Another lovely job of the Army. In that case, the rules of engagement were somewhat reduced.
The Army had long experience of mob control, though, if not in the U.S. And commanders tended to negotiate rather than open fire. The workers, many of which had a certain respect for the military, tended to talk things out as well.
(This, by the way, was slightly different than the case of the Long Beach Oil Terminal. In that case, the strikers were led by a very hard-core union group that stated that it had "seized the means of production for the people" and was less than willing to negotiate. Actually, they didn't want to negotiate, they simply had demands that had to be met or "the oil terminal would be destroyed." When President Warrick dithered the commander of SOCOM ordered Delta to deal with the situation. Delta dealt. The remaining strikers, with ten dead ringleaders being carried out by their heels, went back to work. The SOCOM commander was court-martialed as was the group commander who carried out the mission. Delta got gutted. But oil flowed. Ex-General Pennington is being bruited for the next secretary of Defense. Got my vote.)
Look, civilian control of the military is a very important thing. If the military doesn't obey their civilian commanders, sooner or later you get Generalissimo Jones trying to run things and making things worse. We knew that. That bedrock belief went all the way back to George Washington who, when some of his officers wanted to mutiny, ordered them to swear an oath to always obey the orders of the government, no matter how bad they seemed. It was the foundation of The Society of Cincinnatus. I'm not a member since I'm not descended from any of them. The S-4 in Iran was, but that doesn't reduce the importance of the concept.
But we were being told to do things that were clearly unconstitutional, and the Constitution is what we swear an oath to not the President, while simultaneously being told to do things that were suicidal.
Did we ever slip control, totally? No. But at first at lower levels then at higher and higher we started to ignore The Bitch. When told to do something clearly illogical, we tended to tune it out and do something more logical. Or at least survivable. We got people fed when we had the food. We distributed to groups we trusted. We were color blind on that but not culture blind and sure as hell not tactically blind.
On an actual functional level, we implemented the original Plan, even if we didn't realize it at the time.
We reacted, adapted and overcame.
Which, finally, leads to "let's talk about me."
BOOK TWO
THE LAST CENTURIONS
Chapter One
Stick, Shit End, One Each
So there I was, no shit . . .
January we got our warning on H5N1. February, late, we got our innoculations. By then there were more reports around and Patient Zero in Chicago. March was when the Plague hit in earnest in the States.
We were sitting in Fars Province as things went from bad to worse in Iran. It didn't take the Plague hitting (it hadn't, really, yet) to screw things up in Iran. All it took was Iranians.
Look, Iranians are, by and large, good people. I'm not talking about the jihadi assholes, obviously. I'm talking about your regular low to middle class Iranian. They like to talk, they like to share green tea. They're even reasonably hard workers (unlike the fucking Arabs).
But they're also massively screwed up. There's a bunch of reasons, but I can easily detail two.
One: They're arrogant as fuck. Look, ever seen a movie from pre-Plague called The 300? Bunch of stupid Greeks hold a pass against the whole Persian army. (That would be Iranian, by the way.) Three hundred (actually, more like a thousand with battle squires and allies) against two hundred thousand. Go with the thousand number; they're still outnumbered two hundred to one.
Worse, back then Persia (Iran) was The big superpower. Persian emperors spotted a place they liked, invaded and took it over. They were too large and powerful not to be able to take anything they wanted.
Back then, Persia was The Thing.
(Of course, not too long later historically they were subjects of the Greeks, but I'm not writing a book about the ascent of democracy and why shock infantry always wins over alternatives.)
Iran, even in pre-Plague days, was a third class power.
First Class powers were ones that if they got really busy were going to trash the shit out of any non-First Class opponents. Basically, just pre-Plague, that came down to the U.S. and China. The U.S. because we had, hands down, the best military in the world and we were "the world's economic turbine." China because it was just so fucking big and so was its army. They might not have been able to trash us, (see Greeks vs. Persians; size does not always matter) but if they got it into their heads to invade, say, Cambodia, Cambodia might as well roll. And they were pretty powerful economically as well.
Second class were places like Japan and Western Europe. They had large economies, they were world players and they had small but functional militaries. (Some very good. Australia comes to mind. Then there's the French. It varied.) Throw "academia" and "artists" into this if you wish. Military and economic were usually followed by more or less equal values of the other.
Third class were countries that had some economic power (mostly oil), some semblance of a real economy and were regional powerhouses. They were often big frogs in very little ponds. Brazil, South Africa and Iran all come to mind. Russia might have been second class, might have been third. Not worth debate.
The problem is, Iranians just could not get over the fact that they used to be the big frog in any pond. They still thought they were. And because of that, they thought they knew everything. How could some upstart from a country only two hundred years old know how to do something better than they did?
Well, maybe because the world's changed and we're not still doing it the way that Xerxes wanted it done.
The second problem with Iranians might be an effect of Islam (it's certainly consistent in most Islamic countries) or it might have been something that was a long-term meme. Don't know. Read well researched arguments for both. Anyway, the second problem was they were fatalists.
Look, anybody who has ever been in heavy fire and survived mentally is somewhat fatalistic. "I'm alive so far but if there's a bullet with my name on it, oh, well . . ."
But Persians raise this to high art. The term is "In'sh'allah." "It is as Allah wills."
Bus about to fall off a road in the mountains? "It is as Allah Wills." Circuit board not precisely put in place. "It will work if Allah wills." Foundation for a building made out of quicksand? "It will stay up if Allah wills." In'sh'Allah.
Need a group of workers at a certain place at a certain time? "They will be here if Allah Wills."
For a Midwestern farm boy and military officer, dealing with In'sh'Allah was less than pleasant.
Kipling wrote about it once, talking about people who are not like that: