Always a Possibility

42.

My flippant remark was partially true. Yes, we had orchestrated, by any measure, a successful sortie. Undermanned and overworked we were able to find, infiltrate and overpower a motivated militia, a terrorist group wanting to inflict as much pain and suffering on innocent civilians as possible in order to demonstrate their seriousness to violently engage with what they believed to be a soulless, evil and corrupt government. The seven members of Team Five, being the last line of defense between freedom and tyranny, had all courageously contributed to the effort. It is also true that we could have been better, and for that I assume full responsibility. 

It is my belief that wars, feuds, disputes, hostilities and aggressions should be fought in meeting rooms, behind closed doors, overseen by impartial judges and with tact and diplomacy replacing bazookas and bombs. Failing that I chuckle, a winner-take-all-sudden-death football game will act as tie-breaker. The stakes on the current nuclear-powered battlefield are simply too technologically impersonal. It is one thing to drop a nuke from a drone and another altogether to prod a blade into a man’s gut. That there exists elite tactical units designed to employ guile and stealth vice flash and bang as a first option, most always satisfies my relentless search for meaning. It is, I admit, why I do what I do, and we are who we are. 

When the occasional dark night of the soul questions the morality or ethical political appropriateness of our work, I am usually able to compromise the majority of the good with the minority of the not-so-good. If there was no one to do what we do, our freedom and our country would be something talked about and remembered in movies or in books checked out from the ever-shrinking library instead of a (semi) functioning form of living government. The flip side is of course a country endlessly at war, sending the poor to fight for political power and the resources of foreign countries. This is the paradox we all face. It is the fact that we are loyal patriots acting for the good of the country instead of simply hired mercenary thugs killing at the behest of the highest bidding corporation. The former have faces while the latter wear masks. 

When Julie had finished the debrief by asking if there was anything that I personally could have done better, this is the backstory, my consternation and my struggle. Because for every victory that we earn, we lose a small bit of our humanity. For every terrorist operation that we foil, those slain in the process, paying the ultimate price of war with their lives, are seen by thousands of others as martyrs. They die as heroes to their countrymen at our bloody hands, guns still smoking of greed and fear. This will certainly be far from the last act of terrorism that we will face. The chances are very good that the cells that we eradicated have already been re-staffed and are working on another plan, perhaps one taking the lessons from the defeat to add to their collective acumen and succeed where this plot had failed. The fine line between the failure of The Axis plan and the potential success of the next attack is microscopic. It could happen tomorrow. There is the possibility that the plan we ended, all our work, luck and success in its defeat was itself a diversion, with the real plan now being initiated as we head home to rest and recover, egos bulging in the afterglow of our great victory over evil. 

This is what I meant to imply with my remark. I wonder if Julie got it. I wonder if she will be able to diplomatically meld it into her report to illustrate the paradox and provide a return on our counter-terror investment.  

“Is there anything that you personally could have done better?” 

Yes, I re-think, I could have out-smarted them and known that this is always a possibility.