When War rums Roll

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Johnny Depp called me from France last night and asked what I knew about Osama bin Laden.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all. He is a ghost, for all I know. Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m terrified of him,” he said. “All of France is terrified. I was in the American Embassy today when they caught some terrorists trying to blow it up. I freaked out and rushed to the airport, but when I got there my flight was canceled. All flights to the U.S. were canceled. People went crazy with fear.”

“Join the club,” I told him. “Almost everybody went crazy over here.”

“Never mind that,” he said. “Who won the Jets-Colts game?”

“There was no game,” I said. “All sport was canceled in this country—even Monday Night Football.

“No!” he said. “That’s impossible! I’ve never known a Monday night without a game on TV. What is the stock market doing?”

“Nothing yet,” I said, “It’s been closed for six days.”

“Ye gods,” he muttered. “No stock market, no football—this is Serious.”

Just then I heard the lock on my gas tank rattling, so I rushed outside with a shotgun and fired both barrels into the darkness. Poachers! I thought. Blow their heads off! This is War! I fired another blast in the general direction of the gas pump, then I went inside to reload.

“Why are you shooting?” Anita screamed at me. “What are you shooting at?”

“The enemy,” I said gruffly. “He is down there stealing our gasoline.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “That tank has been empty since June. You probably killed a peacock.…”

At dawn I went down to the tank and found the gas hose shredded by birdshot and two peacocks dead.

So what? I thought. What is more important right now—my precious gasoline or the lives of some silly birds?

Indeed, but the New York Stock Exchange opens in thirteen minutes, so I have to get a grip on something solid. The Other Shoe is about to drop, and it may be extremely heavy. The time has come to be strong. The fat is in the fire. Who knows what will happen now?

Not me, buster. That’s why I live out here in the mountains with a flag on my porch and loud Wagner music blaring out of my speakers. I feel lucky and I have plenty of ammunition. That is God’s will, they say, and that is also why I shoot into the darkness at anything that moves. Sooner or later I will hit something Evil, and feel no Guilt. It might be Osama bin Laden. Who knows? And where is Adolf Hitler, now that we finally need him? It is bad business to go into War without a target.

In times like these, when the War drums and the bugles howl for blood, I think of Vince Lombardi and I wonder how he would handle it.… Good old Vince. He was a zealot for Victory at all costs, and his hunger for it was pure—or that’s what he said and what his legend tells us, but it is worth noting that his career won-lost record in the NFL is not even in the top ten.

No, that honor goes to George Seifert, who inherited a 49er dynasty at the top of its form and won a Super Bowl in his first year. His winning percentage in three downhill years was .75. Then he retired and went fishing. It was a good career move.

The San Francisco empire crumbled after that. It was a horrible process to watch. Bill Walsh went to Stanford, Joe Montana to Kansas City, and the owner was busted for trying to bribe the monumentally sleazy Governor of Louisiana—who argued successfully that while it may have been a crime to offer a bribe to him, it was not a crime for him to accept a bribe.

It was profoundly twisted legal reasoning, but it worked in Louisiana. Gov. Edwin Edwards walked on that one, saying cheerfully that the Law would never get him unless he were “caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.”

Good old Edwin. He was a barrel of laughs in his day, but he is in Federal prison now, for fraud—or at least that’s what they say, but who knows where he really is. The slippery little bugger might be hunkered down in a salt cave near Kabul—probably with Osama bin Laden, disguised as a teenage whore.

Whoops. This may not be the time for eerie humor. We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War may last for “a very long time.”

Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or ten years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history—which is no doubt true—but history also tells us that ten years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are 20 years old today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.

That is extremely heavy news and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice.… Sacrifice.… Sacrifice. That is the new buzzword in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.

Winston Churchill said, “The first casualty of War is always the Truth.” Churchill also said, “In wartime, the Truth is so precious that it should always be surrounded by a bodyguard of Lies.”

That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given, in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately planted Disinformation, and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it. That is what Churchill meant when he talked about Truth being the first casualty of War.

In this case, however, a next casualty was Football. All games were canceled last week. And that has Never happened to the NFL. Never. That gives us a hint about the Magnitude of this War. Terrorists don’t wear uniforms, and they play by inscrutable rules—the Rules of World War III, which has already begun.

So get ready for it, folks. Buckle up and watch your backs at all times. That is why they call it “Terrorism.”

—September 17, 2001