In the Kurdish language, ‘Peshmerga’ means ‘a warrior who faces death.’ I asked a group of the Peshmerga soldiers what they thought of the American paratroopers. They looked at each other, and then nodded and smiled. One answered, ‘They are Peshmerga. They are warriors who face death.’
This is Richard Engel reporting from the Azwya Valley in the Republic of Kurdistan for NBC News.”
Marilyn said, “Wow! Did you know about that?” and then she looked over at me. “Honey! What’s wrong?”
I was sitting there in my recliner, tears streaming down my face, listening in horror to the story. Could I change nothing!? I had killed George Bush and 3,200 innocent people to become President, so that I could bring some peace and sanity to the White House, to silence the relentless beat of the war drums. It all meant nothing! Here I was, just delaying the inevitable, with a war on my hands that I had never wanted. Now I had men dying because they were my ‘personal paratrooper army who had never retreated or been defeated!’ What circle of Hell had I descended into? The most ridiculous and horrendous part? This fresh ‘glory’ would have teenage boys lining up at recruiting stations across the nation, eager to replace those paratroopers I had killed off.
“Carl, what’s wrong?”
I screamed incoherently and threw my glass across the room, where it hit a bookcase and fell to the carpet without breaking. I stood and stalked over to the wet bar where a bottle of Canadian Mist was waiting, and poured myself a stiff couple of shots of whiskey. I drank that down straight, but that didn’t help, and I knocked that to the side.
Marilyn came over and wrapped her arms around me, and held on. “Carl, what is it? What’s wrong!?”
I wanted to push her away, but she held on to me. “I never wanted this! I NEVER WANTED ANY OF THIS! I don’t want men to die because of me! Why is it that I kill so many people!?” I freed myself from her and grabbed another glass, and filled that with the whiskey. I drank some down, and tried to remember a decent quote about drinking, but nothing was coming clear.
Marilyn was scared as she sat next to me, but she didn’t try to stop me. I’ve never hit my wife. I’ve never hit any woman. I would have probably hit her if she tried to make me stop drinking. I just sat there at the bar and drank that bottle of whiskey.
I just wanted the killing to stop. How many Americans had I killed now? How many thousands of Americans had died because I decided they should die? How many American families had I destroyed? I didn’t care about other countries. They had their own leaders who could worry about them. I only cared about the Americans I had killed over the years. How many were there? How many fathers or mothers, sons or daughters, brothers or sisters?
I woke up late the next morning in a recliner in the living room, with Marilyn sitting next to me. My head was pounding medium bad, but the worst was the feeling that an army had marched through my mouth. My tongue and teeth felt gummy and stale. I couldn’t remember the last time I had drunk enough to warrant a hangover, but it was probably in college. They don’t get better with age. I looked over at Marilyn, and she eyed me curiously.
“Feel like talking?” she asked.
“I feel like taking a shower,” I answered.
“Can you do that without a drink?”
I tried to give her a witheringly superior look but I don’t think it worked. “I’ve never really understood that whole hair of the dog routine.” I tried to get out of the recliner and had to rock it back and forth a couple of times to build up the momentum needed. “I am getting too damn old for this shit.”
“It helps if you don’t sleep in a chair,” she answered.
I gave her another look, and then headed to the bathroom. “What time is it?”
“I called down and said you weren’t feeling good, but would probably be down by lunch.”
“Yeah.”
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth and downed half a bottle of Advil. I hoped I didn’t have any photo ops today, because my eyes were so bloodshot as to need a redeye correction. I took a long shower and then shaved and got dressed, and had a few more Advils. I was actually feeling almost human, at least except for the eyes, by the time I was dressed.
Marilyn was waiting for me in the living room. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t ever want to see you like that again, Carl. It scares me to see you like that.”
I nodded. “I know. Sorry about that. Sometimes…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I kept thinking about the men who had died in my name.
“Carl, you didn’t kill those men. Saddam Hussein, he killed them, not you,” she told me.
“You don’t understand. I sent them there, my undefeatable personal army.”
Marilyn cut me off. “BULLSHIT! That’s so much BULLSHIT and you know it! They didn’t die for you! They died for each other! You told me that once, remember? I asked you when you were in the Army if you would die for a flag, and you told me that nobody died for a flag. They died for the guy next to them. Do not give me BULLSHIT!”
“You don’t…”
“Understand? I understand enough! I know you, Carl Buckman! I know you better than you do! If it had been you on that battlefield, it would have been you saying and doing those things. This is not about you! Don’t take this from those men!” she responded hotly.
I shrugged. I gave her a hug and muttered an apology, and then headed down to my office. Several people asked if I was feeling better, and if anybody saw my eyes, they kept their mouths shut.
I deliberately avoided discussing the Kurdish War with anybody today, and stayed away from the Situation Room that night. I didn’t need Marilyn any more pissed at me than she already was. I kept it on a back burner for a few days, as more troops reached the front, and more damage was done to the Iraqis. By the end of the second week, we began getting some feelers from the Iraqis by way of an envoy to the Swiss and from the Swiss to the Saudis. Hussein might be willing to stop if we would leave Iraqi soil and allow him to enter into talks with the Kurds. There were a few of us in the room when Condi Rice told us that, and we all scratched our heads. John McCain was back in the country, and he said it best. “Let me get this straight. They want us to leave so they can declare victory?”
She tossed the note on the table and replied, “Essentially.”
“He’s nuts!”
Condi looked at me, and I simply added, “What he said.”
She gave a wry smile and shrugged. “If I don’t pass this along, I am not doing my job.”
“Why don’t we send a reply, that if the Iraqis are willing to send us Saddam Hussein’s head in a box we’ll go home?” At that, I looked over at General Pace. “Can we drop leaflets over Iraq?”
He smiled. “Yes. We can also simply broadcast that over the radio and television airwaves.”
“Okay, whatever. Why don’t we do that? If we aren’t already doing it, let’s post a bounty on the man’s head. We’ll stop when they send us his head. They can keep the leftovers.”
“You don’t really want his head, do you, Mister President?” asked Condi.
I grinned back at her. “Sure, why not? We can stick it on a pike at the front gate, and march the diplomatic corps past it. Maybe they would get the message.” She looked horrified at the thought. “No? Okay, that might be a bit much. Maybe we can mount it over the main gate at Fort Bragg?” The military guys and anybody else with a military background snickered at the thought. “Seriously, though, we need to make sure we get the message out that the best way to end this is by getting rid of that jackass in Baghdad. I don’t care who takes over, but I am not interested in stopping until the Hussein problem is settled once and for all.”