When, one evening not too far off, the dark suited president looks somber-eyed into the camera,

and interrupts America’s consumption of National Idol and 24 Hours in the Life of an Anti-Terrorist Avenger with talk of necessity and honor;

the TV screens will flicker in the darkening night and computer screens will glow in the face of the information-laden age,

and the traffic on the 405 will slow to a crawl, and the subways of Chicago and New York and Philadelphia will carry home after-work drinkers before the fast food takeaway,

and the offices blocks will close, with security men asleep and taxis hailed,

and video games played and cell phones talked on and tomorrow’s plans made;

while suburban streets settle into an evening’s stupor, framed against the halogen silhouette of the corner convenience,

and the nation slumbers ever forward,

elsewhere,

across Iran, in the suburbs of Tehran, in the mountains of Natanz and near the Persian Gulf coast at Bushehr, where the “bunker buster” bombs will be launched from the F-15s and B2 Stealth bombers,

there will be yet another war.

As fresh-faced American boys drop their payload from 55,000 feet on unsuspecting civilians, children will be waking. TV screens will flicker in the early morning light. Cell phones will be spoken on, and plans made for the day. Across one of the world’s oldest civilizations, offices and schools will be opening, waiting to be filled.

But in the environs of Wall and Broad, in The City and Frankfurt am Main, and in Marunouchi and Pudong New Area, the business of business will remain in business. It is, after all, the Age of Liquidity, and certain rules continue to apply. Balance sheet assets have to managed. Risks must be made averse. And the return profile must be made to fit within the mandate at any cost.

So the capital will flow, breakneck, across the green screens of the globe. Price to earnings will remain focused on both price and earnings. And on the fluorescent shop floors of Minnesota and West Virginia and the Inland Empire, Sales Per Person Hour will remain high and workers will be sent home the moment the margin drops.

As the ambulances race to save the families near the suspected sites, some of the largest companies in the world will continue to suckle at the teat of the United States government, secure in the knowledge that no force in the world can interrupt their marketing plan. For, in the end, the best defense is always a good offense, and the consequences can always be damned.

And the news media back home will focus on the brave soldiers stationed on deck of the aircraft carriers, and their loving spouses who are more than willing to share with their local reporters their pride, love of family and sense of duty. While, out in the Arabian Sea, those selfsame soldiers and sailors will be manning the stations of the carrier battle group, listening in on the communications of doctors and policemen and firemen desperate to piece together again worlds missile-shattered and bomb-destroyed.

And in the halls of governments across the globe, and on the streets of Any Town in the World, voices will shout in the silence and the frustration will mount. And the hatred will grow, not of Freedom or Liberty or Representative Democracy, but of the mechanisms that bring death to the innocent without recourse. And of those who pull the levers that bring the rain.

And when the president looks, dark-eyed, into the camera, and talks of sacrifice and obligation, the American people will fall into line.

For there are some ideals more important than life, and if this is what we have to do, then this is what we have to do.

And no one really knows anyway what happens in the world outside of our borders. But there was talk they were up to no good, and that’s good enough for me.

And the office has been a bit of a bastard recently, and the kids need new braces. And there are video games to be played and cell phones to be talked on and tomorrow’s plans yet to be made.

At least here, in that special dispensation that comes framed against the halogen silhouette of a corner convenience.

And somewhere on the northwest side of Chicago, in a modest bungalow where a house is quiet and the streets are safe, a wife will go to work and a writer will bang his keyboard in frustration.

And sweat through the night amid dreams of chaining himself to the landing gear of a B-52 bomber, only to wake with the knowledge of a morning half a world away that will never be the same again.

And of the days to come spent pushing down his shame at the obscenity of it all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Essays.