Empire (2 page)

Within moments he was back on the job, interrogating the abject young betrayer while the other soldiers explained to the villagers that this boy was not the enemy, just a frightened kid who had been coerced and lied to by the terrorists and did not deserve to be killed.

Six hours later, the terrorist base camp was pounded by American
bombs; by noon the next day, it had been scoured to the last cave by American soldiers flown in by chopper.

Then they were all pulled out. The operation was a success. The Americans reported that they had suffered no casualties.

“From what one of your men told us,” said the colonel, “we wonder if you might have made your decision to put your own men at risk by firing immediately, based on emotional involvement with the villagers.”

“That's how I meant it to appear to the villagers,” said Captain Malich. “If we allowed the village to take casualties before we were on the scene, I believe we would have lost their trust.”

“And when you grieved over the body of the village headman?”

“Sir, I had to show him honor in a way they would understand, so that his heroic death became an asset to us instead of a liability.”

“It was all acting?”

“None of it was acting,” said Captain Malich. “All I did was permit it to be seen.”

The colonel turned to the clerk. “All right, shut off the tape.” Then, to Malich: “Good work, Major. You're on your way to New Jersey.”

Which is how Reuben Malich learned he was a captain no more. As for New Jersey, he had no idea what he would do there, but at least he already spoke the language, and fewer people would be trying to kill him.

When do you first set foot on the ladder to greatness? Or on the slippery slope of treason? Do you know it at the time? Or do you discover it only looking back?

“Everybody Compares America to Rome,” said Averell Torrent to the graduate students seated around the table. “But they compare the wrong thing. It's always, ‘America is going to fall, just like Rome.' We should be so lucky! Let's fall just like Rome did—after five hundred years of world domination!” Torrent smiled maliciously.

Major Reuben Malich took a note—in Farsi, as he usually did, so that no one else at the table could understand what he was writing. What he wrote was: America's purpose is not to dominate anything. We don't want to be Rome.

Torrent did not wait for note-taking. “The real question is, how can America establish itself so it can
endure
the way Rome did?”

Torrent looked around the table. He was surrounded by students only a little younger than he was, but there was no doubt of his authority. Not everybody writes a doctoral dissertation that becomes the cover story of all the political and international journals. Only Malich was older than Torrent; only Malich was not confused about the difference between Torrent and God. Then again, only Malich actually believed in God, so the others could be forgiven their confusion of the two.

“The only reason we care about the fall of Rome,” said Torrent, “is because this Latin-speaking village in the heart of the Italian peninsula had forced its culture and language on Gaul and Iberia and Dacia and Britannia, and even after it fell, the lands they conquered
clung to as much of that culture as they could. Why? Why was Rome so
successful
?”

No one offered to speak. So, as usual, Torrent zeroed in on Malich. “Let's ask Soldier Boy, here. You're part of America's legions.”

Reuben refused to let the implied taunting get to him. Be calm in the face of the enemy. If he
is
an enemy.

“I was hoping
you'd
answer that one, sir,” said Malich. “Since that's the topic of the entire course.”

“All the more reason why you should already have thought of some possible answers. Are you telling me you haven't thought of any?”

Reuben had been thinking of answers to that—and similar questions—ever since he set his sights on a military career, back in seventh grade. But he said nothing, simply regarding Torrent with a steady gaze that showed nothing, not even defiance, and certainly not hostility. In the modern American classroom, a soldier's battle face was a look of perfect tranquility.

Torrent pressed him. “Rome ruthlessly conquered dozens, hundreds of nations and tribes. Why, then, when Rome fell, did these former enemies cling to
Roman
culture and claim
Roman
heritage as their own for a thousand years and more?”

“Time,” said Reuben. “People got used to being under Roman rule.”

“Do you really think
time
explains it?” asked Torrent scornfully.

“Absolutely,” said Reuben. “Look at China. After a few centuries, most people came to identify themselves so completely with their conquerors that they thought of themselves as Chinese. Same with Islam. Given time enough, with no hope of liberation or revolt, they eventually converted to Islam. They even came to think of themselves as
Arabs
.”

As usual, when Reuben pressed back, Torrent backed off, not in any obvious, respectful way that admitted Reuben might have scored a point or two, but by simply turning to someone else to ask another question.

The discussion moved on from there into a discussion of the Soviet
Union and how eagerly the subject peoples shrugged off the Russian yoke at the first opportunity. But eventually Torrent brought it back to Rome—and to Major Reuben Malich.

“If America fell today, how much of our culture would endure? Most places that speak English in the world do so because of the British Empire, not because of anything America did. What about our civilization will last? T-shirts? Coca-Cola?”

“Pepsi,” joked one of the other students.

“McDonald's.”

“IPods.”

“Funny, but trivial,” said Torrent. “Soldier Boy, you tell us. What would last?”

“Nothing,” said Reuben immediately. “They respect us now because we have a dangerous military. They adopt our culture because we're rich. If we were poor and unarmed, they'd peel off American culture like a snake shedding its skin.”

“Yes!” said Torrent. The other students registered as much surprise as Reuben felt, though Reuben did not let it show. Torrent
agreed
with the soldier?

“That's why there is no comparison between America and Rome,” said Torrent. “Our empire can't fall because we aren't an empire. We have never passed from our republican stage to our imperial one. Right now we buy and sell and, occasionally, bully our way into other countries, but when they thumb their noses at us, we treat them as if they had a right, as if there were some equivalence between our nation and their puny weakness. Can you imagine what Rome would have done if an ‘ally' treated them the way France and Germany have been treating the United States?”

The class laughed.

Reuben Malich did not laugh. “The fact that we
don't
act like Rome is one of the best things about America,” he said.

“So isn't it ironic,” said Torrent, “that we are vilified as if we
were
like Rome, precisely because we aren't? While if we
did
act like Rome,
then
they'd treat us with the respect we deserve?”

“My head a-
splode,”
said one of the wittier students, and everyone laughed again. But Torrent pushed the point.

“America is at the end of its republic. Just as the Roman Senate and consuls became incapable of ruling their widespread holdings and fighting off their enemies, so America's antiquated Constitution is a joke. Bureaucrats and courts make most of the decisions, while the press decides which Presidents will have enough public support to govern. We lurch forward by inertia alone, but if America is to be an enduring polity, it can't continue this way.”

Even though Torrent's points actually agreed with much of what Reuben believed was wrong with contemporary America, he could not let the historical point stand unchallenged—the two situations could not be compared. “The Roman Republic ended,” said Reuben, “because the people got sick of the endless civil wars among rival warlords. They were grateful to have a strong man like Octavian eliminate all rivals and restore peace. That's why they were thrilled to have him put on the purple and rename himself as
Augustus
.”

“Exactly,” said Torrent, leaning across the table and pointing a finger at him. “Of course a soldier sees straight to the crux of the matter. Only a fool thinks the turns of history can be measured by any standard other than which wars were fought, and who won them. Survival of the fittest—that's the measure of a civilization. And survival is ultimately determined on the battlefield. Where one man kills another, or dies, or runs away. The society whose citizens will stand and fight is the one with the best chance to survive long enough for history even to notice it.”

One of the students made the obligatory comment about how concentrating on war omits most of history. At which Torrent smiled and gestured for Reuben to answer.

“The people who win the wars write the histories,” said Reuben dutifully, wondering why he was getting this sudden burst of respect from Torrent.

“Augustus kept most of the forms of the old system,” Torrent went on. “He refused to call himself king, he pretended the Senate still meant something. So the people loved him for protecting their
republican delusions. But what he actually established was an empire so strong that it could survive incompetents and madmen like Nero and Caligula. It was the empire, not the republic, that made Rome the most important enduring polity in history.”

“You're saying America needs to do the same thing?” asked Reuben Malich.

“Not at all!” said Torrent, acting out a parody of horror. “God forbid! I'm just saying that if America is going to ever
matter
to history the way Rome does, instead of being a brief episode like the Sassanid or Chaldean empires, then it will be because we spawn our own Augustus, to rule where right now we only buy and sell.”

“Then I hope we fall first,” said Reuben Malich. He knew as he spoke that he should have confined this comment to his Arabic notes. This was the trap Torrent had led him into, by showing him respect; yet, knowing he was being exposed and would surely be cut apart for it, he could not hold silence—because if he did, the other students would be sure this soldier longed for empire, just as Torrent apparently did. “America exists as an idea,” Reuben said, “and if we throw out that idea, then there's no reason for America to exist at all.”

“Oh, Soldier Boy, you poor lad,” said Torrent. “The American idea was thrown out with Social Security. We nailed the coffin shut with group rights. We don't
want
individual liberty because we don't want individual responsibility. We want somebody else to take care of us. If we had a dictator who did a better job of it than our present system, then as long as he pretended to respect Congress, we'd lick his hands like dogs.”

The whole seminar recoiled from his words, though not because they thought he was wrong; it was because he sounded like some kind of neo-conservative.

“Again,” Torrent reminded them, “I'm not advocating anything, I'm only observing. We're historians, not politicians. We have to look at how polities actually function, not how we wish to delude ourselves into thinking they ought to function. Our short-term politics trump long-term national interests every time. Can't fix Social Security, can't fix the tax structure, can't fix the trade deficit, can't fix
outsourcing, can't fix
anything
because there's always campaign money involved, or demagoguery that blocks the way. Between the NRA and the AARP, you can't even do things that vast majorities already agree need to be done! Democracy on this scale doesn't work, it hasn't worked for years. And as for that American idea, we flushed it away with the Great Depression, and
nobody misses it
.” Then he grinned. “Except maybe Soldier Boy.”

Princeton University was just what Reuben expected it to be—hostile to everything he valued, smug and superior and utterly closed-minded. In fact, exactly what
they
thought the military was.

He kept thinking, the first couple of semesters, that maybe his attitude toward them was just as short-sighted and bigoted and wrong as theirs was of him. But in class after class, seminar after seminar, he learned that far too many students were determined to remain ignorant of any real-world data that didn't fit their preconceived notions. And even those who tried to remain genuinely open-minded simply did not realize the magnitude of the lies they had been told about history, about values, about religion, about everything. So they took the facts of history and averaged them with the dogmas of the leftist university professors and thought that the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

Well as far as Reuben could tell, the middle they found was still far from any useful information about the real world.

Am I like them, just a bigot learning only what fits my worldview? That's what he kept asking himself. But finally he reached the conclusion: No, he was not. He faced every piece of information as it came. He questioned his own assumptions whenever the information seemed to violate it. Above all, he changed his mind—and often. Sometimes only by increments; sometimes completely. Heroes he had once admired—Douglas MacArthur, for instance—he now regarded with something akin to horror: How could a commander be so vain, with so little justification for it? Others that he had disdained—that great clerk, Eisenhower, or that woeful incompetent, Burnside—he had learned to appreciate for their considerable virtues.

And now he knew that this was much of what the Army had sent him here to learn. Yes, a doctorate in history would be useful. But he was really getting a doctorate in self-doubt and skepticism, a Ph.D. in the rhetoric and beliefs of the insane Left. He would be able to sit in a room with a far-left Senator and hear it all with a straight face, without having to argue any points, and with complete comprehension of everything he was saying and everything he meant by it.