by Mike Bond
“Unchain him.” Jack turned to al-Baghdadi. “I’m telling them to release you,” he said in Arabic.
“We’re not supposed to, Sir,” a Guardsman said.
“He’s not going to hurt me. And wait outside.”
They unlocked al-Baghdadi’s wrists and feet, went out and closed the bolt.
Al-Baghdadi looked at Jack. “That was stupid,” he said in English.
“What are you going to do?” Jack answered in Arabic. “Try to kill me?”
“Killing you would unfortunately make no difference.”
“Yes it would. Because then they’d kill you.”
“Fool, do you think I care?”
“Far more than you admit.”
“So why are you here? Like the others who try to turn me?”
“What others?”
“The ones who want me out early... That’s why you’re here. Isn’t it?”
Jack thought about this. “If we release you, what then?”
Al-Baghdadi stood suddenly and for an instant Jack tensed. “If I had a prison knife,” al-Baghdadi said, “I could kill you. But I don’t have a knife and I can kill many more of you if I am released. That is what then.”
“But I’m not letting you be released.”
“Then I will have you killed. I can send men to do it. Any time.”
Jack felt coldness up his spine, knowing this was true. “Saying that won’t help you.”
Al-Baghdadi leaned forward. “You’re a parasite, a virus. But soon you will go and we’ll take back our country. Make it what it was, a great empire from the Atlantic to the Hindu Kush, a world power based on faith and law.” He sat back. “And no matter what you do you can’t stop us.”
“Caliphates come and go, the Abbasids, the Ottomans. None last.”
“Ours will. And like the Abbasids twelve centuries ago we will destroy anyone in our way. We will behead them, torture them, crucify them and stone them to death until they learn. When people are afraid they listen. They do what they’re told.”
“People love freedom, they don’t want to be enslaved by ideas. People want democracy, not Sharia.”
“But Sharia will dominate. Sharia will be implemented worldwide. Democracy is the opposite of Sharia and Islam. We believe Allah is the legislator. Allah makes the laws. He decides what is allowed and what is forbidden.”
There was a force of will, Jack realized, that drove this man to believe he could make the world what he wanted. Like Hitler and Stalin he told himself things so intensely he totally believed them. Where religion came in, the ancient chasm between belief and knowledge. But just because you believed something didn’t make it true.
“You say I am a killer?” al-Baghdadi huffed. “That Muslims are killers? But you, the West, have you not killed a hundred million people in two world wars? You, Americans, did you not kill twenty million Native Americans, did you not drop two nuclear bombs on Japan, kill three million Vietnamese? Have you not started oil wars across the Middle East, for nearly a century?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And you say we are the killers? You blame us for cutting the heads from our enemies, but did not your religions do that for centuries?”
“For us those days are finished. We are trying to build a modern world, without killing, with freedom for everyone.”
“Hah!”
He questioned al-Baghdadi for another five hours but nothing changed. There was no way he should be released. But to al-Baghdadi it clearly didn’t matter what Jack recommended, he knew he was going to be released.
When Jack stepped outside the hot air hit like a furnace, searing his throat and nostrils, dust stinging his eyes. How bizarre that once this place had been a wild fertile lowland of trees and grass and streams, and now a blasted desert of tents, concrete huts and sharp wire, at one side a house trailer with a huge Subway sign rattling in the torrid wind.
We cannot make the world, Jack thought, what we believe ourselves to be.
DO NOT RELEASE THIS MAN, he typed in bold across the top of his report, and after detailing his findings, concluded,
Although there is much pressure to release him, he represents a long-term serious risk to the interests of the United States not only in the Middle East but domestically. He is capable of shooting down civilian planes, and has the weapons sources to do it. As an IED expert, he can slaughter thousands and shake the foundations of whatever government we’re trying to rebuild. I believe his group is getting millions a month from Wahhabis in Saudi, Qatar and all over the Gulf, and buying more and more sophisticated weapons. He’s very adept on the internet and has, as you know, a huge following including many “compassionate” US citizens attracted to his fate. He hates the United States and the West with a passion that exceeds description. He’s a miniature Guantanamo, a needle in our side we must endure because the alternative – letting him go – will be far worse.
He’d wasted his time. In return for a negotiations agreement that eventually lasted three days, Abu Bakr was delivered in a Bradley to a crowd of cheering and ululating supporters. And a week later one of the largest IEDs in the tragic history of Baghdad took out a whole Shiite block and killed 71 people.
What bothered Jack was who in the United States had wanted al-Baghdadi free.
What bothered him even more was the last thing al-Baghdadi had said when they released him.
“See you in New York.”
BIN LADEN WAS STILL out there. While Jack was stuck in Iraq helping to hold together the pieces of a failed invasion. When it was Osama who had killed his family. When it was Osama he’d promised himself to find.
“I can’t give it up till I’ve killed him,” he told Isabelle as they sat the kitchen table eating radishes and olives, an unusual treat.
“We may never get him. He’s back in Saudi with his fellow Wahhabis, screwing his slave girls and living like a prince.”
“I think he’s in Pakistan.” He glanced down at his clasped hands as if he were some penitent, some sinner. He thought about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that we should not have let him go. Someday he’d be as hard to kill as Osama. And just as dangerous. The entire universe seemed ruined, unsolvable.
“Pakistan? They wouldn’t dare. America’s the only thing they’ve got to keep from sinking into the pit...”
“I’m beginning to think there’s no difference between Paki Intelligence and Al-Qaeda... and they’ve got all those nuclear warheads.”
“I love you darling.” She glanced at the lamb ribs in the oven. “God is good: let’s eat.”
Assassins Gate
AFTER OBAMA took office the word came down the US would leave Iraq. But like Yugoslavia and other countries that had recently blown apart when their strong central power was gone, every hatred and religious schism soon exploded in blood.
We need at least another decade of US troops in Iraq, Jack wrote Szymanski, before we think of leaving. Like South Korea and Germany after World War II, Iraq needs a Marshall Plan.
If we leave sooner, everything we’ve done is wasted, every dead soldier – and more than a million dead Iraqis – have died for nothing.
The 2007 Surge brought us to over 170,000 American troops in Iraq while the country, if one can call it that, descended into bloody civil war. And as always it was the civilians who paid. Building the Baghdad Wall to separate Sunni from Shiite was a short-term bandage.
Shiite leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr may be talking peace but they’re just strengthening their control over their regions of Iraq. Most of Baghdad is already theirs. When they decide to move against us, either alone or with Iran, they will be impossible to stop without a US commitment of far more soldiers and weapons than we have. And our enemies on the Sunni front are just as dangerous.
If these problems seem insurmountable now, they will be worse if we leave.
Why he wrote these reports he couldn’t imagine. Sending the truth up the line was always a waste of time. While Washington tried to make up its mind
, the recently elected Iraqi Parliament voted to have all US forces out by end December 2011. “The place will sink into chaos,” Jack said to Isabelle, “and some religious nut, some strongman, will take over. It’ll be a religious and every other kind of civil war.”
“That’s why we’re getting out of here,” she said.
“Not till we find Bin Laden.”
GIVING THE GREEN ZONE to the Iraqis seemed like handing car keys to a five-year-old. They were clearly not strong or disciplined enough to control religious infighting and terrorism, and without continuing US troops the country would break apart.
Obama was pushing for more troop reductions, praising the success of a war he’d once called a mistake. But once we got in, Jack repeated in memos that seemed to change nothing, we have to ride it out, make sure all this blood and trillions of dollars were wasted for some purpose.
Now among the generals, diplomats and “advisors”, nobody thought the invasion had been a good idea. “We got hornswoggled,” General Szymanski said to Jack one afternoon in the new billion-dollar US Baghdad embassy, an entire high security city of office buildings, dormitories, shopping and residences.
“Yeah but you guys who backed the invasion are the ones who’ve got the stars. Not the guys who said don’t do it.”
“The military is politics in uniforms, you know that.”
It was pointless to remind Szymanski of the needless deaths, the destruction of a fragile nation. “Humans love war,” Szymanski had once said, “so it’s my job to see we win.”
WHEN DEFENSE Secretary Panetta landed in Baghdad offering to keep some American troops in Iraq, the refusal came not from Baghdad but the White House. And when Muqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq from four years in Iran he promised to turn his Mahdi Army on the Americans if they didn’t leave. “Al-Sadr doesn’t realize,” Jack told a Southern California Congressman doing a campaign video in Baghdad, “that without an American military presence the Sunnis will tear him apart.”
“Hell, the Shiites and Sunnis have been killing each other since Mohammed died. Let’em go at it.” The Congressman had a cheery wide grin with lots of bright teeth, a bottle tan, dyed grayish hair, and millions of corporate dollars in his Super Pac, though this trip was being paid for by the taxpayers.
“Having started this war,” Jack answered, “we have to keep it from getting worse. There will be no win. Just better or worse defeats.”
The Congressman scanned him for an instant and turned away, and once again Jack had the impression of being an outsider, someone who mistakenly tells the truth.
AFTER BIN LADEN was killed Jack felt a sickened, turmoiled relief, flashbacks of the nightmares of Sophie and the kids falling inside the burning tower. He wanted Bin Laden to die over and over again for every person he’d ever harmed.
Revenge. Not just Bin Laden and his insane henchmen but also all the fanatic Saudi and Qatari oil princes who had funded him – may they suffer hot knives tearing out their innards forever was what the Koran suggested.
It was time to go home.
Where was home?
“Somewhere far from here,” Isabelle said. “A place to follow the path with heart.”
“Ever been to Patagonia?”
“OBAMA’S PEOPLE will be in Baghdad next Thursday,” Feist said.
“Good,” Jack said. “Have fun with them.”
“Would you be willing to –”
“No. I wouldn’t be willing to. That’s two days before we’re leaving.”
“Just an hour, Jack. Yours is a dissident view, but you often turn out right.”
“They won’t listen.”
Feist shrugged, looked down at his desk. That’s true, he admitted by gesture. But please do it anyway.
“THE PRESIDENT NEEDS to be out of Iraq for his reelection campaign,” Barbara Lawrence said. A large woman with a husky voice, she’d been a Massachusetts governor and major Obama bundler and now was assistant undersecretary of State.
“The situation on the ground won’t allow it,” Jack said.
Elbows on the glossy conference table, the President’s military advisor General Hank Grenier looked at Jack and Feist across clasped hands. “If the United States pulls our military out of this Godforsaken place, what are the chances you guys and the Iraqis can keep the peace?”
“Are you nuts?” Jack said.
“No way we can keep the peace,” Feist said.
Grenier nodded. “I didn’t think so.”
“But the President wants out,” Barbara Lawrence repeated. “This is not a fact-finding mission. This is an order.”
Jordan Feist let out a soft whistle. “Well you’re on your own, then. We’ll help where we can, but holding this country together is not our job.”
“We all remember,” she smiled, “when tearing it apart was your job.”
THE YOUNG MAN IN THE FADED ORIOLES JACKET drove one-handed, fingering his prayer beads. His sweaty hand kept slipping off the wheel.
Traffic and carts and people in the street blocked his way. A black patch covered his right eye, making it harder to drive. He trembled, wanting to scream Get Out of the Way! He swung the purple taxi left toward Al Kindl Street and the 14th of July Monument, past a donkey cart of dirt-caked beets, people parting on both sides, strings of laundry overhead flickering the sun.
His foot shivered, his ankle so powerless he couldn’t push the pedal nor lift the foot to touch the brake. He saw his flesh a bloody spray, his belly in red pieces on the building walls. Chunks of his bone buried in the street. Sometimes, they say, only your toes remain.
God’s rough hand grasped his shoulder. First they killed your Father, years ago in the retreat across the desert. Then Sayeed your only brother in this war –
But if he died now what good would that do them?
Was he crazy to believe? Did he? At death do we wake at all? Is there truly a garden of seven pools overhung with the sweetest fruits? Slender girls with silken hair and lissome bodies?
Or are we nothing but sparks struck from a flint, ablaze for an instant then dust?
“LET’S TALK REAL,” Feist told them. “Our combat deaths dropped from 960 in 2007 to 54 this year, and civilian deaths are down from a thousand a month to a hundred. But if we leave now,” his cufflinks clunked the table, “in two years we’ll have a higher death toll than ever before.”
The President’s intelligence advisor Tip Townsend had a deep baritone and a sarcastic undertone, the product of many years of saying the judicious thing. “We all know the real deal. That we shouldn’t leave Iraq. But we’re going to leave Iraq as part of the President’s reelection.”
“Just like Bush,” Jack snapped, “who wanted the war to look good back in 2004, for his reelection.”
“War is politics,” Barbara Lawrence said.
“Iraq will fall apart,” Feist said.
“Join the real world, Mr. CIA,” she said. “The President decides; we do whatever he tells us.”
“There’s no point of having an ‘intelligence’ agency if you ignore what we tell you.”
“We’re not ignoring you,” she smiled, “it just doesn’t matter what you say.”
“And we’ll still be here,” Feist answered. “Long after you’re gone. And in three years ISIS will control half of Iraq and most of Syria. They’re worse than anything we’ve faced yet, and you’re letting them in the front door.”
Jack stood. “And when GW’s and Powell’s senior intelligence advisors tell us that Bush and the others should be hauled before the International Court of Justice for War Crimes, we need to listen, not dismiss it like Obama’s doing.”
“He doesn’t want to set precedent.” Feist puffed out his cheeks, exhaled slowly. “You and me, Jack, all us guys, we have to go our own way.”
“Christ, it’s eighteen hours back to DC,” General Grenier glanced at his Rolex. “Let’s get a move on.”
THE PURPLE TAXI BANGED across a curb as the young man drove around a water wagon. He dr
opped the prayer beads into his lap and banging the horn accelerated along the sidewalk, an old woman yelling, people jumping aside. Do they know what I’m about to do? How they must envy me!
My Beloved Son I shall guide you. Straight now, left at the corner. There it is – up ahead – the checkpoint on the right. Watch the Marines getting out of that jeep. Pointing their rifles but do not fear.
Take up the detonator. Nothing you could ever do in your past life can match the greatness of what you now do.
JACK WENT THROUGH ASSASSIN’S GATE into the fierce Baghdad heat. Four Marines behind barricades were aiming rifles at a purple taxi. It lurched forward, halted. Can’t say there’s never a taxi, he smiled, when you want one.
“Afternoon, Sir,” the first Marine said. “We’re chasing this guy off.”
“Don’t,” Jack said. “I can use him.”
“You shouldn’t take a taxi out of the Zone, Sir,” the second Marine said.
“Just headed to the Palestine. Anyway, life’s full of things we’re not supposed to do.”
In the taxi the young man’s fingers trembled on the detonator. Which way did he push? He realized he was begging it not to blow, tried to stop.
He looked up into the sky, saw the beauty of God’s face and pushed the detonator. It skidded from his sweaty fingers onto the floor.
“I said take me to the Palestine,” Jack said.
The young man spun round, shocked at his Arabic. “It’s dangerous –”
“I remember you!” Jack leaned forward. “Years ago, at the University. The Physics Building... You were listening to Pearl Jam.”
The young man scrabbled under the seat for the detonator. “That wasn’t me.”
“What happened to your eye?”
“I lost it in the muqawama. The resistance.”