dead or dying on the battlefield and several hundred thousand more critically wounded.

  Within seconds, orbiting satellites detected the distinct visual pattern of the Israeli nuclear strikes. The first reports were transmitted a fraction of a second later to analysts belonging to the North American Aerospace Defense Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Moments later these reports were confirmed and passed along simultaneously to the President and his advisors in the Situation Room underneath the White House and to the senior military leadership operating out of the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.

  "Fuck!" shouted the President, as he slammed his fist into the table.

  "Prime Minister Dayan is on the phone," someone announced, cutting through the silence in the room. The President sat, impassively.

  "Mr. President..." the Secretary of State softly interjected before coming to a halt.

  "Sir," Jensen began, leaning over the table, "the Israelis just murdered," she raised her hands over the murmured objections of some in the room, "I do not think that is too strong a phrase for what has happened. The Israelis have just murdered hundreds of thousands of Muslim men. Viciously and without warning."

  "Their survival..." opened the Secretary of State.

  "No, Mr. Secretary," the President replied, hitting the conference table with his hand once more, "just no."

  The "negotiations" with the Israelis, Syrians, and Egyptians, such as they were, had been terse.

  "We aren't going to have nuclear bombs going off all across the fucking world," President Warren had practically screamed into the phone at Prime Minister Dayan. "We're going to be coming in whether you like it or fucking not."

  Exact terms were hammered out by a group of second-tier State Department officials in seventeen minutes. The Egyptians, Syrians, and Israelis would all be subjected to a process of "demilitarization", though the exact meaning of that and the course that it would take was left, owing to the shortness of time, largely undefined. In exchange for agreeing to the ceasefire in place (something that was already, given the nuclear shattering of their forces, a fait accompli in the case of both the Syrians and Egyptians), the United States would deploy the largest peacekeeping force in the history of the world to the region in order to assure that the peace was kept.

  Dayan had tears in his eyes when he hung up the phone after speaking to the President.

  "What else could I say?" he asked. "A new Masada would have been a futile gesture and, anyway, I am not brave enough for it."

  General Mackenzie flipped the pages of his orders on his tablet.

  "This is going to be the largest deployment since the Gulf War," he commented as he read through the proposed Table of Organization and Equipment for what had been designated, in the lamentable trend of faux-meaningful naming, as "Operation Lasting Peace."

  "The whole region is awfully fucked up, if you'll excuse the expression," replied Colonel Casey. "There's a good chance that we'll need it."

  "We might need more than this, if this doesn't go exactly as planned. We could end up fighting everyone over there all at once."

  After the Israelis had resorted to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, President Warren had finally agreed to commit large forces to the region, but with very stringent conditions. Much of the Israeli Defense Force would be dismantled – including Israel's nuclear arsenal – under the supervision of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force. Likewise, restrictions would be placed upon the military forces of neighboring nations, those these restrictions, everyone knew, were not likely to be enforced nearly as stringently as those against Israel for only in Israel would they be enforced by an international military operation that many Israelis considered a de facto military occupation of their country.

  "If we anticipate fighting the Israelis – and we just might have to fight some of them – then we're going to need more troops in the interior. Never mind what we'll need if we intervene in Iran. We're talking, given the cuts of recent years, about putting much the whole of the active armed forces into the region," noted Casey.

  "We will be going into Iran," opined Vice Admiral Nathaniel Anderson, commander of the 5th Fleet. "I don't think that there's any way that the Israelis would have ever accepted the President's terms – even if they came with a nuclear threat, as rumored, unless we promised that we'd be making sure that Iran was never going to get another nuke. At least, that's what I hear."

  The work at Central Command continued through the night, as was necessary given that the first of nearly half a million planned soldiers were due to depart in less than forty-eight hours.

  "What an absolute fucking mess," declared Terrance Rickover, as he called the House Republican Conference to order.

  "I know that a lot has happened," he continued, "but I didn't think that we would really begin without acknowledging that first. What. A. Fucking. Mess."

  "Look, I know that we all have a lot that we'd like to say about the performance of the President through this crisis – and long before. And I know that we'd all be right to say so. But, I hope I don't need to remind you that the first priority for us has to be message discipline. The guy, like him or hate him, has the media on his side and, for the time being, he's benefiting from the rally-around-the-flag effect that we see in every crisis, grave or insignificant. We don't know how long it'll last, but I know that if any of you walk out of here today and simply blast him, the media will jump all the fuck over us."

  The Congressman stood up, straightened his vest, and began to pace.

  "There will... There will be a time to apportion fault for what has happened over the last week. That time has not arrived yet. In the short-term, we have little choice but to support the President's deployments, while seeking to point out – as gently as possible – that we regret that any of this is necessary. Then, once public opinion calms, we can point out how Iran should never have had nuclear weapons and what our failure to fully back the Israelis wrought."

  "Also, of course, we can – and should as soon as possible – link these foreign policy failures to the certain arrival of a new recession."

  "So, I know that I hear you asking – because I would be asking in your place – what our purpose is if we must avoid a direct assault upon the President. I hope that you've all had time to review the attachment prepared by Ms. Meyer that I sent to you before this meeting. But, at any rate, pull it up now."

  "The cost of doing what the President seems to be preparing to do – putting half a million men into the Middle East and waging war on Iran – is going to be tremendous. And we have folders and folders worth of the President ranting against 'paying for wars on a credit card' and we all know the folly of raising taxes in a recession."

  "However," the Majority Leader now smiled wickedly, "given this – and given that the President himself is repeatedly on record against raising taxes in a recession – in our renewed spirit of unity and bipartisanship, our friends over on the staff of the Budget Committee have already thrown themselves into the important work of crafting a war funding proposal that meets with the expressed wishes of the President that we not place this new war on a credit card. You'll get the charts soon, but the basics are already in what Ms. Meyer wrote – a 15% cut in discretionary spending, across-the-board, when combined with some long-term changes to government retirement and medical programs ought to let us break just about even."

  "I hope that you will all join with me in this bipartisan proposal to meet the short-term security needs of the United States while also presenting a budget that meets with the priorities expressed by the Preside
nt."

  Christopher Sorensen wanted nothing more than to crawl into the unmade bed of his Washington, DC apartment and go to sleep. The thirty-two-year-old lawyer had spent yet another endless day doing document review work. A Georgetown graduate, he'd intended for his pursuit of the law to come to grander and more romantic things – but in the post-recession economy he, like so many others, had had to settle in order to pay the bills.

  Thus thwarted in his pursuit of one sort of romance, he now had sworn to himself that he would take some time every day to search for a more ordinary form of the stuff. That is what had led him to the world of online dating. Though he'd only had mixed success with it so far, something about it had kept him at it longer than all of his other New Year's Resolutions.

  Searching for love in Washington was always a challenging thing: he didn't have the money of the men of power who ran this town and he didn't have any of the glamour (if that was indeed the word) that Hill Staffers had. Anyway, he reflected from experience, those people always date each other.

  On his third search, he found someone new. She was twenty-six and a pretty brunette with shoulder-length hair. She liked The Simpsons and classical music. The only problem he saw, checking some of her profile questions, was that she was a liberal Democrat. Well, that's hardly insurmountable, he thought, as he began to type a message.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bleeding Canada

  Howard Eagleton sat in his Calgary office and watched the national edition of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation evening newscast.

  "Three months after the Israeli-Iranian nuclear exchange set off war throughout the Middle East, the results of that conflict are being felt acutely here at home," began the reporter.

  The scene shifted to one gas station after another across the country, showing prices that often topped $3 for each liter of gas.

  "Soaring gas prices have not only hit drivers at the pumps, but have had effects in all sectors of the economy."

  Graphics showed how the cost of energy increased the cost of everything else, from food to heating to housing.

  "But not everyone is sharing the pain equally," the reporter added solemnly.

  Well, here it comes, thought Eagleton.

  "With crude oil now selling for more than $250/barrel, energy-producing provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan are reaping an unprecedented windfall. Many are asking: is that fair?"

  Eagleton closed the browser window and turned away with disgust.

  "I don't think that there can be any doubt, Howard: they're coming," said Gillian Reid, his long-time aide and the Deputy Director of the National Centre on Public Policy, the right-wing think tank that the former Leader of the Opposition ran.

  "The Prime Minister might very well be a dullard former substitute teacher who sits at 24 Sussex simply because he has his father's last name, but even a stupid man could not miss the opportunity here," Reid concluded.

  The Liberal-New Democratic-Green coalition government that had run Ottawa for the last two years had been looking for its chance to seize and redistribute the wealth that was piling up in the Western provinces. Now, with parts of the East genuinely suffering as a result of the global economic crisis, the so-called "Second Great Recession" (though many now argued that what was happening was more properly described as a Depression than a Recession), the Prime Minister and his allies would be able to bring along even the weakest members of his coalition in his goal of appropriating the treasure of the West.

  "I agree," responded Eagleton, "but given that the LibDems have a fair-sized majority, I don't know that there's that much that could be done to stop them. They're not thinking of the long-term here, they're just playing politics and they're playing a short game. They want to shore up their support in Quebec -- and to a lesser extent the Maritimes and Ontario – and they're going to grab the cash wherever they can get it."

  Eagleton sighed deeply, feeling every one of his seventy-two years.

  "Call Judy at the Globe . Let's see if we can at least get them to print an OpEd."

  The air in Victoria was electric.

  "It is not enough, Mr. Speaker," the young man speaking shouted, "that we state our opposition with meek and respectful words. We have done that for fifty years and it has not worked. It did not work in the days of our grandparents. It did not work in the days of our parents. And I can assure you that it will not work today. This time, when those from the East come once again for the wealth and treasure of the West, our answer must not be 'we'd rather not.'"

  "Alexander the Great once said that the peoples of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word 'no.' But that must be our answer when Ottawa asks today. Indeed, it must be more than that. It must not be only be 'no' but 'never.' When Ottawa comes to steal our treasure once more, the answer must not only be 'never' but 'fuck off.'"

  The Opposition benches exploded with rage. Even a few on the government benches clucked their tongues. The Speaker hammered away with his gavel.

  "Unparliamentary!" someone from the other side shouted.

  "If it was good enough for the father of our Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, I put it to you that it is acceptable in this House," he replied.

  "The member for Coquitlam-Westwood Plateau is called to older," the Speaker gravely pronounced.

  "Very well, Mr. Speaker," the legislator resumed speaking, "I withdraw the verbiage of the last remark, if not its spirit. But I say to you, Mr. Speaker, as I have said before to the members of this House, that it would be a very grave mistake for the government in the East to presume that it maintains the power and hold over the people of this province, or of the West more generally, that it did some decades ago. We prize more highly our liberties than we do our attachment to an antiquated old order."

  The murmurs and shouts from the other side – and from more than a few on his own side – resumed anew. He thought – maybe – that he heard someone in the uproar shout, "treason" or "traitor" at him and he took the opportunity to let loose a remark that he had been saving.

  "If this be treason," he shouted back, quoting Patrick Henry, "make the most of it."

  William T. Jackson stepped off the floor of the Legislative Assembly with a self-satisfied smile. Elected in a by-election some two years earlier, the lawyer and author took a particular pleasure in driving the dull, poorly dressed, and badly (though in some cases expensively) educated rabble that pretended to govern the Province of British Columbia to distraction with his cutting remarks and contrarian politics.

  "That was a good speech, Bill. I imagine it's already making the YouTube rounds already," declared Fredrick Chan, his Legislative Assistant, as he greeted him.

  "Probably," Jackson admitted, "though I think that we're at the point of diminishing returns when it comes to swearing on the floor of the House."

  "Probably," Chan shrugged.

  "There are even a few of them with me," said Jackson, stabbing his finger into the air, "on the general principles of the thing. They don't want Ottawa to come and rob us blind to pay off Quebec. But they do not see that there is much to be done about it and, being so resigned, they are disinclined to put up a fight. That's fine."

  The legislator slowly walked out onto a portico that was being lashed by the cold British Columbian rain.

  "That's fine," he repeated again, almost to himself, "rather proclaim it, Chan, through my host that he which hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart. His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company who fears our fellowship to die with us."

  "Sir?" the aide, gingerly lingering at the edge of shelter from the rain, nervously asked.

  "I think," announced Jackson, turning to face Chan, "that we ought to place a call to an old comrade."

  Augustus R. King was about as far away from the rains of British Columbia as one could be – sitting contemplatively in a wind-whipped tent erected along the arid Somalian shore and reading the Meditations of Mar
cus Aurelius on his Kindle – when the call was put through. It had been a decade and a half since then-Lieutenant King had received the last phone call that had genuinely changed his life. Now, picking up his secure line, he received another.

  "Randy," began Jackson, "how's the pirate-fighting life?"

  "It's not so bad," replied King. "It's hard to believe that you can make money doing this."

  "I'm looking forward to the next round of dividends. My boat is a little small," said Jackson.

  King squinted as he turned his eyes to the Somalian sun.

  "Don't you own a 200-foot yacht?"

  "Well, sure – but it's not nearly as nice as the Cecil Rhodes ."

  The Perry -class Frigate had been acquired by Praetorian International from the cash-strapped Spanish government for next to nothing and, ever since, had served as the flagship of the Private Military Company's small-but-growing Navy.

  "The Cecil Rhodes is used to fight brigands and the common enemies of humanity, not to entertain women of dubious reputation," replied King.

  Jackson laughed.

  "Things aren't going well over here," he said. "In fact, I think that they might even turn a little bit hot. I know that the company is fully engaged over there and in the UAE – what a pity that the hostility of the present Administration keeps us from getting in directly on this Israel business – but I think that we might need support up here before too much time passes. There may be some real opportunities to be exploited here."

  The Prime Minister, as had been the case for some days past, was not in a particularly ebullient mood. His Liberal-New Democratic Party-Green coalition had been hailed by the media as the nation's salvation but, instead, every day seemed to bring with it fresh challenges. Instead of rolling forward the frontiers of the state to extend its benevolent protection to all Canadians, he found himself dealing with fractious and selfish people of the sort that his electoral victory was meant to vanquish.