“Do we know if they intend to come in through our area of responsibility? Maybe they’re going to bring it in from the Pacific, or through Canada, or Mexico.”
“I don’t know, Admiral.” George couldn’t believe this was happening. These were INTEL questions! Lannis should be the one up here taking the heat, not George. But George stayed true to his Academy training and resisted the temptation to point the finger at Lannis and to say, “He’s the one who should be answering these questions!” Instead, George continued to honestly admit he did not know the answers to the admiral’s penetrating questions. Out of the corner of his eye, George could see Buffalo, shocked at first, but now looking at Lannis as if he was ready to rip the intel officer’s miserable little head right off his shoulders! Lannis continued to stare at his notes, avoiding all eye contact with George or Buffalo.
“What about the time frame? Any idea there?” Admiral Yates continued.
“No, sir.”
“Commander Adams,” the admiral began…
“Yes, sir?”
“Aren’t all of these questions things you should be looking into? How can you put together an Ops plan without knowing anything about where, when, or how the threat might be implemented?”
George was floundering. This briefing was going downhill fast. The scene flashed before his eyes of his initial interview with Admiral Yates upon being assigned to the SUBLANT staff. Admiral Yates had looked at George with penetrating blue eyes and bushy eyebrows longer than his hair and had bluntly stated, “I expect officers on my staff to demonstrate superior performance in all aspects of their duties. If you are one of those officers who think, ‘If the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum,’ I have no place for you on my staff. Understood?”
George had understood, and that’s why he had such a sinking feeling now. “I’m just generally increasing the number of patrols to make it more difficult for anyone to get through, no matter where or when they attempt it, sir.” In a last-ditch effort to salvage something from the briefing, George added, “One thing we could also consider, Admiral, is using some boomers in the attack role to increase the number of boats we have in our defensive line. Because that might be how the DC nuke—”
Admiral Yates, looking as though George had just said the stupidest thing the admiral had ever heard, cut him off midsentence.
“George,” said the admiral, tossing aside formality and addressing George as if he were talking to a small child, “we have just established the fact that you have no idea what threat you are trying to counter. Consequently, your so-called Ops plan is an extremely inefficient use of valuable resources. Now you want to pull our strategic assets out of their patrol areas just when other forces in the world may perceive we are the most vulnerable? I suggest, Commander, you get whatever information is available, and get back to me ASAP with a more realistic plan.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said George as he grabbed his notes and gathered up his other materials.
“Okay, Commander Wayne, what does Intel have for us?” asked the admiral, dismissing George with a wave of his hand.
As George walked to the door, he heard Lannis begin, “Admiral, I’ve done some extra research today about the Wahhabi/ Salafi ideology, which is the Islamic fundamentalist ideology, which underlies al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations. I think it would be beneficial for all the members of the staff to understand this material. It may give us some insight into what al-Qaeda may be plotting. After all, before you can beat your enemy, you have to know your enemy.”
As George closed the door behind him, he heard Admiral Yates respond, “Very good, Commander. Let’s hear it!”
“Shit!” said George. Lannis was truly an asshole. He had intentionally done this to make George look bad, and now all he was doing was parroting back exactly what the admiral just said. He was just changing the words a little and throwing in a cliché here and there to make it sound like they were his own time-tested ideas. Surely the admiral is smart enough to see through that!
George headed straight for the men’s head. He felt like throwing up!
Chapter 9
“Admiral, the terrorists follow an extreme and perverse ideology known as Wahhabi/Salafi ideology,” Lannis continued, following George’s departure. “It is a minority fundamentalist religious cult, distinct from mainstream Islam, but growing. Islamic scholars say Islam teaches one to be lenient toward others and to understand their value systems. The essence of Islamic tolerance, they say, is summarized in the words of the Qur’an, ‘For you, your religion; for me, my religion.’ The so-called fundamentalists, however, have perverted Islam into a religion of intolerance. Through hatred and violence, they attempt to intimidate and ultimately conquer anyone who does not share their extremist views, even other Muslims.”
“Let’s refer to them as radicals rather than fundamentalists,” said Admiral Yates. “If Islam is fundamentally lenient, then fundamentalist is a misnomer.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“How widespread is this radical ideology?”
“As many as ten to fifteen percent of Muslims may subscribe to it to some degree. While relatively few Muslims are willing to shed blood themselves, it seems countless millions of others either sympathize with the funda — I mean radicals — or sit silently by and do nothing. Over the years, despite efforts in the War on Terrorism, this situation has only gotten worse.”
“Wait a minute,” said the admiral. “You said as many as fifteen percent of the Muslims in the world may believe in this radical ideology to some extent… how many is that?”
“Well, sir, with about one point three billion Muslims in the world that equates to about a hundred and ninety-five million.”
“So you’re telling me there are almost two hundred million radical Muslims spread around the world?” asked the admiral in a skeptical tone, raising one of his bushy eyebrows as if to punctuate the question.
Lannis’s left knee began to jerk nervously as he stood at the podium. He took a deep breath trying to control it. “Not exactly, sir. First of all, I said ten to fifteen percent of Muslims may subscribe to the Wahhabi/Salafi ideology to some degree. It’s only an estimate, and while some of them may buy into it totally, others in this number may accept only some of its tenets. Second, the radicals are not uniformly spread around the world. In some Muslim countries the radical ideology is king, while in other countries it’s practically unknown.”
“Thank you for the clarification, Commander. It’s still a huge number.”
“Yes, sir, it is, and the situation is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of mainstream Muslims, the other eighty-five percent, seem to be doing nothing to help resist, isolate, and discredit this dangerous ideology.”
“Why would so many Muslims sit quietly by and let these radicals hijack their religion? Certainly these people can see that the rest of the world is likely to interpret their inaction and their silence as complicity with the radicals. So why don’t they do something? Why don’t we see marches against terrorism by millions of Muslims around the world? Why aren’t they demanding that their own Islamic governments find the terrorists within their borders and eliminate them?”
“Well, sir, I think there are several possible explanations,” ventured Lannis. “These are just guesses on my part, but I’ll just throw them out on the table for discussion. I think some of them can be discounted immediately while others are real possibilities.”