A House Divided

by Adam Yoshida

  "I understand, Prime Minister," President Warren spoke deliberately as he reclined in his chair in the Oval Office.

  "Of course, Canada and the United States are and will remain allies and I am fully in accord with you as to the detestable politics and motives of these rebels. But you have to understand, Prime Minister, that I am presently in a delicate political situation myself and, further, that – for a variety of reasons – there is considerable sympathy for your rebels in this country. Sympathy that I have already said – and I cannot emphasize enough – that I do not share. But that means that any support that we provide will have to be circumspect."

  Alexis Jensen slowly unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and then held her watch in the President's face as he continued to speak.

  "Yes, Prime Minister. I agree with you. I am here to help and we will do whatever we can, it's just that we need to recognize that there are realistic limitations on what can be done immediately..."

  The Deputy Chief of Staff sat on the Resolution Desk and then leaned across it, meeting the President's eyes,

  "Ok. Best of luck to you, Prime Minister," he concluded, hanging up the phone. He then turned his face up to face Jensen.

  "The little boy is really shitting his pants now," he said.

  Jensen sat up, and then hopped off the desk and walked over towards the twinned couches that the President typically used for meetings of all sorts with senior advisors. The President likewise stood up from behind the desk and began to walk on over.

  "Can you blame him?" Jensen asked, "I mean, effectively a third of the country is now either in rebel hands or contested. The Canadian Army in the West practically collapsed in the face of what happened in Vancouver. What does he want from us, though?"

  "Direct military intervention," replied the President. Jensen shuddered.

  "He wants us to send American soldiers to fight Canadians, with Fox News and all of the right-wing media praising those guys around-the-clock as 'freedom fighters'? That's the last fucking thing that we need right now."

  "Well, that's what I told him – as gently as I could. I can hardly get us into a war, especially so political a war, while the House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an impeachment. Not yet, anyway."

  "Oh?" asked Jensen, now leaning back on the couch.

  "Well..." replied the President, "I can see how we could make it fit into our emerging counter-narrative for the impeachment if we had to. 'The last grasp of white reaction and privilege' and all of that. Perhaps we also could convince some of our friends in the media to play up the idea of rebel atrocities and the like, create a drumbeat for humanitarian intervention and so forth. Also, I did promise to look into the mercenaries who are serving with the rebels – who brought those tanks and everything else over that they used in Vancouver. I'm sure that we can find some Federal laws that they broke in that process, even if none of them appear to be American companies."

  "Mr. President," Raul Emerson warned, "we can ill-afford a government shutdown right now. I mean, the economy is such a mess... I know that we've bought some time with these Platinum Coins, whatever market uncertainty that they have caused. But I think now is the time to deal."

  The Vice President, admitted to the Oval Office in spite of the President's continuing fury towards him because of his expansive influence on the Hill, disagreed.

  "Mr. President, now is the time for you to make a genuine assertion of authority. The Congress cannot, under our Constitution, pass laws that are invalid under the Constitution. As the President of the United States, you have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to be the servant of the Congress."

  "Mr. President..." said Emerson.

  "No," replied Warren, "I think that the Vice President is quite correct, insofar as this is concerned. As President, I have not only the right but, in fact, the duty to respond when the Congress or any other official violates the Constitution. We'll go with the signing statement suggested by the Vice President."

  "We have the votes in the House," the Majority Whip confirmed, speaking up to make himself heard over the chants of the crowd outside, "but I don't see how we possibly can make it happen in the Senate."

  "We need to make a go of it, even if the cowards in the Senate do vote to acquit," insisted Terrance Rickover to the rest of the Republican House Leadership.

  Rickover stood up and began to pace.

  "Look at what's happening in Canada. In the Middle East. In the whole of the world. I am convinced that we have reached a turning-point in the affairs of man. This is not simply about the President and even it is not only about the Constitution. This is about the destiny of humanity. The question before us is simple: liberty or despotism. If we accept the unlimited rule of a few directed at the goal of fulfilling unlimited and unearned obligations, then we will negate all of the liberties of the people. Either we are a republic of free men or we are a republic of slaves of an arbitrary majority. We cannot be both."

  "But as a practical matter..." the Congresswoman from Tennessee and the Chair of the Conference tactfully began.

  "Barbara: fuck the practicality of it for a moment. We cannot concede on this point and we cannot compromise or we will find that we have compromised everything. Any concession in this fight would fall into the field of old Washington compromises where the Majority proposes burning down all of the buildings in a city overnight and the Minority counters by suggesting burning down half of them and stretching it out over two weeks. No. No. No."

  "Look Terry," the Congresswoman from Tennessee relied, her face flushed red, "the reality is that we have a mob outside screaming at us, unlike anything that I've ever seen in twenty-three years in the Congress. This whole thing had inflamed incredible passions in the country and I think that we need to consider tamping them down or who knows what will happen."

  "I don't know what will happen," Rickover conceded, sitting down and lowering his tone of voice, "but I do know what will happen if we fail to act now. We will have, by inaction or compromise, destroyed forever the liberties of the people. Government expenditures, now that we have handed the President the power to print money and to in turn use that money to buy votes, will rise indefinitely. So many people will become – if they are not already – dependent upon government that it will become impossible to remove this odious regime by democratic means and we will end up in the same spot as the Western Canadians found themselves."

  It took nine days of lockdowns and fighting in the city of Qom, filled with door-to-door searches, many of them actively opposed, for the IDF's soldiers to find what they had come looking for. Seventeen Israelis had died in the course of the treacherous fighting through houses, mosques, schools, and bunkers. The Iranian death toll was, naturally, several times that with Iranian casualties being sustained both during the fighting itself and during the prolonged and active discussions with intelligence specialists that followed the battles.

  The soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division knew that they were helping to look for something in particular. To the degree that they had been told anything, they had been told that they were assisting in a search for "high-value targets." A handful had guessed what the Israelis had actually been looking for.

  General Kahn stood and looked at the gleaming metal object that the Sayeret Matkal commandos had secured after taking the well-hidden bunker by surprise. There had been no real resistance after the commandos had flooded the ventilation system of the bunker with a surgical anesthetic in gaseous form, but the soldiers – obedient to their orders – had shot the defenders anyway, just in case. After all, if they were taken as prisoners, then the decision on what to do with them would have fallen into many hands and the chances of loose talk would have greatly multiplied. And no one wanted this getting out.

  "Are these functional?" Kahn asked General Aronov as he bent in to inspect the collection of cylinders.

  "No - they're about 90% though. The rest can be made to happen quite quickly," replied the Israeli Gene
ral, "before the attack, they simply loaded up whatever they had sitting on the assembly line and moved it into these places. They feared to do it earlier – to interrupt the manufacturing process – because they did not know if we had spies in their factories who would have seen such a halt as a red flag."

  "I know how to keep a secret, and tell me if I'm asking too much: but what's going to happen to these things now?"

  "These," said Aronov, waving his hand, "are an insurance policy."

  At what point, Major Varro had wondered, does violence become justified in response to political events? Sitting alone at his desk, he had sketched out one flow chart after another, written down one word after another, read book upon book – and he had yet to find a definitive answer. Plainly the answer was not "never" for, had it been so, then the United States of America would never have existed in the first place. At some point the Founding generation had had to take it upon itself to fire the shot heard 'round the world. Yet that reality did not answer the fundamental question of what acts justified actual rebellion.

  He drew up a chart, describing degrees of political opposition, beginning with mental dissent and rising all of the way up through Cambodian-style genocidal civil war. The President – whom he had served in a very direct fashion – was plainly committing crimes against the Constitution on a daily basis. He was a direct witness to these crimes. At what point did acting as a passive witness become complicity?

  Varro travelled the DC Metro system, walking aimlessly about the city as he pondered these questions. He could act – he had thought of ways in idle moments long before he had even first considered that thought might have to be transformed into action – but would any good be accomplished by such an infamous act? Brutus and Cassius had not saved the Republic – perhaps they had even doomed it. But, perhaps, it was not Brutus and Cassius, but those who had failed to strike at the Gracchi brothers who had doomed the Roman Republic. Lost in his own mind, Major Varro continued to walk.

  It took several weeks and the dispatch for a Lieutenant Colonel to the region, allegedly on a Public Affairs "fact finding" mission in advance of the arrival of a Congressional Delegation, for General Hall to begin to get some answered about what Third Army was really up to.

  "I wasn't able to move all the way up to the front – I wouldn't have been permitted unless I was to wave around my Chief of Staff pass," the Colonel explained, "but I was able to talk to a lot of people and get at least a slight read on what's going on over there. By all accounts, even though the IDF is supposed to be largely stood down and working in relief work, there are still Israeli soldiers everywhere. Especially at CENTCOM HQ in Jerusalem."

  "You think," asked all, "that they're passing supplies to Israeli formations off-the-books?"

  "It's the only thing that makes sense. I mean, they're still having a pretty rough fight with the insurgents over there and, of course, we know from Iraq and Afghanistan that there are definite downsides to using our soldiers for that particular mission. Not only the casualties, but also the PR aspects of it come into play."

  "That's understandable enough, but that would definitely violate both the letter and the spirit of the orders issued by the President," Hall brooded, before adding, "let's put all of the figures together."

  The task of compiling the report was delegated to a Brigadier General who, in turn, passed it down to his staff. Among them was a youngish Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who, as both a patriot and a man with a family to look after, had long been in contact with prospective future employers. In particular, he had had a number of meetings with an attractive young woman who served as a recruiter for Praetorian International, which had repeatedly told him that they hoped to use his services in the future.

  Howard Eagleton sat quietly in the Vancouver office that had been allocated, after the liberation, to the provisional President of the Western Republic.

  "...The Federal Government continues to mobilize increasingly substantial forces in the Eastern Provinces," explained his briefer, "new military equipment has been purchased or transferred from overseas, principally from Europe. New tanks and aircraft are coming in from both France and Germany. Heavy recruiting in Quebec, the Maritimes, and in Native communities is aiming to raise and train a force of 100,000 or more soldiers for an offensive, perhaps sometime next year. The government apparently intends to go all-in and to remain in for the long haul. They're raising money through more-or-less straight currency issuance. It'll play long-term havoc but, in the short term, it seems to be working. They've managed to get some governments to subscribe to their bonds on political rather than economic grounds, pointing out to them the long-term economic threat that the Western Republic, extended to its natural limits, would be as a nation of massive resources and extremely low taxes, alongside other more-rhetorical points."

  "If we can move fast, post-Vancouver, we have a real opportunity," noted Jackson quietly.

  "How so?" asked Eagleton, "the battle here in Vancouver required every force that we could sneak in. Federal forces are weakened, but still in control of large chunks of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. They have more of an ability to raise support from the international community than we do."

  "Internationally, perhaps, that is true of the entire world. But we should not understate our own advantages," said Jackson. He turned to General King.

  "Mr. President," began Augustus King, "since even before the military part of this conflict began, we – meaning myself, General Jackson, our friends at Praetorian, and a number of our friends abroad have been preparing ourselves for exactly this eventuality. With the right amount of money – and the right sort of campaign – we believe that it will be possible for us to assemble a larger and more mobile army, to dispatch it to the East, to settle this battle once and for all, and to do it before the full onset of winter."

  "How could that even be possible?" asked Eagleton with a tone that landed somewhere between dismissive and intrigued.

  "Well," said Jackson, "let's take a step back and consider the economic prospects of a Western Republic. Even accounting for some reduction in energy prices, a Western Republic consisting of the former Provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and all of the northern territories would have a GDP valued at nearly a Trillion pre-war dollars. To put it another way, the Western Republic represents the world's fifteenth largest economy.

  "Now, let's consider something else – as things stand, we have not settled the issue of pre-existing Federal obligations. However, it is my position – and an assumption which this plan rests – that the Western Republic, given the willingness of the Federal Government to wage war against it as well as the usurpations of our rights and theft of our money that were the causes of the separation to begin with, will not assume any of the existing Federal debt. Further, it is our projection – prepared by several respected Think Tanks here and in the United States – that funding the sort of social and other services required by and demanded by the citizens of the Western Republic will result in a very low rate of taxation. Perhaps no more than 10-15% of the total GDP of the Western Republic. And, of course, this would be a country, especially given the projected raising of restrictions upon development, with very high resource revenues."

  "Let us consider another factor as well: those same low tax rates are very likely to raise substantial interest in relocating in the West from many international corporations. In other words, it is very likely that the Western Republic would see rapid economic growth that would transform it into a top-ten economy and, further, that it would be the richest country in the world on a per-capita basis."

  "Ok," said Eagleton, "I get that. I think that we all get that."

  "But here," said King, "is what it means on a practical level: if we can convince people of this abroad, that makes the Western Republic the investment opportunity of a lifetime. Yes, it's true that our credit is a little bit shaky - but if we can convince enough investors of this position, we will be in a position
to raise a massive amount of money from financial markets."

  "How massive are we talking about?" asked the President.

  "Our projections suggest selling $150 billion in long-term bonds ought to be more than enough. With a long-term repayment date, the up-front cost ought to be relatively trivial when compared with what might be gained from them."

  "And what do we do with this sort of money?"

  "The world," replied King, "it awash in weapons. Our financial arm, Praetorian Capital, would be prepared to both raise the money and to use our contacts in order to acquire the sort of equipment that that kind of money can buy."

  "All right. Suppose that we do this: where are we going to get soldiers from?"

  "Elevate the conflict to a higher plane," said Jackson, "make this a universal struggle for freedom. Anyway, we have friends who can handle a lot of that for us."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  John Brown

  The television host strutted across the stage.

  "During the Revolutionary War, Lafayette was just one of many who came to America in order to volunteer in our struggle, because he recognized that we were fighting a universal battle for human freedom."

  The image behind the host changed.

  "The same was true in our own Civil War. Brave men came, even all the way from Europe, because they recognized that there was a universal principle at stake.

  "And, again, in the World Wars, there were those who went overseas early – from right here in America – to join the fight for freedom before our politicians were ready to do the same.

  "Now we have a new fight for freedom going on. This one being fought in our own hemisphere. A handful of freedom-loving individuals have risen against a tyrannical government and asserted their own right to the pursuit of happiness.

  "And what is our President doing? Is he standing alongside the giants of our own history as a supporter of freedom? No. He's offering mealy-mouthed support to the oppressors and he's providing them with weapons. His Justice Department is going so far as to investigate and yes, in a few cases even prosecute those brave enough to volunteer in defense of freedom.