True Faith and Allegiance

41

President Jack Ryan stood before a rough room. He gave a lot of press conferences, compared with most other presidents, and was comfortable with even the toughest questions, but today he felt such a visceral anger inside him at the attacks going on in the country that he fought hard to temper his comments, to control his mood, and to craft his answers in ways that would show him in control and serving as a calm, reasonable steward over the investigation to capture Abu Musa al-Matari and his fellow terrorists.

This made him come off more than a little flat in front of the cameras, he could feel it, but he wasn’t ready to burst forth with his true emotions.

And the press wasn’t going easy on him at all.

After opening with a superficial update on the hunt, little more than a promise that all was being done and no stone would be left unturned, Ryan announced that the Pentagon would be putting proposals on his desk by the end of the day to help protect servicemen and — women at home and abroad. From here he offered a subdued but sincere expression of condolences for the victims and their families, and then he opened the room up to questions, with the caveat that he would not be able to answer questions related directly to the ongoing terrorism investigations.

A White House correspondent from CNN went first after being called on by Ryan. “Mr. President, does the fact that ISIS seems to have matured in their abilities to where they can now attack our military inside the United States indicate that your strategy to destroy them in the Middle East has been a failure?”

Jack wasn’t surprised by this question at all, but he took his time thinking over his answer before speaking. Finally he said, “I don’t believe so, Lauren. It is in keeping with the normal actions of rebel groups, going back millennia, that when they lose ground on the battlefield, they try to take back ground in the public forum.

“They will commit more suicide attacks on the battlefield, and we’re seeing that. And they will work as hard as they can to attack the West in the West. And we’re seeing that as well with what’s going on currently at home, and in Europe, which has been an Islamic State battleground for the past two years.”

Another reporter, this one from the AP, asked, “Do we know the size of the force here in the United States?”

“We have some estimates, yes, and it is a relatively small number. I can’t give you that number, unfortunately, because we can’t let our enemy know everything we know about them. We have to protect our sources and methods.”

The AP reporter said, “Five? Ten? One hundred? One thousand?”

Ryan reiterated, “I can’t give you that number, Chuck. Obviously several Islamic State terrorists have been killed in the commission of their attacks so far. We expect more to be killed or captured if they continue, due to the diligence of federal, state, and local law enforcement. Our threat levels are at their highest point, and our intelligence on the subject is good and getting better. We will root them out as quickly as possible, and while that doesn’t answer your fair question, that’s all I can give you right now.”

An older reporter who worked for McClatchy said, “What are you asking citizens to do to be safe? Should America just hunker down at home until the threat has passed?”

Ryan frowned for a moment. “Absolutely not, Richard. Let’s keep this in perspective for the average U.S. citizen. It is a sad fact that there were more than fifty shootings in Chicago over the weekend, with seven dead. There exists, quite unfortunately, violence all around us. What is happening with these Islamic State terrorists in our borders is of utmost concern to us, but I would not want the average American citizen to do anything more than report any concerns you may have to your local law enforcement agency.

“People have a reasonable tendency to do one of two things when they listen to someone in the government warn them of a threat. They either tune out or they freak out. I don’t want Americans doing either thing. They need to understand there are real threats, but we are working with skill and diligence to remove these threats.”

Now the ABC chief national security reporter, Susan Hayes, said, “Americans have watched us fight against the Islamic State for much of your term. We have some Special Forces and some airpower over there, but so far we haven’t been able to stop them. Yes, they have shrunk in some areas, but if you look at a map of territory controlled by ISIS, you see it remains larger than many other Middle Eastern nations. Will you consider new steps to ramp up the war against ISIS in light of the fact they are over here now, killing people within our borders?”

Ryan considered this carefully, like a professor wanting to give his student the proper context for his answer. “When you see on television that ISIS has conquered a new city, it is important for you to understand what that means. The media portrays these events by showing a map with an ever-moving, and often expanding, red blob indicating the so-called borders of the Islamic State. The truth is, ISIS has fought weak enemies, many of whom have run without putting up resistance. We should not think of them as really owning much territory at all. They come in, scare local police and government away, set up roadblocks and send out a couple pickup trucks full of men, which serve as death squads. They aren’t governing, they aren’t turning these locations into real strongholds. They can roll a few more trucks up a local road, and then the next day someone redraws the map of their ‘borders’ to make it look like they’ve pushed their front line thirty miles overnight. They didn’t advance their front line. They drove a convoy of trucks from one village to the next without being destroyed.

“We have intelligence and special mission units in the area, so those of us privy to classified intelligence know the media reports are not accurate.”

A reporter from The New York Times called out, “Then why haven’t we defeated them?”

“Two words, Michael. Civilian casualties. Two more words, related to the first two. Human shields. ISIS lives and operates within cities and congested areas. We find a group of Islamic State fighters out in the open and we do our best to put an A-10 or an Apache on them as quick as our people can task them. But we aren’t going to shell cities, no matter who is in there that needs rooting out.”

Susan Hayes spoke again, this time without being called upon. “So are you saying there will be no new offensive against ISIS despite the fact they are now bringing the war to our cities?”

“Susan, nobody on planet Earth wants a massive U.S. invasion into Iraq and Syria more than ISIS. If we return to the Middle East in large numbers, the Islamic State knows their ranks will be flooded by recruits, extremism in the cities will skyrocket, and support for their heinous aims will go up. The average ISIS fighter, poorly trained, poorly equipped, motivated by nothing other than a vague hope of an Islamic State and a specific belief in exaltation in the afterlife… this guy doesn’t have a prayer of ever shooting down an F-18, seeing an American Special Forces operator in his rifle sight, or winning a fight with a drone or a smart bomb. But if we flood the zone, if we put a couple hundred thousand American men and women in their area, well… some of these guys just might get their sights on what they see as an infidel, and that is the best thing they can hope for in their life.”

Ryan shook his head slowly. “I have no intention of giving them the opportunity they crave.

“Now, the United States is at the vanguard of fighting this evil group, and we will continue to be there, leading from the front. If we see tactical ways to increase our involvement that make sense, we will do just that.”

Ryan took a few more questions, most along the same lines as the others. He closed with, “As soon as we have more to report, the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the secretary of defense will be speaking publicly as the need arises.”

After Ryan left the press briefing room, Arnie Van Damm was there by his side.

Ryan said, “What did you think?”

“Not your best performance, Jack.”

“Tell me why.” Jack did not disagree, but he valued Arnie’s input.

“You were talking like a historian in there.”

“In my own defense, I am a historian, Arnie.”

“Do you think that’s what people want to hear? That what’s happening now is simply a long-standing insurgent tactic, and nothing to be alarmed about?”

“I didn’t say it like that.”

“That’s how it sounded.” Van Damm pointed in the direction of the stairs to the Situation Room. “Back down there you sounded like you wanted to pick up a machine gun and lead the attack into Mosul yourself. That’s what the public needs to hear. Not a poli-sci lecture about Third World madmen and street crime in Chicago.”

Ryan thought Arnie had a point, but he said, “I wasn’t ready to be honest with the way I feel right now. We need more of a plan, less groping in the dark. I’ll talk to the public when we are prosecuting this fight against the intelligence leak and the terrorists in some meaningful way.” Together they entered the Oval. “For now we are on the back foot, and I couldn’t let that show in my emotions.”