17 August 2006

The End of the World

I heard from the President of Iran that the end of the world is coming soon, the 22nd of August, to be precise. I heard it from a man who is in a position to know, or at least in a position to tell the world about it.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and I go back a long way. He wouldn't know me on the street, but we both came to our respective lines of work in the fall of 1979. There is some controversy over where Mahmoud was one of the ringleaders of the hostage taking in Tehran, and he has denied it, but I like to think that he was there, righteous, and I was there, equally so, just offshore on my ship. We were making preparations for the rescue that went so badly wrong later.

I think we both had beards at the time, and maybe that accounts for the feeling of empathy.

He stayed right there in Tehran, and I went on to other things, but it was that event that formed the core of everything that happened later.

Knowing when the end of the world is going to be is exceptionally useful. I have had a store of dry foods put away for impending catastrophe since 9/11, but there are some items that are better fresh, like batteries.

I am unfamiliar with exactly how the End will go down, but I anticipate there will be media coverage. There are differing schools of thought on the timing. Some American fundamentalists consider that the event will play out as it is depicted in the Bible, on the plains of Armeggedon. They get pretty agitated every time there is a conflict in the vicinity, and you can't blame them.

They tend to rely on location, rather than timing. My old adversary Mahmoud goes that one better, saying that he is confident that the observance of the Prophet's epic Night Journey, on which he rode the winged horse Bourak to the furthest mosque from Mecca, and to heaven and hell. The location of the mosque is taken by experts to mean the one built on the foundations of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, within sight of the place of the Crucifixion.

That anniversary is next Tuesday. Coincidently, it is just a week before the Iranians have delayed responding to the UN proposals on their nuclear program.

Although I am an unbeliever, I am taking the President's declaration with gravity. He has told us he has medium range ballistic rockets and intends to get nuclear weapons to put on top of them.

For anyone who hasn't been paying attention, the President has had a pretty good run. Iranian support was essential to the bombing of the Marine Barracks, and of the US Embassy there where a friend of mine was killed. If you got down the list of violent acts down through the years since, what with the other embassies and airliners and ships and trade centers, it is pretty impressive. When you include the recent performance of the Iranian-sponsored Hezballah against the Israelis, it is an impressive list.

The Lebanon adventure was an excellent campaign against Israel's traditional strengths in armor and airpower. Using a bunker strategy with Iranian anti-tank rockets, it worked out pretty well, and it is too bad about all the civilians who got in the way. Some say it dispels the myth of Israeli invincibility. I'm not sure about that, but then I still think the Vietcong were beaten in their famous Tet Offensive. The question is really how the media plays it, and the spin on this latest savagery is going Hezballah's way.

But with the end of the world coming up, it is entirely possible that things could change. They don't call it asymmetric warfare for nothing, The term refers to the jujitsu fight of the relatively powerless against the mighty, using weakness as a strength, with the assumption that more powerful will be reluctant to use massive force. So far that it true, and I am thankful for that. We have lived with the notion of the End of the World since I was a kid, and the civil defense drills had us hide under our desks to practice response to the Russian attack.

At some point, it is just about raw power. That is why I pay attention to what President Ahmadinejad says, and it is why I am stocking up on batteries.

Vic Socotra

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