another bombing? What then? And how much time do we have to
sort this out? The economy is panicked. I laughed when Bush urged Americans to
buy and sell, go to dinner, take that vacation, but he was addressing the
problem I have right now: if Americans don’t resume normal activity soon, we’re
going to have a meltdown. And that nightmare in the desert—I’m going to be
blamed when it’s not all tied up neatly in a month!
No!
There are opportunities for me, particularly after I hand security and recovery
off to Bruce. And after I hang the bomb on Kim, I can make a strong case that
he has to go . . . hold summits to get the support of the Russians, Chinese,
Japanese, and South Koreans . . . probably use this as the lever to unite
Korea. And if I position the South to run the country, they’ll support
reunification. Maybe they’ll even provide the troops if force is required to
remove Kim. Then there’s the opportunity to establish stronger accountability
for nuclear weapon s and materials, maybe give the IAEA real teeth.
I have the chance to put the world on a safer
course!
***
The man being interviewed in front of a
very large tent wore scrubs and exhaustion. “Yes,” he said, “we’ve put the
worst injured in these tents. There’s nothing we can do except make them
comfortable with drugs and give family members a chance to be with them.”
The screen changed to a stand-up of a
reporter looking almost as tired as the nurse.
“And so it has come to this,” she said
with a delivery that had once been brisk but now was slurred. “The American
medical system is completely overwhelmed by Las Vegas. All of the technology, all of the
drugs, all of the dedication of its people, and the best that can be done is to
make thousands of terribly injured human beings quote comfortable unquote in a sweltering desert until their lives flicker out.
“Will the president’s visit change
anything? Now that he and the first lady have seen and felt the horror here,
will the Martin administration do more? People here are praying it will.
“This is Ellen Shapiro reporting from
Creech Air Force Base, near what used to be Las Vegas, Nevada—or maybe, from
hell.”
Chapter 16
The White House
The president reread the Wall Street Journal’s editorial:
Where casinos like
the Thunderbird and the Golden Phoenix once stood, another sort of bird rules. Las Vegas is now the home
of a vast congregation of vultures, carrion crows, and even seagulls, in their
thousands. The smell of death travels to the visitor and the survivor on desert
winds.
But
this is more than the smell of death. It is the smell of Evil.
We are well aware
that any use of the term “evil” invites parody. Many in the president’s party
ridiculed the phrase “axis of evil” and still refuse to receive the idea of
evil into “serious” political discourse, taking its use as evidence the speaker
is simply another redneck clinging to guns and God.
We would remind
those who have banished this term of an observation by human rights activist
Natan Sharansky, once a political prisoner in Russia’s gulag, now an Israeli
citizen and political figure. Writing about the differences between repressive
social systems and free ones, he said, “Over the years, I have come to
understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of
freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to
confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral
clarity to see evil.”
We applaud the
breadth and wisdom of the plan to which President Martin so eloquently rallied
a shocked nation in the first hours after the murder of Las Vegas. As an intellectual construct, we
could not improve upon it. Although it was more a wish list than a call to
arms, it really is all that is possible right now because we don’t know—as the
president said, “yet”—whom to hold to account.
When we do
sort this out? The economy is panicked. I laughed when Bush urged Americans to
buy and sell, go to dinner, take that vacation, but he was addressing the
problem I have right now: if Americans don’t resume normal activity soon, we’re
going to have a meltdown. And that nightmare in the desert—I’m going to be
blamed when it’s not all tied up neatly in a month!
No!
There are opportunities for me, particularly after I hand security and recovery
off to Bruce. And after I hang the bomb on Kim, I can make a strong case that
he has to go . . . hold summits to get the support of the Russians, Chinese,
Japanese, and South Koreans . . . probably use this as the lever to unite
Korea. And if I position the South to run the country, they’ll support
reunification. Maybe they’ll even provide the troops if force is required to
remove Kim. Then there’s the opportunity to establish stronger accountability
for nuclear weapon s and materials, maybe give the IAEA real teeth.
I have the chance to put the world on a safer
course!
***
The man being interviewed in front of a
very large tent wore scrubs and exhaustion. “Yes,” he said, “we’ve put the
worst injured in these tents. There’s nothing we can do except make them
comfortable with drugs and give family members a chance to be with them.”
The screen changed to a stand-up of a
reporter looking almost as tired as the nurse.
“And so it has come to this,” she said
with a delivery that had once been brisk but now was slurred. “The American
medical system is completely overwhelmed by Las Vegas. All of the technology, all of the
drugs, all of the dedication of its people, and the best that can be done is to
make thousands of terribly injured human beings quote comfortable unquote in a sweltering desert until their lives flicker out.
“Will the president’s visit change
anything? Now that he and the first lady have seen and felt the horror here,
will the Martin administration do more? People here are praying it will.
“This is Ellen Shapiro reporting from
Creech Air Force Base, near what used to be Las Vegas, Nevada—or maybe, from
hell.”
Chapter 16
The White House
The president reread the Wall Street Journal’s editorial:
Where casinos like
the Thunderbird and the Golden Phoenix once stood, another sort of bird rules. Las Vegas is now the home
of a vast congregation of vultures, carrion crows, and even seagulls, in their
thousands. The smell of death travels to the visitor and the survivor on desert
winds.
But
this is more than the smell of death. It is the smell of Evil.
We are well aware
that any use of the term “evil” invites parody. Many in the president’s party
ridiculed the phrase “axis of evil” and still refuse to receive the idea of
evil into “serious” political discourse, taking its use as evidence the speaker
is simply another redneck clinging to guns and God.
We would remind
those who have banished this term of an observation by human rights activist
Natan Sharansky, once a political prisoner in Russia’s gulag, now an Israeli
citizen and political figure. Writing about the differences between repressive
social systems and free ones, he said, “Over the years, I have come to
understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of
freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to
confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral
clarity to see evil.”
We applaud the
breadth and wisdom of the plan to which President Martin so eloquently rallied
a shocked nation in the first hours after the murder of Las Vegas. As an intellectual construct, we
could not improve upon it. Although it was more a wish list than a call to
arms, it really is all that is possible right now because we don’t know—as the
president said, “yet”—whom to hold to account.
When we do
Similar Books
