Empire

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.

Recruitment

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.