“Well, Mr. President, from now on you and the other leaders of your country can save your words. The time for them has passed. At last the Arab people of Palestine have the means of obtaining the justice that should have been theirs long ago, and they are going to get it, Mr. President, because if they do not, millions of your people are going to die to pay for the injustices that have been committed against them.”
The impact of Qaddafi’s words was heightened by the flat, monotonous voice in which he uttered them, a voice so devoid of passion it seemed to Eastman that the Libyan leader could have been a broker reading off stock quotations to a client, or a pilot going through his preflight checklist.
For Tamarkin and Jagerman, the precise, well-controlled voice was the final confirmation of something each had suspected: this man would not hesitate to carry out his threat.
“I cannot really believe, Mr. Qaddafi,” the President continued, “that a man like you. a man so proud of having carried out his revolution without bloodshed, a man of compassion and charity, can really be serious about employing this satanic device, this instrument of hell, to kill and maim millions and millions of innocent men and women.”
“Mr. President.” For the first time, there was a slight undercurrent of stridency in Qaddafi’s tone. “Why can’t you believe it?”
The President was staggered that the man could even ask the question. “It’s totally irrational, a wholly irresponsible act, sir. It’s—”
“Such as your act when you Americans dropped a similar weapon on the Japanese? Where was the compassion and charity in that? It’s all right to kill, burn, maim thousands of yellow Asiatics or Arabs or Africans, but not clean, white Americans. Is that it? Who created this satanic device, as you call it, in the first place? German Jews. Who are the only people who have ever used it? White Christian Americans. Who are the nations that stockpile these engines that can destroy the world? Your civilized, advanced, industrial societies. They are products of your world, Mr. President, not mine. And now it is we of the other world who are going to use them to right the injustices you have committed against us.”
The President was frantically scrutinizing his yellow legal pad. How inappropriate the words he had written there seemed to him now that he was actually confronted by this man. “Mr. Qaddafi.” The usually stern and confident baritone wavered. “No matter how strongly you may feel about the injustices done to the Palestinians, surely you will acknowledge that it’s not my innocent countrymen in New York who are responsible-the blacks in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Puerto Ricans, the millions of ordinary, hard-working men and women struggling there to make a living?”
“Oh yes, they are responsible, Mr. President,” came the reply. “All of them. Who is responsible for creating Israel in the first place? You Americans are. Who provided them with the arms they used in four wars against us? You Americans did. Whose money keeps them alive? Yours.”
“Do you suppose that, even if the Israelis should agree, temporarily, to withdraw, they would let you get away with this?” the President asked.
“What guarantees can you hope to have that this solution of yours can last?”
Clearly, the President’s question was one for which the Libyan was prepared. “Order your satellites that are observing my country now to study our desert along our eastern border from the seacoast to Al-Kufra. Perhaps you will find some new constructions there. My SCUD missiles are not like yours, Mr. President, they cannot travel around the world and strike a pin as yours can, but they can fly a thousand kilometers and find the coast of Israel. That is all they have to do. They are all the guarantee I will need when this is done.”
My God, the President thought, it’s even worse than I had imagined. He doodled frantically on his legal pad, hoping for some magic thought that would strike the responsive chord he had thus far been unable to find.
“Mr. Qaddafi, I have followed the progress of your revolution with genuine admiration. I know how well you’ve used your great oil wealth to bring your people material progress and prosperity.” He was groping and he knew it.
“Whatever your feelings are about New York, surely you don’t want to see your nation and your people destroyed in a thermonuclear holocaust?”
“My people are prepared to die for the cause if necessary, Mr. President, just as I am.” Again the Libyan had lapsed into English to shorten the exchange.
“Mao Tse-tung accomplished the greatest revolution in history with a minimum of bloodshed,” the President rejoined. That was a lie, but it reflected the psychiatrists’ advice. Invoke Mao, they had said, he sees himself as an Arabic Mao. “You have the same opportunity if you will be reasonable, remove your threat to New York and work with me toward a just and lasting Middle East peace.”
“Be reasonable, Mr. President?” came the answer. “Being reasonable to you means that Palestinian Arabs can be driven from their homes, can be forced to live in refugee camps for thirty years. Being reasonable means that Palestinian Arabs should stand by and watch the creeping annexation of their homeland by these Israeli settlements. Being reasonable means that we Arabs should let you Americans and your Israeli allies go on preventing the Palestinians from enjoying their God-given right to a homeland, a nation, while we continue selling you the oil to run your factories and your cars, to heat your homes. All that is reasonable. But when my brothers and I tell you, who are responsible for their misery, `Give us the justice you have denied us so long, or we will strike,’ suddenly that is unreasonable.
Suddenly, because we ask for justice, we are fanatics. You cannot understand just as you couldn’t understand when the Iranian people turned their wrath on you.”
As Qaddafi was speaking, Jagerman slipped a piece of paper up the table to the President. On it he had written the words “The greater-goal tactic?”
The phrase summarized a maneuver the Dutchman had suggested earlier: trying to persuade Qaddafi to drop his threat to New York by getting him to associate with the President on some specific plan to achieve an even greater goal than the one he was seeking. Escalate his ambitions into something beyond those he had defined. Unfortunately, no one in the National Security Council conference room had been able to suggest a practical way of applying the theory. Suddenly, as he looked at the note, an idea struck the President. It was so bold, so dramatic, it might capture Qaddafi’s imagination.
“Mr. Qaddafi,” he said, unable to conceal the excitement in his voice. “I have a proposal to make to you. Release the millions of my fellow Americans in New York from your dire menace and I will fly to Libya immediately, unescorted, in Air Force One. I, the President of the United States, will allow you to hold me as your hostage while together we work, hand in hand, to find a plan to give the world and your Palestinian brothers something even greater than what you have proposed-a real, durable peace, acceptable to all. We will do it together, and yours will be a glory greater than Saladdin’s, because it will have been won without bloodshed.”
The President’s wholly unexpected proposal stunned his advisers. Eastman was aghast. It was absolutely unthinkable: the President of the United States becoming the hostage of an Arab oil despot, locked up in some desert oasis like a commercial traveler kidnapped for ransom by the Barbary Coast pirates two hundred years ago.