Has Adolph Been Reading Tom Clancy?

You may be surprised to learn I haven't read that many Tom Clancy novels.  I've read Red Storm Rising and I've seen all the ones that have made it to the big screen.  But there is another that has never been movie-ized but whose 1,384 pages I devoured in two closely proximate sittings, for reasons that anybody else who has read Executive Orders should instantly recognize: 

The American political situation takes a disturbing turn as the President, Congress, and Supreme Court are obliterated when a Japanese terrorist [crashes] a 747 [into] the Capitol [during a State of the Union address]. Meanwhile the Iranians are unleashing an Ebola virus threat on the country. Jack Ryan, [former] CIA agent, is cast in the middle of this maelstrom. Because of a recent sex scandal, Ryan was appointed vice president, a slot he doesn't hold for long when he lands in the Chief Executive's chair. He goes after the Iranians and then tries to piece together the country and his life the only way he knows how--with a fury that we've grown accustomed to in Clancy's intricate, detailed, and accurate stories of warfare and intrigue.

Clancy wrote Debt of Honor, at the end of which this eerily 9/11-esque suicide national decapitation strike takes place, in 1994.  That's what understandably grabbed my attention, though I opted for EO instead because I wanted to see the scope and breadth of the aftermath.

As the nation tries to recover from the shock of having its entire government wiped out (except for bewildered new president Jack Ryan, of course, whose survival is sufficiently miraculous that it's better to just accept it as a given and move on), the Iranians decide to take advantage of the situation.  First they conquer Iraq (by assassinating Saddam Hussein, but the strategic ambition is nonetheless also unmistakably similar) with the additional objective of using the combined Iranian-Iraqi "Army of God" to overrun Saudi Arabia and hold the economies of the West hostage by seizing control of half or more of the world's oil supplies.  In order to keep the Americans from intervening, they use the fortuitous mutation of a strain of the ebola virus that has jumped from African monkeys to the local human population to devise a biological weapon which they promptly use to attack the United States.

That came instantly to my mind when I stumbled across this story:

Hundreds of endangered monkeys are being taken from the African bush and sent to a “secretive” laboratory in Iran for scientific experiments.

An undercover inquiry by the Sunday Times has revealed that wild monkeys, which are banned from experiments in Britain, are being freely supplied in large numbers to laboratories in other parts of the world. All will undergo invasive and maybe painful experiments leading ultimately to their death.

One Tanzanian dealer, Nazir Manji, who runs African Primates, an animal-supplying company based in Dar es Salaam, said that in recent years he had been selling up to 4,000 vervet monkeys a year to laboratories, charging about £60 each.... 

Manji said scientists at the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute in Iran had bought 215 vervet monkeys from him this year but he had become suspicious about their true motive, although he was still trading with them. They had “spent a lot of money” on getting the monkeys, even sending over scientists to check on each consignment.

“Iran is very secretive,” said Manji, who has been exporting monkeys for 22 years. “They said it [the monkeys] was for ‘our country’, for vaccine. [They said] ‘We don’t buy vaccine from anywhere; we prepare our own vaccine’.

“But I think they use it for something else. You know why? Because they don’t go on kilos. Iran wants [monkeys weighing] 1.5kg to 2.5kg, [but] 1.5kg for vaccine is not possible.”

Rubibira indicated that finding out what the Iranians wanted the monkeys for would be difficult. “They cannot say, you know. They are secretive. They wouldn’t tell the truth.”

The revelation will fuel speculation that the monkeys may be used for research involving biological weapons. Primates are typically used by scientists wishing to test both the effectiveness of germ warfare agents and defences against them.

The Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, which has its headquarters in Karaj, near Tehran, has been accused in the past by an Iranian opposition group of conducting biological weapons testing.

According to US intelligence, the pharmaceutical industry in Iran has long been used as a cover for developing a germ warfare capability.

In 2005 the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Iran “continued to seek dual-use biotechnology materials, equipment and expertise that are consistent with its growing legitimate biotechnology industry but could benefit Tehran’s assessed probable BW [biological weapons] programme”. Earlier this year it reiterated this.

The Iranian ebola attack in Executive Orders kills three thousand American civilians (another 9/11-like coincidence) but does far more disproportionate damage to the nation's economy and civilian morale through mass panic, quarantines, and the resulting limitations on transportation of food, supplies, and medicines.  These difficulties are magnified by the absence of a functioning government aside from the requisite heroic leadership of President Ryan, who morphs eventually from Admiral Stockdale clone to avenging angel when the convenient trail of metaphorical bread crumbs leads right back to Tehran, orders a surgical air strike that takes out the Iranian Supreme Leader, and delivers a "surrender immediately and unconditionally or we'll cleanse one end of your country to the other with holy nuclear fire" ultimatum.  This after effortlessly wiping the "Army of God" off the map with a conventional force a fraction of its size.

Doesn't require a great deal of credulity to intuit the mullahgarchy seeking a real-life equivalent biological capability to compliment their nuclear ambitions.  One can easily see them nuking Israel but opting for cold plague against us.  Far less obvious, far less spectacular, far less traceable, and far more strategically debilitating - particularly if the president calling the shots is (nick)named "Hussein," who would be paralyzed from the git-go and allow the country to grind to a halt and inexorably disintegrate.  And, subsequently, who knows?  Maybe they would follow that up with a nuclear attack to finish the job the ebola (or whatever) started.

To me it simply redundantly underscores the critical necessity of invading Iran and crushing the Islamic regime while that goal can still be attained conventionally, and before the mullahs can seize the strategic initiative for themselves with weapons not so conventional.  The "madness" has always been procrastinating in favor of time-wasting diplomatic futility, not decisive action in advance of a far more awful alternative.

Alas, history is repeating itself, as the twenty-first century Neville Chamberlains and Lord Halifaxes and Eduard Daladiers cringe their countries into an atomic conflagration that could be so easily averted.  Only this time, instead of a Winston Churchill, or God help us, a Jack Ryan to lead us out of the wilderness, we'll be stuck with Barack Obama to dig our graves.

At least, though, the government will pay for the shovels - right?