thwarting terrorism. He says they would be acting with deceit. I suppose he feels we should give ourselves up to prayer and leave the fate of terrorists to God and judgment day.
Aly fol owed him outside to the garden. In one corner, a fountain made the kind of music that only moving water can. They looked out over a bed of azalea bushes, anxious to flower. When the moment seemed right, Aly volunteered, “I suppose I should have told you a little more about his values in such areas. The imam believes in turning the other cheek and leaving retribution to the Almighty. It’s real y more of a Christian thing. As much as I respect and admire our good friend, I don’t personal y subscribe to that view. I believe, as you do, that we have to rely on secular law for the punishment of evil. And I wil tel you this; there are very few Muslims who feel as Mohammed does.”
They returned inside, and Alan sank into a low soft couch. Aly curled up in the loveseat across from him. The look she saw on his face now was as inquisitive as it was serious, and she waited patiently for his response.
“Let me ask you this,” he said eventual y. “As a Muslim, do you have any qualms about what we plan to do?”
“None that I can think of, not given what you’ve told me,” Aly answered.
“Espionage, at least the way you describe it, is not sinful in my opinion, Alan. It is simply the gathering of facts identifying the guilty and exonerating the innocent. As long as this so-cal ed espionage is held apart from punishment, I have no problems with it. Fair enough?”
Alan sat up. He leaned forward. “And yet you find fault with our invasion of Iraq,”
he reminded her. “Which was based on what we thought was credible information gathered for the most part through various means of espionage including reports from foreign intel igence agencies.
“You’re right. I find fault with it. The information you’re talking about turned out to be garbage, Alan. There were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and no evidence to suggest there ever were. We were misled. We preemptively struck another country which posed no threat to us, and now four mil ion Iraqis have been displaced and who knows how many tens of thousands have died.”
“Come on now, Aly. You and I both know there were several other sound reasons for the invasion, not the least of which was Iraq’s refusals to let the United Nations verify the existence or nonexistence of the weapons of mass destruction they claimed they didn’t have. If the implementation of UN
resolutions is left in the hands of that incompetent organization, we’l never see anyone complying, not North Korea, not Iran, not the man in the moon. When that happens, then what? Noncompliance leads to more resolutions, which leads to another round of noncompliance. The whole process is a waste of time. It’s a waste of time because the UN has become irrelevant.”
“I’m sorry to disagree, but we have to support the UN, Alan. Cooperation among diverse nations on every continent is our best and maybe our only hope for peace in this world. The UN isn’t perfect, but it’s al we’ve got.”
Alan couldn’t sit stil . He came to his feet and carried his beer across the room. He took the seat next to Aly and anchored his elbows to his knees. He said,
“History suggests differently, my dear. When it comes to conflict, conflict of any kind, the United Nations has proved to be disastrously impotent. In the past sixty years, what do they have to brag about? With the exception of the Korean War––and I hesitate even to mention it since the conflict was fought almost entirely with United States personnel––the UN can’t make a single relevant case for the ability to intervene where intervention is cal ed for. And they’ve had their chances. Rwanda, the Sudan, Vietnam, the Six-Day War. What did they do in that one? The UN secretary general ordered the 2000-man peacekeeping force monitoring the border between Egypt and Israel to withdraw the minute Egypt amassed an army at the border. Shal I go on?”
“You and I have set up camp at different points on the political spectrum, I’m afraid, and we could argue the point forever,” Aly said. Then she flashed a disarming smile and added, “I’m not sure that’s in the best interest of our loving relationship, however.”
“On that we agree,” said Alan, setting aside his drink and putting his