“So, you will select only strict-constructionists who are likely to overturn Roe.”
It was like hitting a wall. Ryan paused noticeably before answering. “I hope to pick the best judges I can find. I will not interrogate them on single issues.”
The Boston Globe leaped to his feet. “Mr. President,
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what about where the life of the mother is in danger, the Catholic Church–”
“The answer to that is obvious. The life of the mother is the paramount consideration.”
“But the Church used to say–”
“I don’t speak for the Catholic Church. As I said earlier, I cannot violate the law.”
“But you want the law changed,” the Globe pointed out.
“Yes, I think it would be better for everybody if the matter was returned to the state legislatures. In that way the people’s elected representatives can write the laws in accordance with the will of their electorates.”
“But then,” the San Francisco Examiner pointed out, “we’d have a hodgepodge of laws across the country, and in some areas abortion would be illegal.”
“Only if the electorate wants it that way. That’s how democracy works.”
“But what about poor women?”
“It’s not for me to say,” Ryan replied, feeling the beginnings of anger, and wondering how he’d ever gotten into this mess.
“So, do you support a constitutional amendment against abortion?” the Atlanta Constitution demanded.
“No, I don’t think that’s a constitutional question. I think it is properly a legislative question.”
“So,” the New York Times summarized, “you are personally against abortion on moral and religious grounds, but you will not interfere with women’s rights; you plan to appoint conservative justices to the new Supreme Court who will probably overturn Roe, but you don’t support a constitutional amendment to outlaw freedom of choice.” The reporter smiled. “Exactly what do you believe in on this issue, sir?”
Ryan shook his head, pursed his lips, and bit off his first version of an answer to the impertinence. “I thought I just made that clear. Shall we go on to something else?”
“Thank you, Mr. President!” a senior reporter called loudly, so advised by the frantic gestures of Arnold van Damm. Ryan left the podium puzzled, walked around the
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corner, then another until he was out of sight. The chief of staff grabbed the President by the arm, and nearly pushed him against the wall, and this time the Secret Service didn’t move a muscle.
“Way to go, Jack, you just pissed off the entire country!”
“What do you mean?” the President replied, thinking, Huh?
“I mean you don’t pump gas in your car when you’re smoking a cigarette, God damn it! Jesus! Don’t you know what you just did?” Arnie could see that he didn’t. “The pro-choice people now think you’re going to take their rights away. The pro-life people think you don’t care about their issue. It was just perfect, Jack. You alienated the whole fucking country in five minutes!” Van Damm stormed off, leaving his President outside the Cabinet Room, afraid that he’d really lose his temper if he said anything more.
“What’s he talking about?” Ryan asked. The Secret Service agents around him didn’t say anything. It wasn’t their place–politics–and besides, they were split on the issue as much as the country was.
IT WAS LIKE taking candy from a baby. And after the initial shock, the baby cried pretty loud.
“BUFFALO Six, this is GUIDON Six, over.” Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Masterman–“Duke” to his peers– stood atop “Mad Max II,” his M1A2 Abrams command tank, microphone in one hand, and binoculars in the other. Before him, spread over about ten square miles in the Negev Training Area, were the Merkava tanks and infantry carriers of the Israeli army’s 7th Armored Brigade, all with yellow lights blinking and purple smoke rising from their turrets. The smoke was an Israeli innovation. When tanks were hit in battle, they burned, and when the MILES gear receptors recorded a laser “hit” they set off the marker. But the idea had been for the Israelis to count coup that way on the OpFor. Only four of Masterman’s tanks and six of his M3 Bradley Scout tracks were similarly “dead.”
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“GUIDON, BUFFALO,” came the return call from Colonel Scan Magruder, commander of the 10th “Buffalo” Armored Cavalry Regiment.
“I think this one’s about concluded, Colonel, over. The fire sack is full.”
“Roger that, Duke. Come on down for the AAR. We’re going to have one really pissed Israeli in a few minutes.” Just as well the radio link was encrypted.
“On the way, sir.” Masterman stepped down off the turret as his HMMVW pulled up. His tank crew started back up, heading down toward the squadron laager.
It didn’t get much better than this. Masterman felt like a football player allowed to play every day. He commanded 1st “Guidon” Squadron of the 10th ACR. It would have been called a battalion, but the Cav was different, to the yellow facings on their shoulder straps and the red-and-white unit guidons, and if you weren’t Cav, you weren’t shit.
“Kickin’ some more ass, sir?” his driver asked as his boss lit up a Cuban cigar.
“Lambs to the slaughter, Perkins.” Masterman sipped some water from a plastic bottle. A hundred feet over his head, some Israeli F-16 fighters roared past, showing outrage at what had happened below them. Probably a few of them had run afoul of the administrative SAM “launches.” Masterman had been especially careful today siting his Stinger-Avenger vehicles, and sure enough, they’d come in just as he’d expected. Tough.
The local “Star Wars Room” was a virtual twin to the original one at Fort Irwin. A somewhat smaller main display screen, and nicer seats, and you could smoke in this one. He entered the building, snaking the dust off his chocolate-chip cammies and striding like Patton into Bas-togne. The Israelis were waiting.
Intellectually, they had to know how useful the exercise had been to them. Emotionally, it was something else. The Israeli 7th Armored was as proud an outfit as any in the world. Practically alone, it had stopped an entire Syrian tank corps on the Golan Heights back in 1973, and their current CO had been a lieutenant then who’d taken command of a headless company and fought brilliantly.
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Not accustomed to failure, he’d just seen the brigade in which he’d practically grown up annihilated, in thirty brutal minutes.
“General,” Masterman said, extending his hand to the chastened brigadier. The Israeli hesitated before taking it.
“Not personal, sir, just business,” said Lieutenant Colonel Nick Sarto, who commanded the 2nd “Bighorn” Squadron, and who had just played hammer to Master-man’s anvil. With the Israeli 7th in the middle.
“Gentlemen, shall we begin?” called the senior observer-controller. As a sop to the Israeli Army, the OC team here was a fifty-fifty mix of experienced American and Israeli officers, and it was hard to determine which group was the more embarrassed.
There was, first, a quick-time replay of the theoretical engagement. The Israeli vehicles in blue marched into the shallow valley to meet GUIDON’S reconnaissance screen, which leapfrogged back rapidly, but not toward the prepared defense positions of the rest of the squadron, instead leading them away at an angle. Thinking it a trap, the Israeli 7th had maneuvered west, so as to loop around and envelop their enemies, only to walk into a solid wall of dug-in tanks, and then to have Bighorn come in from the east much faster than expected–so fast that Doug M ills’s 3rd “Dakota” Squadron, the regimental reserve, never had a chance to come into play for the pursuit phase. It was the same old lesson. The Israeli commander had guessed at his enemy’s positions instead of sending his reconnaissance screen to find out.
The Israeli brigadier watched the replay, and it seemed that he deflated like a balloon. The Americans didn’t laugh. They’d all been there before, though it was far nicer to be on the winning side.
“Your reconnaissance screen wasn’t far forward enough, Benny,” the senior Israeli OC said diplomatically.
“Arabs don’t fight that way!” Benjamin Eitan replied.
“They’re supposed to, sir,” Masterman pointed out. “This is standard Soviet doctrine, and that’s who trained ’em all, remember. Pull ’em into the fire sack and slam the back door. Hell, General, that’s exactly what you did with
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your Centurions back in ‘73.1 read your book on the engagement,” the American added. It defused the mood at once. One of the other things the American officers had to exercise here was diplomacy. General Eitan looked sideways and managed something approaching a smile.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Sure as hell. You clobbered that Syrian regiment in forty minutes, as I recall.”
“And you, at 73 Easting?” Eitan responded, grateful for the compliment, even though he knew it was a deliberate effort to calm his temper.
It was no accident that Magruder, Masterman, Sarto, and Mills were here. All four had participated in a vicious combat action in the Persian Gulf War, where three troops of the 2nd “Dragoon” Cav had stumbled into an elite Iraqi brigade force under very adverse weather conditions–too bad for the regimental aircraft to participate, even to warn of the enemy’s presence–and wiped it out over a period of a few hours. The Israelis knew it, and therefore couldn’t complain that the Americans were book soldiers playing theoretical games.