The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'Wow,' a morning-show anchor observed off-mike. 'I'm beginning to think this
circus is serious.'
But coverage didn't stop there, of course. In the interest of fairness, balance,
controversy, a proper understanding of events, and selling commercials, the TV
coverage included the head of a Jewish paramilitary group who vociferously
recalled Ferdinand and Isabella's expulsion of the Jews from Iberia, the czar's
Black Hundreds, and, naturally, Hitler's Holocaust – which he emphasized further
because of German reunification – and concluded that Jews were fools to trust
anyone at all except the weapons in their own strong hands. From Qum, the
Ayatolla Daryaei, the religious leader of Iran and long an enemy of everything
Americans did, railed against all unbelievers, consigning each and every one to
his personal version of hell, but translation made understanding difficult for
American viewers, and his grandiloquent ranting was cut short. A self-styled
'Charismatic Christian' from the American South got the most air time. After
first denouncing Roman Catholicism as the quintessential Anti-Christ, he
repeated his renowned claim that God didn't even hear the prayers of the Jews,
much less the infidel Muslims, whom he called Mohammedans as an unnecessary
further insult.
But somehow those demagogues were ignored – more correctly, their views were.
The TV networks received thousands of angry calls that such bigots were given
air time at all. This delighted the TV executives, of course. It meant that
people would return to the same show seeking further outrage. The American bigot
immediately noticed a dip in his contribution envelopes. B'nai B'rith raced to
condemn the off-the-reservation rabbi. The leader of the League of Islamic
Nations, himself a distinguished cleric, denounced the radical imam as a heretic
against the words of the Prophet, whom he quoted at length to make his point.
The TV networks provided all of the countervailing commentary also, thus showing
balance enough to pacify some viewers and enrage others.
Within a day, one newspaper column noted that the thousands of correspondents
attending the conference had taken to calling it the Peace Bowl, in recognition
of the circular configuration of the Piazza San Pietro. The more observant
realized that this was evidence of the strain on reporters with a story to cover
but nothing to report. Security at the conference was hermetically tight. Those
participants who came and went were carried about by military aircraft via
military air bases. Reporters and cameramen with their long lenses were kept as
far from the action as possible, and for the most part travel was accomplished
in darkness. The Swiss Guards of the Vatican, outfitted though they were in
Renaissance jumpsuits, let not a mouse pass by their lines, and perversely when
something significant did happen – the Swiss Defense Minister discreetly entered
a remote doorway – no one noticed.
Polling information in numerous countries showed uniform hope that this would be
the one. A world tired of discord and riding a euphoric wave of relief at recent
changes in East–West relations somehow sensed that it was. Commentators warned
that there had been no harder issue in recent history, but people the world over
prayed in a hundred languages and a million churches for an end to this last and
most dangerous dispute on the planet. To their credit, the TV networks reported
that, too.