AP ECONOMIC NEWS: The stock markets opened in positive direction today for the first time since the attack on the United States Homeland. Investors seem to believe that, perhaps, an end is possible for the conflict. <STORY DEVELOPING>
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chairman Jackson was in his dress uniform sitting in the Situation Room prepared to brief the President on the ongoing war effort. As he waited for the President to arrive he couldn’t help but think to himself that out of the three Presidents he had known that this one was doing the best job of leading the military, and he was doing it through a disturbingly dangerous time.
He listened to council, he thought carefully, but not too long, and he made decisions without micromanaging. In other words, he allowed soldiers to be soldiers and do their jobs. They asked him if the high-level battle plans were acceptable, and once he said to execute, there had been little to no micromanagement of decisions, just general guidance. It was as it should be. Perhaps it was because this President was a veteran. Whatever the cause, it was a good thing that that man was in the chair right now.
Previous Presidents he had served under, and some of them before his time that he had studied in history books, had not taken this approach. Some wanted to be involved in every decision down to the company level, which just took too long for things to be done. It always seemed to end with people getting unnecessarily hurt.
Combat was a very complex and fluid situation in which decisions had to be made by those in the middle of it. Presidents had the responsibility of guiding the battle, but not deciding every minor detail as it took place.
The door opened and the President could be heard from the hallway, “Keep your seats!” The President, the Chief of Staff, and Captain Banner came in to join the entirety of the Chiefs of Staff.
The two political men wore business suits, the Captain had on his dress uniform. They two politicians sat at the table, the Captain in one of the seats lining the wall.
“Mr. Chairman, Generals, I want you all to congratulate Captain Banner here on becoming a Major in a promotion ceremony to take place one week from now,” they gave him a small and polite round of applause.
“The promotion isn’t enough for me to keep inviting him back, so I want you all to know and understand that in about that same week from now timeframe, I am going to submit his name to the Senate for confirmation to take the office of Vice President of the United States,” said the President.
“For the time being, I want him kept as in the loop on these matters as much as I am. Hopefully in less than a month we will have him in office, and if anything were, God forbid, to happen to me he would be taking the big chair,” finished the President.
“Well, Major, welcome, and I must say this isn’t necessarily the career change you wanted, but I think you would be one of the best possible choices for this position. It is a vacancy that very much needs filling,” said the Chairman.
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” said Frank.
“General, you called me here to let me know what is going on, and what is about to start?” asked the President.
“Yes Mister President. This is what will become known as your daily War briefing. I am able to report that our air campaign is going as well as can be expected. Our pilots are taking out there tanks one at a time. We are primarily using stealthy aircraft to do this, F-22s for instance. In this kind of a conflict, with this many targets, it is going to take a long time with this method. We have used a few medium sized stealthy bombers and have a change in our tactics coming up. This represents the start of the air shock campaign,” he said by way of introducing the briefing.
“We have discussed and are now ready to move forward with the air assault involving a number of aircraft that hasn’t been used at once since World War II. What we are planning to do is to send most of our heavy bombers in with multiple fighter escorts all at the same time rather than continuous but lighter bombing runs. If this plan sounds familiar to you it is essentially the D-Day plan. We have done a few things already they were not capable of back then. We have taken out much of their radar capability with the exception of some of their portable units. The reason we haven’t taken them out yet is that they we can’t find them. When they get turned on we can see them, and kill them, but until they throw that switch they could be anywhere. We will destroy them once they are turned on,” the Chairman reported, pausing before continuing to ensure the information was absorbed, and there were no questions.
“Right now, we essentially have control of the sky. If we take into account what size the respective countries had for fighter aircraft versus what we have taken out, we have destroyed around 5 % of what they had available. This isn’t much as they have yet to put much up against us. However, once they get up in the air our pilots are proving superior every single time. Thus far they have kept theirs out of the fight because of the stealthy nature of our aircraft. We can’t be found until after they start to destroy targets. By that point it is too late due to the speed of our jets. We can’t destroy theirs on the ground because they have moved them out of their typical places and stored them someplace, possibly even underground. We aren’t sure where, there is no reliable intelligence on these assets,” he explained.
“Where is the ‘gotcha’ here General?” asked the President.
“The gotcha Mister President, is that once we send a group of air assets the size of what we are sending is that they will throw everything that they have at us, all at once. They won’t have a choice. That action on their part will cost American lives, there is no way around it. They will take down some of our aircraft,” he explained carefully.
“We really don’t want it to happen, and we want this to end quickly, but I hope the men are prepared for this,” said the President.
“They are ready for this, it is their job. Do we have your support on this Mr. President?” asked the General.
“Yes you do, but I want to know something from this room and if the answer isn’t unanimous then we need to know that right now. Does this room, does everyone in here agree, that this path forward is the one that is likely to bring this war to a close faster, and cost fewer American lives than any other we can currently think of? In other words, does anyone have a better idea?” asked the President.
No one spoke. Everyone in the room merely stared at the President, “I will take by your collective silence that you all agree. We need the world to be at peace. Our economy was teetering on the brink before this happened, and we simply don’t have the money for a long war. I hate to break it down to economics, but that may drive how long we can do this without resorting to some extreme measure that I don’t like to think about,” said The President.
“Mister President, if I may, this is the best approach. We will brief you if things change. Additionally, we have all discussed the young Captain here, and his recent interactions with the press. Captain, we all want to wish you luck on your upcoming press tour, and if there is anything we can do to help you with the Senate please call us. However, as a result of your press conference we wanted to do the following,” explained the Chairman.