Acts of War

Agreed,' said Vanzandt.

'So we've got to try and contain this before the Syrians and Turks go at it,' said the President. 'Av, what are the chances that the Turks will enter Syria to hunt the bombers?'

'Well, Ankara is pretty upset,' Lincoln said, 'but I don't think they'll go over the border. At least, not in force.'

'Why not?' said Vanzandt. 'They've ignored national sovereignty before. In 1996 they mounted some pretty bloody cross-border air attacks on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq.'

'We've always believed that Turkey was acting with Iraqi approval in that case,' said CIA Director Rachlin. 'Since the U.S. wouldn't let Saddam attack the Kurds, he let the Turks do it.'

'Anyway,' said Lincoln, 'there's another reason the Turks are wary of going against Syria. Back in 1987, Turkey discovered that Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish guerrilla leader, was living in Damascus. He was sitting in his apartment and ordering attacks on villages in Turkey. Ankara asked Damascus to let a strike team in so they could take him. All Syria had to do was stay out of the way. But Syria didn't want to stir things up with the Syrian Kurds, so they refused. The Turks came very close to ordering a strike team into Damascus.'

'Why didn't they?' the President asked.

'They were afraid that Syria had tipped Ocalan off,'' Lincoln said. 'The Turks didn't want to raid the building and not find him there. It would have been politically embarrassing, to say the least.'

'I'd say that this dam blast is a helluva lot more provocative than what was happening in 1987,' Vanzandt remarked.

'It is,' said Lincoln, 'but the problem is the same. What if it turns out that Turkish Kurds did the hands-on work, not the Syrian Kurds? Turkey attacks Syria looking for enemies there, and it turns out their own Kurds were responsible. Syria's stock rises in the international forum and Turkey's plummets. Turkey won't risk that kind of an ambush.'

'You've got to remember, Mr. President,' said Defense Secretary Colon, 'this explosion hurts Damascus as much as it does Ankara. My feeling is that it's the unified Kurds who have turned up the heat. They're trying to trigger a war between Turkey and Syria by forcing Turkey to enter Syria looking for terrorists. And the Kurds will keep applying pressure until they get a major incursion.'

'Why?' asked the President. 'Because they think they'll get a homeland as part of the peace process?'

Colon and Lincoln both nodded.

Hood was looking up at one of the maps. 'I don't understand,' he said. 'What does Syria gain by preventing Turkey from finding Kurdish terrorists? Damascus has got to ensure the security of their other water sources, especially the Orontes River in the west. It looks like it comes right through Turkey into Syria and Lebanon.'

'It does,' said Lincoln.

'So if Turkey wants to stop the Kurds,' Hood went on, 'and Syria needs to stop the Kurds, why won't they join forces? This isn't like the Ocalan affair. Syria doesn't risk stirring up the Kurds. It looks like they're already on the warpath.'

'Syria can't join forces with Turkey,' said Vanzandt, 'because of the Turkish military cooperation pact with Israel. Syria would sooner support Kurdish political goals to stop them from blowing up other dams rather than join the Turks and eradicate the Kurds.'

'Syria would back one enemy rather than support the friend of another enemy,' Colon said. 'That's Middle Eastern politics for you.'

'But Syria would have to give up some of its own land to give the Kurds a homeland,' the President said.

'Ah, but would they?' asked Av Lincoln. 'Suppose the Kurds eventually get what they want, a homeland straddling parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Do you think for a moment that Syria will stay out of there? They don't play by any rules. They'll use terrorism to exert de facto control over what used to be their territory, and also absorb some of the former Turkish lands into Greater Syria. That's exactly what they've done with Lebanon.'

'General Vanzandt, gentlemen,' the President said, 'we've got to find some way of guaranteeing the security of those other water sources and also of helping the Turks find the terrorists. What are your suggestions?'

'Larry and Paul, we can talk about internal operations against the terrorists later,' said General Vanzandt. 'Present the President with some suggestions.'

Hood and Rachlin both nodded.

'As for the water,' Vanzandt went on, 'if we move the Eisenhower Carrier Battle Group from Naples to the eastern Mediterranean, we can watch the Orontes while at the same time keeping the seaways secure for Turkish exports. We want to make sure the Greeks don't jump into this.'

'That leaves everyone happy,' said Steve Burkow, 'unless the Syrians suddenly decide in their paranoid way that this is all a United States plot to cut off their water supply. Which, if you ask me, wouldn't be the world's worst idea. That would put Damascus out of the terrorism business right quick.'

'And kill how many innocent people?' Lincoln asked.

'Not many more than Syrian-backed terrorists will kill worldwide over the next few years,' Burkow replied. He typed his password on the computer and brought up a file. 'We were talking about Sheik al-Awdah before,' Burkow said as he looked at the screen. 'In yesterday's radio speech from Palmyra, Syria, he said, 'We call upon God Almighty to destroy the American economy and society, to transform its states into nations and turn them against one another. To turn its brothers against one another as penance for infidelic evil.' Now, to my ears that's a declaration of war. You know how many sickeroos out there are going to hear this and try to make that happen?'

'That doesn't justify blind, preventative strikes,' the President pointed out. 'We aren't terrorists.'

'I know that, sir,' Burkow said. 'But I'm tired of playing by rules that no one else in the world seems to acknowledge. We pour tens of billions of dollars into the Chinese economy and they use that money to develop and sell military nuclear technology to terrorists. Why do we allow it? Because we don't want American businesses to suffer by being shut out of China—'

'The issue isn't China,' Lincoln said.

'The issue is a chronic goddamn double standard,' Burkow shot back. 'We look the other way when Iran ships weapons to Muslim terrorists around the world. Why? Because some of those terrorists are bombing other countries. In a perverse way, that gives us allies in the fight against terrorism. We don't have to endure all kinds of criticism for defending ourselves if other nations are defending themselves too. All I'm saying is we've got an opportunity here to hold Syria's feet to the fire. If we cut off their water, we choke their economy. We do that and Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist camps in Syria and even our Kurdish terrorists get squeezed.'

'Kill the body and you kill the disease,' Lincoln replied. 'Come on, Steve,'

'You also keep the disease from spreading to other bodies,' Burkow answered. 'If we were to make an object lesson of Syria, I guarantee you Iran and Iraq and Libya would pull in their claws and count their blessings.'

'Or redouble their efforts to destroy us,' Lincoln said.

'If they did,' Burkow replied, 'we would turn Tehran and Baghdad and Tripoli into craters wide enough to be photographed from space.'

There was a short, uncomfortable silence. Visions of Dr. Strangelove flashed through Hood's mind.

'What if we were to turn that around?' Lincoln asked. 'What if we were to hold out a helping hand instead of a fist?'

'What kind of hand?' the President asked.

'What would really get Syria's attention isn't just a flow of water but a flow of money,' said Lincoln 'Their economy is in the gutter. They're turning out roughly the same amount of goods as they were fifteen years ago when the population was twenty-five percent smaller. They've gotten mired in an unsuccessful attempt to match Israel's military strength, there's been a big falloff in Arab aid, and they've got insufficient foreign exchange earnings to buy what they need to spur industry and agriculture. They have nearly six billion dollars in external debt.'

'My heart grieves,' Burkow said. 'Seems to me they've got enough money to underwrite terrorism.'

'Largely because that's the only kind of pressure they can apply on rich nations,' Lincoln said. 'Suppose we give Syria the carrot before they sponsor further acts of terrorism. Specifically, we give them U.S. guaranteed credit at the Import Export Bank.'

'We can't do that!' Burkow shouted. 'For one thing, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have