Novelist and Spinspeak Lexicographer James Baar in a new short story,"In the Gulf," published by Amazon.com/Shorts tells how an Admiral, commander of a huge task force ready for a preemptive nuclear strike against Islamofascist Iran, argues with his Catholic Dominican chaplain about mortal sin, just war, evil, free will and God's plan; asks whether a god of peace can be a god of war, and finds answers in the two minutes before the order to launch.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) August 15, 2007 -- Does the West have to nuke out Islamofacist Iran? And what would God say about that?
A frustrated four-star American admiral commanding four carrier battle groups confronts those questions in James Baar's latest tipping point short story, In the Gulf, published online by Amazon/Shorts.
At 35,000 feet the long blue sweep from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean beyond looks like a U.S. Navy parking lot. Officers aboard Fleet Ballistic Missile submarines hidden beneath the surface insert top secret targeting cards into guidance systems. Crews on four 1000-foot nuclear carriers load first launch jets on more than a dozen catapults.
Preemptive nuclear war is on the table again for the third time in two months as the Admiral, an Annapolis fighter pilot, and his Commander Catholic chaplain, a Dominican scholar and boyhood friend, pause on a narrow cusp of world history to argue about honor, mortal sin, evolution, evil, free will and the numerous comforts of sloth.
Baar, whose last novel was Ultimate Severance, calls In the Gulf a companion piece to one of his previous tipping point Amazon Shorts, Somewhere on the Elbe. That story rings changes on an American Army officer's 50-year old guilt for not preventing the Cold War.
Dining In the Gulf on roast chicken in the Admiral's wood-paneled quarters, the Commander says "the only rationale that the Church recognizes for a just war is when all other means have been exhausted."
He asks: "How can a Christian believer, how can God approve of arbitrarily destroying millions of Iranians? Do you think you have some special assignment from Heaven?"
"What if while we dither, the Iranians wipe out Israel and then hold a wimpy world at bay with nuclear missiles?" the Admiral replies. "Or they take out just one of our major cities and then say, 'let's talk.' Could that possibly be God's plan? The Iranians, the mullahs, say it is."
Citing 1500 years of what he considers barbaric Islamic aggression against the West, the Admiral says: "You ask what would I say to God after a preemptive strike...What do our leaders say to God if they let us be attacked when they could have prevented it? Has God removed suicide from the list of mortal sins?"
Two days later, international talks collapse, Washington orders a preemptive strike, and in the two minutes before launch the Admiral finds himself answering all questions.
Amazon/Shorts offers online "never before seen short works from a wide variety of well-known authors available only on amazon.com" - all available for immediate downloading for .49 cents each.
Baar's latest novel, Ultimate Severance, describes an Enroned 21st Century world awash in spinspeak - a world peopled by flim-flam artists on and off Wall Street, imperial CEO's, smarmy pols, five-star spinmeisters, entrepreneurial mobsters and assorted mountebanks. Ironically, in the light of In the Gulf, he makes clear that this "return to normalcy" was made possible by the "quite by accident" launching from a submarine of a spray of new "lite'n kleen" missiles carrying nuclear warheads to Syria and Iran.
Baar is also the author of Spinspeak II: The Dictionary of Language Pollution and an earlier business novel, The Great Free Enterprise Gambit. He is editor of the Spinspeak Letter weblog and is nearing completion of a new book with Donald E. Creamer on crisis in the global ad agency business from its Golden Age to its current chaos, But Wait! There's More! (maybe). Creamer was CEO/founder of Creamer/HBM, at one time the world's seventh largest ad agency.
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