Rumsfeldia: Fear and Loathing in the Decade of Tears
- Thread starter Drew
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Well, Drew managed to conceive of a caliphate in Syria and an Islamist insurgency in Mali months or even years before similar events happened in real life. Let's hope that real life does not imitate art in this case. Perhaps Bernie Sanders will form an OTL version of the We the People party out of public disatisfaction with traditional parties. In turn, the OTL 2016 election may look like the TTL 1980 election: Trump - Clinton - Sanders .
Well, Drew managed to conceive of a caliphate in Syria and an Islamist insurgency in Mali months or even years before similar events happened in real life. Let's hope that real life does not imitate art in this case. Perhaps Bernie Sanders will form an OTL version of the We the People party out of public disatisfaction with traditional parties. In turn, the OTL 2016 election may look like the TTL 1980 election: "Please don't feel so stupid or insecure" "I beat China all the time" "When did we beat Japan at anything?" Donald "My net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney" Trump - Clinton - Sanders .
That reminds me-Sanders was working with WTP in this TL, right? Please tell me he hasn't had a "nervous breakdown", too...
Although if he is still around and kicking, given that TTLs leftism is probably going to get some serious validation after Rumsfeldia falls, I could see him winning the presidency. Maybe.
Drew hinted some time back that Rumsfeldia may be overthrown in a French Revolution style uprising. Given that all alternatives have basically been shut off, this scenario seems almost inevitable.
Unfortunately, if this hint turns out to be true, the administration that succeeds Rumsfeld will not be the stable, "bourgeois" politicians that probably would have taken over if the coup succeeded (i.e Jimmy Carter, Pete McCloskey, or even Ron Dellums for that matter). Instead, those who will take over will likely be the really nutzoid, fringe radicals that were on TV so often during the Vietnam War.
I can totally picture TTL 1990 Detroit with a massive public spectacle of the CEOs of TRW, Bank of America, etc being guillotined by a radicalized Michael Moore or something. Meanwhile, mass movements to ban old Disney films as "reactionary" and "misogynistic" will become prominent. All sorts of bizarro crap will probably be seen post-Rumsfeldia. I call it Counter-culture 2.0!
I can also picture many other old hippie ideas coming back such as communal living, co-op businesses and even group marriage.
I was thinking, in a reversal of the film post a few pages back, many films will become more anti-corporate in nature, a much darker variation than the OTL anti-consumerism in the 90's. Like, the alternate Jurassic Park is even more anti-corporate, (and much closer to the book, in regards to its portrayal of John Hammond.
The co-op thing is already taking off, it seems, what with the libertarian communes.
John Hammond getting eaten alive by a pack of Procompsognathus might be a pretty good analogy for what's about to happen.
Well, Drew managed to conceive of a caliphate in Syria and an Islamist insurgency in Mali months or even years before similar events happened in real life. Let's hope that real life does not imitate art in this case. Perhaps Bernie Sanders will form an OTL version of the We the People party out of public disatisfaction with traditional parties. In turn, the OTL 2016 election may look like the TTL 1980 election: Trump - Clinton - Sanders .
I will not claim credit for being psychic about the rise of ISIS, more like I was trying to take a trend to its extreme end -- only to discover that reality could be even more extreme!
On the other hand, I also got in ahead of OTL with a Latin pope with radical ideas about capitalism.
Some of what I've written in Rumsfeldia is inspired by a current trend in Canadian politics - two left-of-centre/moderate parties being handed their electoral lunch by a formerly centre-right party hijacked by extremists using incremental right-wing policies and wedge politics to destroy the moderate liberal state. I've applied it to the United States here, and added a bit of drama to illustrate the point more clearly.
When Stephen Harper and his Conservatives were elected to govern here, it was thought that Canada was behind the U.S. politically, in that Harper represented a kind of Reagan/Thatcher/Bush43 Friedman neo-liberalism that hadn't yet taken root in Canadian politics.
However, I think Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are ahead of the American curve in another key aspect. Canada had its Tea Party in the 1990's in the form of our old Reform Party, and Harper emerged out of that. To that extent, Harper is a warning about the direction the Tea Party can go under a forceful leader (and Rumsfeldia is a bit of hyperbole based on that concept - but set in the recent past).
In reading about Scott Walker and Jeb Bush I was struck by how closely their governing styles and governing personalities resembled Stephen Harper in power. In respect to Bush its uncanny, almost as if Harper and not that other Bush was his real brother.
For Americans interested in where the Tea Party could take their country if it gets one of their own into the White House, I recommend studying Stephen Harper very closely. He's your warning.
For those who say Jeb Bush is not really Tea Party, go look at his record and governing style in Florida very closely. The reference same to how Stephen Harper has governed Canada the last nine years. The parallels are, as I said, eye-opening.
As for Donald Trump: I think Carl Hiaasen says it best:
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article27059140.html
There seems to be an assumption that the appearance of the Reform Party and Harper's rise to power happened in a vacuum, at least that is how I perceive the "Harper = Tea Party" rhetoric. I always saw western alienation as one of the underlying factors, particularly PET's arrogance in implementing the National Energy Program and his outright contempt for the West helping fan the flames along. Then bungling by future PC and Liberal governments helped reinforce the perception that Central Canada didn't give a damn about Western concerns. Something that Reform capitalized on and the Chretien/Martin Liberals did nothing to mitigate.
HOWEVER... one of the few bright spots I see for Canada ITTL, is that Peter Lougheed as Prime Minister would butterfly a lot of the factors that helped Harper and his cronies get into power. I admit that the insanity of the Rumsfeld Administration probably has Canadians wary of American politics and unchecked corporatism. With Lougheed being Albertan, I imagine western alienation is not as prevalent with one our own as Prime Minister therefore, no Harper Conservatives.
HOWEVER... one of the few bright spots I see for Canada ITTL, is that Peter Lougheed as Prime Minister would butterfly a lot of the factors that helped Harper and his cronies get into power. I admit that the insanity of the Rumsfeld Administration probably has Canadians wary of American politics and unchecked corporatism. With Lougheed being Albertan, I imagine western alienation is not as prevalent with one our own as Prime Minister therefore, no Harper Conservatives.
Saturday, July 4, 1987
President Rumsfeld speaking from the East Room of the White House with a large American flag prominently displayed behind him,
“My fellow Americans, I come before you on this greatest of national holidays, a day that commemorates our founders throwing off the shackles of foreign tyranny in order to live in freedom, to announce that today, our great armed forces – working in conjunction with many patriotic free-enterprise contractors – have set foot on Cuban soil to liberate the oppressed of that island from socialist tyranny.
For too long the island of Cuba has been held in the socialist yoke by the criminal, anti-freedom tyrants that are the Castro brothers, aided and abetted by their puppet masters in Moscow. In 1959 the keepers of freedom were betrayed by the treacherous Castro brothers and their socialist minions, and the people of Cuba were thrown into slavery and degradation, all in the sinister, obnoxious cause of the world-wide Communist effort to enslave all humanity.
“Today, on this historical anniversary of the founding of the first and only free nation ever to exist on the planet, we will reverse this monumental criminal treachery and restore freedom to the Cuban people. The fight will be short, for only a few Communist dead-enders will resist us. The enslaved people of Cuba, craving freedom, will lay a bed of roses to greet our liberating heroes who will bring them the precious gift of freedom so long denied to them and all other peoples not blessed to be Americans.
“To the leaders of the Soviet Union and all other socialist oppressor nations, let me warn you now, any attempt to prevent this liberation – any interference with the freedom mission of our troops – shall be met with the direst of retaliations. We will reply kind-for-kind for any action against our freedom forces. The fate of the world, therefore, is in your hands. I recommend you reflect on this, and let the consequences of any interference with our forces guide your reaction. Look to you children and your families, and understand what interference with our righteous cause will mean for them.
“My friends, today freedom lives and grows stronger. Our great military, assisted by freedom-loving contractors who have brought true freedom to the armed forces of our great nation, will win through and spread freedom where there has been only slavery and imprisonment. God Bless our military, God Bless the free market, and God Bless America.”
--------------------------------------------------------
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Lt. Colonel Kenneth Bowra was growing increasingly frustrated with the fussy little prick from Corporate Transport Services. As the hours passed, and the transports for his teams failed to arrive, Bowra began to burn, his frustration like a slow fire in a dry forest gaining momentum, burning away his self-control and resistance to a desire to snap the prick in two.
“Where the fuck are my transports!” he screamed at the shorter, bespectacled weasel holding a clipboard in one hand.
The CTS drone instinctively drew back from the Special Forces warrior, his brown eyes nervously glancing down at the clipboard, as if the outdated roster clipped to it could magically offer an answer to his dilemma.
“I’m sure they’ll be along shortly, just –“
“That’s what you’ve been saying for the last three hours, asshole!” Bowra screamed back him. “For three hours we’ve been waiting – three Goddamned, fucking hours of sitting on our asses when we should be in Cuba, taking out their beach defenses! Instead of shooting Cuban commies, we’re here doing sweet dick all – thanks to you!”
The CTS man – his name was Vinco – didn’t dare tell this belligerent John Wayne want to-be that there had been a major screw-up at CTS headquarters, which meant that not only were Bowra’s transports held-up, but so where dozens of others for other Special Forces squads. In fact few, if any, of the Special Forces units would get to Cuba before the regular Marines and Army hit the beaches.
“I’ll make a call,” Vinco offered, stepping back from the enraged Bowra.
“You do that,” Bowra growled.
Vinco didn’t know then – but later learned – that while CTS had been contracted to deliver the Special Forces units, the fact that the individual aircraft, which were the property of CTS and not the armed forces, would need insurance coverage while operating over hostile Cuban airspace had not been adequately covered. CTS expected the Pentagon to take care of it; the Pentagon thought it was CTS responsibility as a contractor. The result was no insurance on D-Day for the Cuban operation, and as a result while the Pentagon and CTS upper management argued about it, the choppers and planes remained grounded, along with the Special Forces element they were supposed to deliver to the island.
Vinco made his call, praying that something had been worked out. He was told it hadn’t, and that he was to stand fast until he received new instructions.
Looking over at the heavily armed, hulking figure of Lt. Col. Bowra, Vinco swallowed hard. Maybe he would go work for this brother-in-law after all.
-------------------------------------
Beach Code Named Liberty
The Marines of the second battalion, Seventh United States Marine Corps Regiment came ashore on Liberty beach just before dawn fully expecting that a Special Forces unit had chewed-up and harassed the defenders during the night before.
The ground fire from concealed points just inland told them that assumption was wrong. Lance Corporal James Todd Smith of Fox Company, 3rd squad, managed to make it to cover, but many of his fellow marines didn’t. Instead they were cut down like ten-pins as enemy bullets penetrated their body armor.
Cheap fucking shit” Smith, who was known as LJ, thought. Having made cover he wasted little time ripping his off and throwing it into the bushes. At least it was a relief to shed fifteen pounds of dead weight off his body in this blast furnace heat.
The new and improved body armor had arrived from a TRW subsidiary just before they had jumped off for Cuba, and there had been no time to test it. At least they had body armor – up until that last minute it looked like they were going to be sent in with no protection.
Glancing at the dead and wounded Marines around him, LJ realized that’s exactly what had happened anyway.
Trying to maintain cover, LJ moved forward out of the kill zone, trying to get out of the fire zone of the Cuban gunners in the jungle ahead. Sweat poured from him, and he cursed the heat and humidity, and whoever the hell decided to launch the invasion of a tropical island in the middle of summer.
A figure moved in the distance: LJ saw the distinctive shape of an AK rifle in his hands. The Marine dropped into a crouch and tried to pick the Cuban off with his new M-20 improved rifle. But it jammed.
Fucking piece of shit! Why the Hell they’d replaced the perfectly good M-16’s with this crap was unclear to him.
LJ didn’t have much time to do anything about it. He’d have to get the Cuban with his knife.
-------------------------------------------
Artemisia, Cuba
Company B, 1st Ranger Battalion was one of the few special forces units that actually had transport to Cuba the night of July 3rd and July 4th, and as such the Rangers were the first to fight on the island.
First Lieutenant Nick Coppola watched his CO die – his guts blown out by a Cuban RPG – and realized he was the senior officer living. He tried to rally his men around them. Their orders had called for them to harass the Cubans, cut off their logistics and organize a rising among the locals. Little had gone as planned.
Half their equipment had failed. Many of the vests were useless. Coppola was wearing a vest he’d taken from a dead Cuban and using an AK. Many of the surviving rangers were scrounging the Cuban equipment because it worked.
Communications were spotty, but Coppola didn’t need headquarters to confirm that most of the Special Forces units hadn’t made the insertion, and as a result instead of confusing the Cubans with multiple targets and fire points, the Rangers had simply made themselves easy targets for the local militias.
The local civilians, who were supposed to welcome them, were the ones offering the most resistance – often with pitchforks and old shotguns. It would have been laughable, except for the fact that many of the Rangers were reduced to pistols and knives themselves.
Someone somewhere made a pot load of money selling shit to us, Coppola observed.
For now, all he the surviving members of his Company could do was withdraw into the jungle, and hope that someone would come to their rescue. Headquarters assured him that help was on the way, but Coppola didn’t feel reassured.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Above Cuba
Captain Dan Hampton USAF circled his F-16 Fighting Falcon around for a kill against two Cuban MIG-21’s. Even at two-to-one he had the advantage over the older Soviet models, whose pilots were focused on two U.S. helicopters below and not paying attention to their sixes as they should have been.
Hampton toggled to his sidewinder air-to-air missiles and fired one at each MIG. The one of his left wing fired-off, but the one on the right dropped like a useless turd into the jungle below.
Fucking new software! Hampton cursed. The Falcons had recently been overhauled with new software that was supposed to upgrade firing responsiveness and control.
Once the sidewinder off his left wing blew-up it target, the other MIG pilot would be alerted. Hampton wasn’t worried, the Falcon could out-fly the old MIG, but he’d have to use some old fashioned flying skills to avoid any missiles coming his way.
Just as Hampton was adjusting his altitude, his missile warning system went-off, indicating that one of the deadly bolts was zeroing in on him.
What the Hell? The MIG’s couldn’t have gotten a bead, not from that range.
Too late Hampton realized hit was his own sidewinder coming back at him, the targeting software having somehow detected the launching aircraft as a threat and brining the missile back on the Falcon as if it was its intended target all along.
The range was so close that Hampton didn’t have time to eject and make a clear breakaway from the blast range of the impact.
God forgive me my sins, he thought, and damn all these software designers to Hell.
The next second Dan Hampton and his Falcon were scattered all over the Cuban jungle.
-----------------------------
Near Bayamo, Cuba
Major General Colin Powell had survived in the Rumsfeld Army by keeping his head down and avoiding trouble. He’d had some knowledge of General Haig’s plot, but had no direct involvement in that hair-brained scheme, and so had avoided the first round of purges. To be sure he’d taken a two year posting in Alaska, to stay out of sight and out of mind for a while. He was now a Major General because Rumsfeld’s purges had thinned the ranks, and he’d been drawn-up to two stars by his years of experience.
Being captured by the Cubans had not been part of the plan for the day, but that happened. It was humiliating to surrender on the first day of action, and to have to do so because of major equipment failures and a lack of planned support only added to the misery of his position.
Upon realizing his rank, the Cubans had immediately separated the general from his men. Now he was being lead into some kind of underground bunker complex, buried well into a hillside. The air-conditioning had apparently failed (it was good to see that the enemy was having a few problems too) and it was stifling down below.
Powell’s humiliation was only increased – from boiling to volcanic – when he realized he was being paraded before Fidel Castro himself.
The bearded Cuban leader, dressed in a pair of sweat-soiled fatigues and chomping on a cigar, regarded the American general with an expression which conveyed amusement. The Portuguese officer standing behind him (obviously a liaison officer of some kind) looked at the American with a sour-faced expression.
“Why you come here,” Castro asked in heavily accented, broken English.
“Colin Powell, Major-General, United States Army, - Oh-“
“Yes, yes. You good soldier,” Castro said, waving his arms in the air.
“You realize, General, that your aggression against the peaceful Cuban people has turned into a complete fiasco,” the Portuguese officer said in perfect American English.
Powell didn’t dignify it with a response.
Castro called over his own translator, as what he wanted to say next was beyond his limited language skills.
“Your men will be treated well,” the translator said. “We will not be like our comrades in North Korea or Vietnam, where unpleasant things were allowed. None of that here in Cuba.”
Powell watched this dance silently, as Castro let loose in a flurry of Spanish, gesticulating wildly as he spoke, all while the Cuban translator struggled to keep-up.
“At what price?” Powell asked. The translator didn’t seem to understand at first. “What do you demand of me, in return for this lenient treatment for my men?”
Castro reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out what looked like an airline ticket.
“Of you, nothing,” he said in English. “You go home.”
“I don’t understand,” Powell replied, puzzled.
“We want nothing of you,” the translator explained. “We want nothing of your men. They are too many, we cannot send them all home now.”
“It is not safe,” Castro said. “Too many Americans shooting.”
“This is a ticket on the next Mexican airways flight to Mexico,” the translator said. “You will go on it. From there we are sure you can make your own way home to America.”
“We throw generals back,” Castro said in his rough English. “You tell Rumsfeld, we don’t need his generals. But to his men, we offer a Cuban holiday.”
“The ticket is for an economy seat,” the translator added. “We are a poor country and first class is just too expensive. I hope you understand.”
Powell bristled as the Cuban leader and his entourage laughed at the joke.
-----------------------------------------
U.S. Southern Command, Florida
General Josiah Dorman USA fell into a very dark mood as he read the first day’s casualty reports. With first day reports like these, Eisenhower would have shot himself. Even “Butcher” Grant would have blanched, even as he reached for the bottle.
Josiah Dorman didn’t drink; he didn’t smoke; he didn’t have sex, not even with his right hand. His life was dedicated to the Lord and the United States Army, the order of the two depending upon the task at hand – although Dorman saw service to his country as service to the Lord. The USA was God’s instrument on earth; His sword to smite the sinners and see His will done on Earth.
Humiliation in Cuba was not His will. It was contractor failure, mostly the result of nickel-and-diming and incompetence in Rumsfeld’s privatization scheme.
General Dorman had blanched at the President’s blasphemies, when he referred to economics as God’s Will. How dare the President associate God’s Will with the expression of Mammon! Now he could clearly see that God had rendered his judgment on Donald Rumsfeld. How else, but by the will of God, could such a humiliation have been visited on the nation which served His cause.
General Dorman didn’t blaspheme. But he did swear a new oath, his first since taking the officer’s oath at West Point. He swore to serve God’s purpose by eliminating this apostate from the White House for good.
------------------------------------------------------------
Moscow
Nikolai Ryzhkov read the intelligence reports from Cuba with disbelief. At first he thought the KGB was altering the product to appease the leader, trying to disguise a disaster. He cursed because he had tried to rid the KGB of this nonsense, so that he received real intelligence instead of politically messaged pap.
Ryzhkov did as he had done before in such situations, he had a very off-the-record phone conversation with President Francois Mitterrand. For several years now the two had been comparing notes on the products of their intelligence services. It had started during their joint operations against the PJO in Africa, when both the Soviet and French leaders had come to suspect the quality of the intelligence reports they were receiving. Over time they had developed the confidence to cross-check with each other, checking on their own services through the eyes of the other and all the while adding an extra element to the Moscow-Paris dynamic.
Mitterrand told him it was true. The American invasion of Cuba, at least on the first day, was turning into the worst military disaster since Mussolini’s ill-fated invasion of Greece.
The news did not hearten Ryzhkov, as many would have thought that it might. In these reports the Soviet leader saw a superpower in collapse, and worse a President who had clearly lost control of his own country. There would be reckoning for this, and Rumsfeld would pay a price.
What kept Ryzhkov up at night was that there seemed so few options, and that clearly the aftermath was going to be unpleasant.
For that reason – because Rumsfeld would now be grasping at any straw to survive – Ryzhkov re-doubled his resolve not to provoke the American over Cuba. The real question he had to ask himself was what he would do when Rumsfeld did fall.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
President Rumsfeld speaking from the East Room of the White House with a large American flag prominently displayed behind him,
“My fellow Americans, I come before you on this greatest of national holidays, a day that commemorates our founders throwing off the shackles of foreign tyranny in order to live in freedom, to announce that today, our great armed forces – working in conjunction with many patriotic free-enterprise contractors – have set foot on Cuban soil to liberate the oppressed of that island from socialist tyranny.
For too long the island of Cuba has been held in the socialist yoke by the criminal, anti-freedom tyrants that are the Castro brothers, aided and abetted by their puppet masters in Moscow. In 1959 the keepers of freedom were betrayed by the treacherous Castro brothers and their socialist minions, and the people of Cuba were thrown into slavery and degradation, all in the sinister, obnoxious cause of the world-wide Communist effort to enslave all humanity.
“Today, on this historical anniversary of the founding of the first and only free nation ever to exist on the planet, we will reverse this monumental criminal treachery and restore freedom to the Cuban people. The fight will be short, for only a few Communist dead-enders will resist us. The enslaved people of Cuba, craving freedom, will lay a bed of roses to greet our liberating heroes who will bring them the precious gift of freedom so long denied to them and all other peoples not blessed to be Americans.
“To the leaders of the Soviet Union and all other socialist oppressor nations, let me warn you now, any attempt to prevent this liberation – any interference with the freedom mission of our troops – shall be met with the direst of retaliations. We will reply kind-for-kind for any action against our freedom forces. The fate of the world, therefore, is in your hands. I recommend you reflect on this, and let the consequences of any interference with our forces guide your reaction. Look to you children and your families, and understand what interference with our righteous cause will mean for them.
“My friends, today freedom lives and grows stronger. Our great military, assisted by freedom-loving contractors who have brought true freedom to the armed forces of our great nation, will win through and spread freedom where there has been only slavery and imprisonment. God Bless our military, God Bless the free market, and God Bless America.”
--------------------------------------------------------
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Lt. Colonel Kenneth Bowra was growing increasingly frustrated with the fussy little prick from Corporate Transport Services. As the hours passed, and the transports for his teams failed to arrive, Bowra began to burn, his frustration like a slow fire in a dry forest gaining momentum, burning away his self-control and resistance to a desire to snap the prick in two.
“Where the fuck are my transports!” he screamed at the shorter, bespectacled weasel holding a clipboard in one hand.
The CTS drone instinctively drew back from the Special Forces warrior, his brown eyes nervously glancing down at the clipboard, as if the outdated roster clipped to it could magically offer an answer to his dilemma.
“I’m sure they’ll be along shortly, just –“
“That’s what you’ve been saying for the last three hours, asshole!” Bowra screamed back him. “For three hours we’ve been waiting – three Goddamned, fucking hours of sitting on our asses when we should be in Cuba, taking out their beach defenses! Instead of shooting Cuban commies, we’re here doing sweet dick all – thanks to you!”
The CTS man – his name was Vinco – didn’t dare tell this belligerent John Wayne want to-be that there had been a major screw-up at CTS headquarters, which meant that not only were Bowra’s transports held-up, but so where dozens of others for other Special Forces squads. In fact few, if any, of the Special Forces units would get to Cuba before the regular Marines and Army hit the beaches.
“I’ll make a call,” Vinco offered, stepping back from the enraged Bowra.
“You do that,” Bowra growled.
Vinco didn’t know then – but later learned – that while CTS had been contracted to deliver the Special Forces units, the fact that the individual aircraft, which were the property of CTS and not the armed forces, would need insurance coverage while operating over hostile Cuban airspace had not been adequately covered. CTS expected the Pentagon to take care of it; the Pentagon thought it was CTS responsibility as a contractor. The result was no insurance on D-Day for the Cuban operation, and as a result while the Pentagon and CTS upper management argued about it, the choppers and planes remained grounded, along with the Special Forces element they were supposed to deliver to the island.
Vinco made his call, praying that something had been worked out. He was told it hadn’t, and that he was to stand fast until he received new instructions.
Looking over at the heavily armed, hulking figure of Lt. Col. Bowra, Vinco swallowed hard. Maybe he would go work for this brother-in-law after all.
-------------------------------------
Beach Code Named Liberty
The Marines of the second battalion, Seventh United States Marine Corps Regiment came ashore on Liberty beach just before dawn fully expecting that a Special Forces unit had chewed-up and harassed the defenders during the night before.
The ground fire from concealed points just inland told them that assumption was wrong. Lance Corporal James Todd Smith of Fox Company, 3rd squad, managed to make it to cover, but many of his fellow marines didn’t. Instead they were cut down like ten-pins as enemy bullets penetrated their body armor.
Cheap fucking shit” Smith, who was known as LJ, thought. Having made cover he wasted little time ripping his off and throwing it into the bushes. At least it was a relief to shed fifteen pounds of dead weight off his body in this blast furnace heat.
The new and improved body armor had arrived from a TRW subsidiary just before they had jumped off for Cuba, and there had been no time to test it. At least they had body armor – up until that last minute it looked like they were going to be sent in with no protection.
Glancing at the dead and wounded Marines around him, LJ realized that’s exactly what had happened anyway.
Trying to maintain cover, LJ moved forward out of the kill zone, trying to get out of the fire zone of the Cuban gunners in the jungle ahead. Sweat poured from him, and he cursed the heat and humidity, and whoever the hell decided to launch the invasion of a tropical island in the middle of summer.
A figure moved in the distance: LJ saw the distinctive shape of an AK rifle in his hands. The Marine dropped into a crouch and tried to pick the Cuban off with his new M-20 improved rifle. But it jammed.
Fucking piece of shit! Why the Hell they’d replaced the perfectly good M-16’s with this crap was unclear to him.
LJ didn’t have much time to do anything about it. He’d have to get the Cuban with his knife.
-------------------------------------------
Artemisia, Cuba
Company B, 1st Ranger Battalion was one of the few special forces units that actually had transport to Cuba the night of July 3rd and July 4th, and as such the Rangers were the first to fight on the island.
First Lieutenant Nick Coppola watched his CO die – his guts blown out by a Cuban RPG – and realized he was the senior officer living. He tried to rally his men around them. Their orders had called for them to harass the Cubans, cut off their logistics and organize a rising among the locals. Little had gone as planned.
Half their equipment had failed. Many of the vests were useless. Coppola was wearing a vest he’d taken from a dead Cuban and using an AK. Many of the surviving rangers were scrounging the Cuban equipment because it worked.
Communications were spotty, but Coppola didn’t need headquarters to confirm that most of the Special Forces units hadn’t made the insertion, and as a result instead of confusing the Cubans with multiple targets and fire points, the Rangers had simply made themselves easy targets for the local militias.
The local civilians, who were supposed to welcome them, were the ones offering the most resistance – often with pitchforks and old shotguns. It would have been laughable, except for the fact that many of the Rangers were reduced to pistols and knives themselves.
Someone somewhere made a pot load of money selling shit to us, Coppola observed.
For now, all he the surviving members of his Company could do was withdraw into the jungle, and hope that someone would come to their rescue. Headquarters assured him that help was on the way, but Coppola didn’t feel reassured.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Above Cuba
Captain Dan Hampton USAF circled his F-16 Fighting Falcon around for a kill against two Cuban MIG-21’s. Even at two-to-one he had the advantage over the older Soviet models, whose pilots were focused on two U.S. helicopters below and not paying attention to their sixes as they should have been.
Hampton toggled to his sidewinder air-to-air missiles and fired one at each MIG. The one of his left wing fired-off, but the one on the right dropped like a useless turd into the jungle below.
Fucking new software! Hampton cursed. The Falcons had recently been overhauled with new software that was supposed to upgrade firing responsiveness and control.
Once the sidewinder off his left wing blew-up it target, the other MIG pilot would be alerted. Hampton wasn’t worried, the Falcon could out-fly the old MIG, but he’d have to use some old fashioned flying skills to avoid any missiles coming his way.
Just as Hampton was adjusting his altitude, his missile warning system went-off, indicating that one of the deadly bolts was zeroing in on him.
What the Hell? The MIG’s couldn’t have gotten a bead, not from that range.
Too late Hampton realized hit was his own sidewinder coming back at him, the targeting software having somehow detected the launching aircraft as a threat and brining the missile back on the Falcon as if it was its intended target all along.
The range was so close that Hampton didn’t have time to eject and make a clear breakaway from the blast range of the impact.
God forgive me my sins, he thought, and damn all these software designers to Hell.
The next second Dan Hampton and his Falcon were scattered all over the Cuban jungle.
-----------------------------
Near Bayamo, Cuba
Major General Colin Powell had survived in the Rumsfeld Army by keeping his head down and avoiding trouble. He’d had some knowledge of General Haig’s plot, but had no direct involvement in that hair-brained scheme, and so had avoided the first round of purges. To be sure he’d taken a two year posting in Alaska, to stay out of sight and out of mind for a while. He was now a Major General because Rumsfeld’s purges had thinned the ranks, and he’d been drawn-up to two stars by his years of experience.
Being captured by the Cubans had not been part of the plan for the day, but that happened. It was humiliating to surrender on the first day of action, and to have to do so because of major equipment failures and a lack of planned support only added to the misery of his position.
Upon realizing his rank, the Cubans had immediately separated the general from his men. Now he was being lead into some kind of underground bunker complex, buried well into a hillside. The air-conditioning had apparently failed (it was good to see that the enemy was having a few problems too) and it was stifling down below.
Powell’s humiliation was only increased – from boiling to volcanic – when he realized he was being paraded before Fidel Castro himself.
The bearded Cuban leader, dressed in a pair of sweat-soiled fatigues and chomping on a cigar, regarded the American general with an expression which conveyed amusement. The Portuguese officer standing behind him (obviously a liaison officer of some kind) looked at the American with a sour-faced expression.
“Why you come here,” Castro asked in heavily accented, broken English.
“Colin Powell, Major-General, United States Army, - Oh-“
“Yes, yes. You good soldier,” Castro said, waving his arms in the air.
“You realize, General, that your aggression against the peaceful Cuban people has turned into a complete fiasco,” the Portuguese officer said in perfect American English.
Powell didn’t dignify it with a response.
Castro called over his own translator, as what he wanted to say next was beyond his limited language skills.
“Your men will be treated well,” the translator said. “We will not be like our comrades in North Korea or Vietnam, where unpleasant things were allowed. None of that here in Cuba.”
Powell watched this dance silently, as Castro let loose in a flurry of Spanish, gesticulating wildly as he spoke, all while the Cuban translator struggled to keep-up.
“At what price?” Powell asked. The translator didn’t seem to understand at first. “What do you demand of me, in return for this lenient treatment for my men?”
Castro reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out what looked like an airline ticket.
“Of you, nothing,” he said in English. “You go home.”
“I don’t understand,” Powell replied, puzzled.
“We want nothing of you,” the translator explained. “We want nothing of your men. They are too many, we cannot send them all home now.”
“It is not safe,” Castro said. “Too many Americans shooting.”
“This is a ticket on the next Mexican airways flight to Mexico,” the translator said. “You will go on it. From there we are sure you can make your own way home to America.”
“We throw generals back,” Castro said in his rough English. “You tell Rumsfeld, we don’t need his generals. But to his men, we offer a Cuban holiday.”
“The ticket is for an economy seat,” the translator added. “We are a poor country and first class is just too expensive. I hope you understand.”
Powell bristled as the Cuban leader and his entourage laughed at the joke.
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U.S. Southern Command, Florida
General Josiah Dorman USA fell into a very dark mood as he read the first day’s casualty reports. With first day reports like these, Eisenhower would have shot himself. Even “Butcher” Grant would have blanched, even as he reached for the bottle.
Josiah Dorman didn’t drink; he didn’t smoke; he didn’t have sex, not even with his right hand. His life was dedicated to the Lord and the United States Army, the order of the two depending upon the task at hand – although Dorman saw service to his country as service to the Lord. The USA was God’s instrument on earth; His sword to smite the sinners and see His will done on Earth.
Humiliation in Cuba was not His will. It was contractor failure, mostly the result of nickel-and-diming and incompetence in Rumsfeld’s privatization scheme.
General Dorman had blanched at the President’s blasphemies, when he referred to economics as God’s Will. How dare the President associate God’s Will with the expression of Mammon! Now he could clearly see that God had rendered his judgment on Donald Rumsfeld. How else, but by the will of God, could such a humiliation have been visited on the nation which served His cause.
General Dorman didn’t blaspheme. But he did swear a new oath, his first since taking the officer’s oath at West Point. He swore to serve God’s purpose by eliminating this apostate from the White House for good.
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Moscow
Nikolai Ryzhkov read the intelligence reports from Cuba with disbelief. At first he thought the KGB was altering the product to appease the leader, trying to disguise a disaster. He cursed because he had tried to rid the KGB of this nonsense, so that he received real intelligence instead of politically messaged pap.
Ryzhkov did as he had done before in such situations, he had a very off-the-record phone conversation with President Francois Mitterrand. For several years now the two had been comparing notes on the products of their intelligence services. It had started during their joint operations against the PJO in Africa, when both the Soviet and French leaders had come to suspect the quality of the intelligence reports they were receiving. Over time they had developed the confidence to cross-check with each other, checking on their own services through the eyes of the other and all the while adding an extra element to the Moscow-Paris dynamic.
Mitterrand told him it was true. The American invasion of Cuba, at least on the first day, was turning into the worst military disaster since Mussolini’s ill-fated invasion of Greece.
The news did not hearten Ryzhkov, as many would have thought that it might. In these reports the Soviet leader saw a superpower in collapse, and worse a President who had clearly lost control of his own country. There would be reckoning for this, and Rumsfeld would pay a price.
What kept Ryzhkov up at night was that there seemed so few options, and that clearly the aftermath was going to be unpleasant.
For that reason – because Rumsfeld would now be grasping at any straw to survive – Ryzhkov re-doubled his resolve not to provoke the American over Cuba. The real question he had to ask himself was what he would do when Rumsfeld did fall.
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Oh Lord, just reading that speech from Rumsfeld was enough to make me know what was going to happen next was going to be bad, but Italy in WWII levels? This is an unmitigated disaster that Rumsfeld can't really hide, especially with his power base eroded. He's still got the nukes, but that just might be the breaking point. At this point, I'm just hoping Nicolas Cage makes it through OK.
"Commanding Armed Brother Hong Jue-ji looked out of his office window at the rag-tag troops decamping in his compound after six months of fighting in the jungles of Laos. Their appearance was a disgrace in soiled uniforms, their faces covered in dirt and sores. The haunted expressions on their faces cried out to Hong Jue-ji the sense of men who had walked through Hell and though their bodies might have come back, their spirits might never fully return. According to his reports six had been shot for madness just that morning. They joined the nine thousand of their comrades rotting in Laotian soil. Their equipment was a mess, some of it Korean War vintage. It looked like worn craftsmen’s tools which had seen too much use under bad conditions, and was held together with quick fixes and desperate prayers by equally desperate men who knew they would have to rely on it again for their lives.
This was the state of the once great People’s Liberation Army four years in to the reign of the Great Nephew."
America's Lesser Mao alright. If still in doubt, read on.
"The Lesser Mao, the nephew, when he was still lucid, liked to think of himself as a modern Emperor Chin, destroying all that had been the past – including the recent past – in order to create a new China and a new Chinese mass. His dreams were of a generation of conquest that would sweep across the Urals and into Europe itself. In the end, he could barely conquer an outhouse. He was not a saviour of China, but the curse of the Gods, brought down on us for some arrogance or folly."
This was the state of the once great People’s Liberation Army four years in to the reign of the Great Nephew."
America's Lesser Mao alright. If still in doubt, read on.
"The Lesser Mao, the nephew, when he was still lucid, liked to think of himself as a modern Emperor Chin, destroying all that had been the past – including the recent past – in order to create a new China and a new Chinese mass. His dreams were of a generation of conquest that would sweep across the Urals and into Europe itself. In the end, he could barely conquer an outhouse. He was not a saviour of China, but the curse of the Gods, brought down on us for some arrogance or folly."
I'm not sure whether to laugh or be concerned over the possible connotations of "Cuban holiday" that Castro has in mind. Beach party in, say, Varadero? The former. Incarceration deep in the jungle? The latter.
But broadcasting images of the American "POWs" having the time of their lives in the beach with the sounds of Guantanamera for ambience as a propaganda message to the USA? That must be some damn great propaganda value there.
But broadcasting images of the American "POWs" having the time of their lives in the beach with the sounds of Guantanamera for ambience as a propaganda message to the USA? That must be some damn great propaganda value there.
Given one of the scenes in the update, I suspect somewhere in Florida or Georgia is going to be Rumsfeld's Kwansgi...
teg
ThePest179
Banned
Doesn't America have preexisting troop commitments in China, Syria, Greece, and South Africa? If so, where did the (admittedly bare-bones) US Army formations for Cuba come from?
Also, Nicholas Cage as a Special Forces soldier.
Also, Nicholas Cage as a Special Forces soldier.
Time
I get the feeling one of those soldiers sent to Cuba will express his feelings to the White House in an explosive matter.
I get the feeling one of those soldiers sent to Cuba will express his feelings to the White House in an explosive matter.
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