The White House
"My Fellow Americans," the President of the United States of America began his televised address to the country, "since September 11th, 2001, Christians and Jews around the world have lived under the threat of annihilation by Islamic extremists bent on global domination. These terrorists, while certainly not representative of the main currents in Islamic teachings, have nevertheless managed to expand their ideology of hatred to vast segments of the global population. Despite America's intervention in Iraq in the name of peace, despite America's attempt to spread democratic principles of governance to long-repressed peoples in the Middle East, this radical current within Islam has in the years since 9/11 orchestrated numerous attacks on western cities, including Madrid, London, and Helsinki, and the virulence of the movement has only increased of late to heretofore unforeseen levels. Then last week, the world watched in horror when for the third time in human history a nuclear weapon was used against a civilian population, and Copenhagen was reduced to charred rubble. And while no one nation has claimed responsibility for this attack, it is clear that this action was precipitated by these same radical Islamic terrorists, only now with the support of Islamic republics who have secretly been developing nuclear weapons for some time. Intelligence agencies in both America and western Europe have delivered proof of this assertion to both myself and the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Of this than should be no doubt in your mind.
"It now seems clear to most freedom loving people around the world that radical Islam is a movement that cannot be stopped by conventional means, and that unconventional means of deterring future aggression must be attempted if the people of the world are to live in peace. When attempting to even conceive of new methods of deterrence, military planners in the Pentagon thought it best to analyze successful periods of deterrence in history, and it was concluded that the most recent past held the most completely successful example of deterring a well armed aggressor from pursuing a deadly course of action. This example is the Cold War, and the deterrent policy that best worked was what was known then as Mutually Assured Destruction.
"Just by way of giving you a little background, Mutually Assured Destruction was a policy that at it's most basic level insured that any aggressor-nation attacking the United States would itself be annihilated. This created a "Balance of Terror", whereby no nation dared attack the United States for fear of certain retaliation from America's strategic nuclear forces then arrayed around the world. This policy, developed by John Foster Dulles, grew out of George Kennan's policy of Containment, first implemented in document NSC-68, said document which sought to counter communist expansion by using conventional ground and air forces against Soviet sponsored aggression and expansion against peaceful citizens in first South Korea, then Vietnam, Honduras, Nicaragua, and finally, Afghanistan. The Soviet Union never attempted to use nuclear weapons in these conflicts for fear of invoking the policy response of Mutually Assured Destruction, and from 1945 through 1989 the world lived in relative peace.
"When confronting fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, military planners here and in Europe confronted once again the basic problem of trying to contain this or any terrorist movement; that terrorist organizations are loosely structured movements and not nation states, neither are they identifiable through open alliance with any one government or group of governments. But that is not to say that these movements operate without support from easily identifiable governments, indeed, without support from many governments which claim to support democratic principles in general and the America people in particular. This duplicity has made prosecuting the war on terror an almost impossible political task, and the United Nations, an organization established to contain conflicts of this nature, has been wholly ineffectual in this regard. Our adversaries laugh at our impotence . . .
"Now, freedom loving peoples in the Americas and Europe have been confronted with a new reality, the reality of living under the specter of nuclear intimidation and annihilation.
"My Fellow Americans, let me assure you that from tonight on we will no longer tolerate this state of affairs.
"To that end, from tonight on, our recently augmented and expanded force of B-2 strategic bombers will operate around the clock circling anywhere from two to five cities in the Islamic world. Each of these aircraft will be armed with two of our new third generation five-hundred gigaton hydrogen warheads - the most powerful nuclear devices ever constructed by man. In the event that Islamic terrorists and their sponsor governments in the Islamic world decide to further prosecute their reign of terror on freedom loving peoples anywhere in the world, they should understand that the consequences of their actions will be simply this: within one half hour of a major terrorist attack on any city or military facility of the United States or the European Union, a major city in the Islamic world will be utterly and completely destroyed.
"Joining me now is Major-General Ernst Bayer of the United States Air Force. General, could you please describe for the people listening tonight just where you are, and what your mission is?"
[if you were watching television that evening, your screen split to show the President in the Oval Office on one half of your display and what was obviously the darkened cockpit of an airplane, a helmeted figure dimly seen in silhouette against banks of glowing red and green flight instruments, on the other half . . . ]
"Ah, yes, Mr President, we are currently above the Holy City of Mecca, orbiting at very high altitude, and we will remain on station here for approximately eight hours before we return to base. We are armed with two Mark 98 hydrogen weapons, and will deploy these weapons on authenticated signal from National Command Authority."
"General Bayer, can you tell me what your orders are if your aircraft is fired upon by ground forces below you?"
"Yes, Mr President. If either on-board instruments or our local AWACs aircraft detect the launch of a surface to air missile aimed at either our aircraft or the AWACs aircraft, both of the nuclear weapons on board this aircraft will be armed and deployed on the target, sir."
"Thank you, General. And now my fellow Americans, I would like you to hear from Colonel Deke Hayward. Colonel Hayward, are you there?"
[. . . your television screen flickers for a moment, then resolves on a scene similar to the one it has just replaced, only the figure is more clearly illuminated. You see a handsome middle aged man behind the controls of an aircraft . . .]
"Yes, Mr President, read you loud and clear."
"Colonel, would you please describe for us just where you are tonight, and please state clearly what your operational orders are."
"Well, uh, wait one, ah, yes, Mr President, we are currently above the city of Tehran, over the Islamic Republic of Iran, orbiting at a classified altitude, and we will remain on station here for approximately seven more hours before we return to base. We are armed with two hydrogen weapons, and will deploy these weapons on authenticated signal from National Command Authority or if we are fired upon by hostile forces."
"And again, Colonel, let me be clear here, if fired upon by any force you will without hesitation arm and deploy your nuclear weapons, is that correct?"
