The Second Civil War- The Complete History

by Adam Yoshida

  Dunford checked his watch again. He silently prayed that the distant sounds of gunfire, combined with the reports of battle elsewhere, had caused all civilians to take shelter. He hesitated for a fraction of a second. Well, he thought, it has to be done. He pressed the “Send” key on his phone.

  Half a block away, a car bomb detonated with incredible force. The target was a building that had been taken over by the Army to serve as cafeteria for soldiers in this part of the city. Even with battle imminent, his last intelligence had shown, there were some soldiers getting coffee from the place. Never mind those who staffed it. The bomb - a standard nitrate fertilizer/gasoline job - simply tore the place apart. Several people were killed but, more importantly from the perspective of the battle plan, more were wounded.

  The Western platoon was broken into three squads. One of them, supplemented by a few crack shots, was quietly deployed around the site of the bombing.

  Dunford watched as people screamed in the aftermath of the bombing. A man, his leg torn apart by shrapnel, dragged himself pathetically across the ground. Another man came running across the scene, running towards the injured soldier. The Lieutenant continued to watch and wait as others came to the scene. He waited another second as he continued to watch the first man charge towards the scene. It was brave, he thought, but it was the bravery of peacetime. After satisfying himself that the people charging to the aid of the wounded were themselves ordinary solders and not marked medical personnel, he silently gave the order to fire. The first soldier to be struck was hit directly in the chest and blown backwards by the force of a sniper’s bullet. Another was stuck in the head and, having been initially driven backwards by the hit, was carried forward another few steps before the forward momentum of their bulk sent them crumpling forward. As an outcome, the Lieutenant reflected for not the last time during his service, it was legal without being moral.

  The initial resistance encountered by the First Armored Brigade had been, in a word, pathetic. A handful of infantrymen had attempted to fire Rocket-Propelled Grenades at the first Merkavas in the line as they moved down Hastings Street. It was gallant enough, but about as effective as Polish cavalry attempting to assault Nazi Panzers with their sabers. Julian’s company hadn’t even stopped to deal with them, leaving the mopping up instead to be handled by the infantry coming in the second echelon.

  For the sixty-third time that day, Captain Julian thanked God that the Federal Government had failed to move any of the Canadian Army’s Leopard II tanks to support the occupation forces in Vancouver. They had had logistically sound reasons for coming to this decision - the length and fragility of their supply lines requiring that the forces in British Columbia be supplied almost entirely by the air primary among them - but it now left them without a force capable of seriously challenging the Western Army in a direct head-to-head battle.

  Resistance intensified as the tanks began to approach the Downtown core itself. A squad at the corner of East Pender and Main had managed to fire an anti-tank missile that disabled one of the Western tanks. This, combined with the fighting being reported over their radio network as going on all along the streets of the city to the west, required the entire column to be slowed.

  As infantry moved to attempt to clear nearby buildings with support from the armored vehicles on the road, a second anti-tank guided missile streaked through the air and narrowly missed.

  “First Platoon hold,” Julian spoke into his radio as he began to key instructions into his computer for the tanks of his Company.

  “Engage the enemy forces in the building on the left that I have designated with direct fire,” he ordered his tanks. Eleven functional Merkavas turned their barrels and began to unleash 120mm High Explosive rounds against the squat, ugly, and old building that the missiles had been fired from. Later Julian would take special delight in offending the particularly squeamish by describing his battle in the Downtown Eastside as, “a form of accelerated and concussive urban renewal.”

  By the time the soldiers from Camp Pearson reached the mountain, the artillery fire had ceased. The pair of howitzers had already decamped for somewhere. General Cauchon himself had accompanied the two Infantry companies sent out to attempt to hunt down the forces attacking the Federal base with indirect fire.

  “Fuck,” he cursed, leaning against his HUMVEE as he and other soldiers examined the area where, based upon the tracks and debris surrounding them, the Western soldiers clearly had been.

  “General,” his aide announced with great solemnity, “our forces in Vancouver report that they are under attack by heavy armor. First reports say that there’s a whole armored division overrunning their lines. Colonel McLean reports that, given the lack of heavy weapons at his disposal, he will be compelled to surrender in short order.”

  “Jesus fuck!” shouted Cauchon, “there’s no fucking way that they’ve concealed a whole Goddmaned division from us! Some heavy weapons, sure. That’s why we managed to bring in the ATGMs and the rest of it. But a division? He’s fucking panicking. Signal Brigade HQ - tell them that Colonel McLean is relieved, effective immediately and that I will be taking personal...”

  General Cauchon never got to finish his sentence. As it turned out, the rebels had one final surprise up their sleeves on that day: they’d purchased a single ex-American M270 Multiple Rocket Launch System together with a significant quantity of munitions for the same. Further, they’d carefully sighted the area from which they had fired upon Camp Pearson in the expectation that there would be a major movement of forces into the area - forces who had still not adjusted to the idea that they were fighting a war rather than acting as a police force and who would therefore respond to an attack by charging to it as if it were a crime scene rather than a battlefield. At that very moment the first of 7728 high-explosive submunitions began to detonate over the spot where the General was standing and moments later continued to detonate over the spot where he had been standing.

  The White House, Washington, DC

  “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 a
s ‘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, anyways.”

  “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 a 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.”

  The Capitol, Washington, DC

  “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.”

  Qom, Iran

  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 anyways 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 General, “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.”

  Arlington, Virginia

  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 th
e 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.

  The Pentagon

  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.”