December of 2023, and a cloud has appeared in the neocon sky: the Russians are advancing towards Kiev, and the few Ukrainian soldiers left can only destroy bridges to slow them down or send drones against Moscow banks to destroy their pension plans. As Russian troops pass through villages, old women throw rocks. Two teenagers emptied cans of light-blue and then yellow paint onto a passing tank; the video, of course, has made the evening news from New York to Tokyo, and rivers of commentary exalt the never-give-up pluck of Ukrainians.
There are rumors of a putsch in Kiev, however, and to add insult to injury, extra Marines have had to surround the American Embassy because crowds are showing up, the quiet ones desperate to get American visas, but the noisy ones -- and they are legion -- to bang on pots and pans to protest the U.S. getting them into this mess. Media reports dutifully call them "victims of Putin's disinformation."
Something must be done. The neocons have spent 100 billion taxpayer dollars and all America's political capital on the Ukraine War. But neocons do not do defeat. A meeting with the president is called to turn this hiccup into victory.
It is evening in Washington now, and Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, and Tony Blinken file into the Oval Office and sit down on parallel sofas. Nuland has brought a jar of cookies and puts it on the coffee table. The President turns on a television, which shows the line of heavily-dressed people, some with sleeping children, sitting outside the embassy, waiting to be permitted entrance. The protesters have disappeared.
"Well!" he says with relief, plopping down in an armchair. "That doesn't look so bad. Those protesters must have shrunk away, embarrassed after all we've done for them."
Nobody mentions that it's two a.m. in Kiev.
"So what have you got for me?" says Biden, adding with a wave at the silent TV, "Don't get discouraged by this. Freedom always wins out. Hey, I was thinking: what if we blow up another Russian pipeline? You know, send them a message: 'This is unacceptable.'"
Blinken: "Really, what we need, first and foremost, sir, is to create a new reality."
Sullivan sighs. "Tony, can we please not get into reality? Reality exists. It's like air; you don't change it or invent it."
Beside him on the sofa, Nuland jabs Blinken in the ribs.
"We think, sir, the situation calls for a stronger" -- he glances at Sullivan -- "calibration. If we send in troops now, we can probably -- no, surely -- hold the Russians well short of Kiev."
"American boys in harm's way? No. I've said that from the get-go: we will not enter the war. No way."
"Then we are looking at the Russians in Maidan Square within a week, sir," says Sullivan.
Biden: "Freedom will out, you just have to have faith."
Sullivan: "We all love freedom, sir, but think of a Russian flag pulled up a flagpole in Maidan. The visuals are going to be terrible."
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