Drone Threat

38

President Lane took his customary seat at the far end of the Situation Room table, his mind clearly occupied. The next hour in this room would determine the fate of the nation. Pearce was on his right.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Gordon Onstot, sat at the other end of the long table opposite President Lane. The four-star air force general’s barrel chest was loaded with hard-earned combat medals, ribbons, and badges. Mike Pia, the director of national intelligence, sat to the chairman’s right. Chandler, Grafton, Eaton, Peguero, Abbott, and Gibson sat in the middle.

“We need to talk about goals and means,” Lane began. “I want to know from each of you what you would do if you were sitting in my chair. Don’t try and second-guess me. Just give me your best thoughts in a few sentences. We’ll start with goals. Gordon, let’s hear you first.”

The JCS chairman cleared his throat. “We need a limited and definable goal that can be achieved rapidly and that addresses the threat at hand. We should mount an immediate air and ground assault on the ISIS Caliphate in Syria and Iraq and its capital city, Raqqa. We should kill or capture all enemy forces, and kill or capture Caliph al-Mahdi and his ruling council as quickly as possible to eliminate the current threat.”

“Doable?” Lane asked.

“No question. A matter of weeks if sufficient force is deployed quickly enough. Maybe less.”

“The CliffsNotes version of the Powell Doctrine,” Garza said.

The press secretary nodded. “A definable objective. I can sell that.”

“The chairman’s right,” Chandler said. “Hit them hard and win.”

“Objections?” Lane asked. He glanced around the room. Pearce frowned. “Troy?”

“‘Hit them hard and win’ is great. But the minute we leave, they’ll be back and we’ll have to occupy the territory indefinitely, just like South Korea, where we still have troops more than fifty years after that conflict ended.”

“I take it you have a different goal?” Lane asked.

“Take out al-Mahdi and his troops and you still haven’t killed ISIS — they’re operating throughout the Middle East, and they have affiliates all over the planet. The only way to truly win a war is to end it, and the only way to end it with ISIS and its affiliates is to hunt every last one of them down and kill them wherever we find them.”

The attorney general scowled. “Aren’t you exaggerating the problem? Only a small percentage of Muslims are fanatics.”

“There are one-point-six billion Muslims in the world,” Pia said. “If just ten percent of them are fanatics, that means we’re in a war with one hundred sixty million people. If it’s just one percent, we’re still talking about sixteen million people devoted to destroying us by any means possible.”

“That’s a long war, Troy,” Lane said. “A global war. A total war.”

“We’re already in a long war,” Pearce said. “They launched their campaign against the West in the seventh century. But half a war like General Onstot is proposing promises an even longer one — and denies us victory for the effort. By fighting a limited war against ISIS, we telegraph to our enemies that we’re not totally committed to winning. That gives them incentive to wait us out. They will, and we’ll quit. We always do.”

“You’re just a bag of sunshine and rainbows, aren’t you?” Chandler said.

“Troy’s right,” Grafton said. Chandler scowled at her. She didn’t care. It was time for her to make her move.

“How so, Vicki?” Lane said.

“Even if we could defeat ISIS by only destroying the Caliphate, all we’ve done is cleared the field for al-Qaeda to reemerge, or for some other jihadi organization to rise up and take its place. Radical Islam is a hydra with a million heads. Like Troy said, either we make a total military commitment to destroy all of our jihadi enemies over a long war, or we don’t make that total commitment, and fight an even longer war and lose to them.”

“Sounds like genocide,” Peguero said. “Like a war against Islam itself. That’s not an American idea. That’s not who we are.” Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not who you are, Mr. President.”

“You’re right,” Pearce said, looking a Peguero. “Genocide literally means the killing of a type of person. In World War Two we killed fascists. Millions of them. We killed their soldiers in the field and burned their cities to the ground and their civilian populations with them. It was the only way to defeat them. Do you have a problem with us winning World War Two and defeating the fascists?”

“That’s a ridiculous question,” Peguero said. “There’s no comparison.”

“I agree,” Pearce said. “Germany and Japan were nation-states. ISIS is not, despite the Caliphate. We could invade Germany and Japan and Italy and occupy them and force their leaders to sign treaties that ended the war. There is no one country to invade and occupy, no one person in authority to deal with, no treaty to be signed to end the war with radical Islam. That means we must kill them all, wherever we find them, if we ever want it to end.”

“Religion can’t be defeated with guns and violence,” Peguero said. “We need to win the argument against radical Islam by showing the world we are morally superior. Islam is a religion of peace. The fanatical killers aren’t really Muslim at all.”

Garza threw up his hands. “Are you nuts? Who are you to say that Muslims who claim to be Muslims aren’t really Muslim? ISIS and AQ and Boko Haram and all of the other murdering bastards all swear by the Koran and by Allah and by Muhammad, His Prophet. Only smug, self-righteous Western elites think those people aren’t really who they say they are.”

“All I know is that if you wage war against the whole religion, you’ll only increase the number of zealots who want to kill us,” Peguero said. “Bush understood that. So has every other president since him — at least until now.”

“I agree with you,” Pearce said.

Eyebrows raised around the room, including Peguero’s. “I’m confused.”

“You can’t destroy religion with guns. Religion, like ideology, is software. It’s invisible. It’s an idea. So you’re right, we can’t fight radical Islam with guns.” Pearce tapped his skull with his finger. “But we can wreck the hardware that runs it. We put bullet to bone. Turn brain pans into pink mist. That’s exactly how Islam spread, isn’t it? Muhammad and his successors spread their software by killing Christians and Jews in the wars of Muslim expansion that only ended when the West stopped them by force of arms at places like Tours, Malta, and Vienna.”

“So we have to become barbarians in order to defeat the barbarians?”

“In theory, yes. But I know that we don’t have the guts to wage that kind of war. I’m not even sure it’s the morally right thing to do. But half a war and half the effort will only make things twice as bad in the long run. Wage total war or don’t wage it at all is my point.”

“How can we not wage war against our sworn enemies?” Chandler asked.

“Containment,” Pia said.

“What do you mean exactly?” Lane asked.

“Containment is the Cold War strategy that defeated the Soviet empire without firing a shot in a hot war. It forced the Soviets to live with the internal contradictions of their social and economic system and, of course, it collapsed upon itself.”

“That took over fifty years to accomplish,” Chandler said.

Pia shrugged. “Only because our two-faced European allies propped them up for decades for profit while we spent the money to defend NATO. Otherwise the Soviet Union would have fallen thirty years earlier.”

Grafton frowned with confusion. “So what’s your point?”

“The principle of Islamic containment is the same: totally wall off Islam from the West. It’s a civilizational war, isn’t it? Let the crazies stay stuck in crazy town. Let the whole Middle East turn into one giant ISIS Caliphate. What do you think would happen? The Muslim world hasn’t produced a significant medical or scientific or technological breakthrough in seven hundred years. If they were completely walled off from the West and forced to live according to Sharia law, they’d wind up in a complete dystopia of economic collapse, overpopulation, famine, disease, and ultimately revolution. They’d either completely destroy themselves or reform themselves, and we wouldn’t have to fire a shot or shed one drop of blood in a war with them.”

“But how do we ‘wall off’ Islam from the West?” Peguero asked.

Pia shrugged. “That’s another topic for another day. I’m just suggesting that war isn’t the only alternative here.”

Eaton nodded. “Technically, Mr. Pia is right. Containment worked against the Soviets. In theory, it may work again. But we don’t have ten years or even ten days to see if it will. The ISIS threat is at our throats right now. We need an immediate solution.”

“So you favor General Onstot’s position?”

“I do,” Eaton said. “Even though I also agree that winning this battle against the ISIS Caliphate won’t win us the war.”

“There’s an even simpler solution,” Garza said.

“What’s that?” Lane asked.

“Fly the stupid flag.”

Garza’s words sucked the air out of the room.

Pearce watched Lane’s jaw clenching in the awkward silence.

“For the record, I was joking,” Garza said.

“That flag will never be flown under any circumstances,” Lane said. “Am I absolutely clear about this?”

The room nodded in agreement.

“Don’t raise the issue again, Jim. Not even as a joke.”

Garza nodded, chastised. “Won’t happen again.”

“Good.” Lane lightened up. “I wouldn’t quit your day job, either.”

Nervous chuckles filtered through the room, breaking the tension.

Garza smiled. “No, sir.”

Lane continued. “To summarize, the three alternatives are a limited engagement, a long engagement, or containment, which is no engagement. The problem is, we’re out of time. I agree with Gordon and Melinda. We need a swift and powerful strike to decapitate the ISIS leadership and destroy its forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq right now. That’s our best shot at stopping these terror attacks on American soil. So that’s our goal. Now it’s time we talk about the means of achieving it. Suggestions?”

So far, so good, Grafton thought. Lane is one step closer to war.

Chandler leaned forward on the table. “Given our ‘no new boots on the ground’ policy, the only viable option for ground forces would be to accept the Russians’ offer and use their troops with our air support. They’re already in the region and ready to go.”

Pia shook his head. “The Russians have been driving toward the Persian Gulf since Peter the Great. Now’s not the time to hand them the keys to the kingdom.”

“I agree with the director,” Onstot said. “In the long run, the Russians are our strategic competitor. Handing them the world’s primary oil reserves on top of their own energy resources gives them economic leverage we don’t want them to have.”

“It also conveys weakness,” Grafton said.

Chandler shot her another withering look. She ignored him. She knew Lane would never agree to Russian boots. The only chance for war was for Lane to commit American forces. Time to kill the Russian option once and for all.

“How so, Vicki?” Lane asked.

“A Russian alliance communicates to our allies and enemies that we’re either too weak or too afraid to take on ISIS by ourselves and that we are no longer the world’s preeminent superpower.”

“So you think we should go it alone?” the president asked.

“Yes, sir. I do.” Grafton felt the power in the room shift away from Chandler and toward her. For once she wasn’t sitting in the vice president’s shadow.

It felt good.

“It’s a limited operation with clearly defined objectives. I’m sure our military can handle it.”

Lane turned toward the JCS chairman. “Can we?”

Onstot nodded. “No question. “Twenty thousand troops should do the job, not counting air and naval support. First or Second Marines, 82nd Airborne, 10th Mountain. Any combination of those would work. We can have the lead elements on the ground in twenty-four hours. Just give the word.”