To the Death

“Well, if I had to guess,” said Tariq Fahd, “I’d say the hideous Americans tortured our people, wrung the information out of them, and then tipped off the Israelis to come in and nail the Hamas C-in-C, the man Ramon Salman telephoned the night before the Logan airport bomb.”

“I’d go with that,” said Ravi. “And I should remind all of you, the Mossad always favors the bomb against the bullet. And I doubt they have ever forgiven me for the death of their senior operatives in the restaurant in Marseilles.”

“Not to mention wiping out the entire jail staff at Nimrod, and, in one hit, liberating every last one of the most sworn enemies of Israel.” Tariq Fahd looked wistful.

“Do any of you think we should seek revenge, on behalf of Allah and the Prophet?”

“Always,” said General Rashood. “We should never accept a strike against us on this scale without an immediate response. The problem is, the Mossad probably considers its operation in Bab Touma to have been the most terrible failure. And anyway, you all understand how difficult it is to mount an attack on the Israelis. They’re liable to come back and flatten this entire city. If they suspect Hamas.”

“They won’t just suspect Hamas,” said the commodore. “If anything happens to them, they’ll know it was us, before the dust clears.”

“Nonetheless, I think we should most certainly devote some time toward planning a major strike against either the Mossad or the USA,” said Ravi. “Something devastating, something that will surely grab the headlines. Make ’em sit up and listen to us, as they have never really done since 9/11. Never done since our beloved Osama bowed out.”

“Could we blow up their entire headquarters on King Saul Boulevard?”

“Only if we did not mind losing possibly twenty of the highest-qualified personnel we have,” replied General Rashood. “Because that’s what it would take, and that’s what would happen. We’d never get out alive.”

“And that would be an awful waste,” replied the commodore. “By the sword of the Prophet, that would be the most awful waste. But Allah will guide us.”

“Allah is great,” intoned Ravi. And he was joined in that Muslim exaltation by everyone in the room. And in the silence that followed, they repeated the following lines from the Koran, the prayer of the jihadist:

… from thee alone do we ask help.Guide us on the straight path,The path of those upon whom is thy favor,… Light upon light,God guides whom He will, to his Light…

Washington, D.C.

Not every member of President Bedford’s White House staff was absolutely thrilled about the continued presence of Admiral Arnold Morgan at the elbow of the chief executive.

And in particular, there was a small cabal of the president’s speechwriters who considered the admiral a gross intrusion upon their ambitions. These were youngish men, three of them, highly educated, who believed to the depths of their egotistical souls that they alone knew what the president should be saying.

The problem with such people is they also believe they know what he should be doing. Not all the time. But enough of the time to make certain senior staffers extremely wary of them.

The business of writing speeches for the boss has, over the years, developed into the function of a committee. First draft, rewrite, alterations, new thought, new draft. Christ, he better not say that. why not? He is the president, right? Yes, but the media will go for him. they’ll go for him no matter what. yes, but. yes, but. yes, but. yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.

This crowd, bursting with self-importance, would rewrite Shakespeare—To be or not to be

(delete the last “to be,” superfluous), That is the question (delete “question” and substitute “problem,” it’s more positive, less indecisive).

Writers and editors, the endless war. I don’t think you should say this, or indeed that.

Yeah, but where were you, asshole, when the paper was blank?

After a couple of years of this internal strife, these literary staffers quite often lose track of the fact that what a president says has nothing whatsoever to do with what he does.

They begin to believe that their thoughts and words represent actual policy. And when a tyrant like Admiral Morgan comes rampaging in, not giving a damn, one way or another, who says what, only about what the president does — well, that causes inevitable friction among the scribes.