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The Epoch Point by Spencer Zimmerman is a religious historical conspiracy thriller that follows evil throughout the existence of mankind, revealing the constant conflict between God and the devil, good and evil. Robert Davis is a young Airman fresh out of Air Force basic training who, after being held captive in China, suddenly finds himself unraveling the most immense conspiracy in history. On duty during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he soon uncovers hidden facts suggesting Russian and Iraqi involvement. While exploring abandoned military barracks at Kessler AFB in Mississippi, Davis and his friends discover the diary of Lee Harvey Oswald. Suddenly the Airmen find themselves the target of mysterious agents. As the clues surface, an evil emerges powerful enough to rewrite the entire history of humanity, not to mention kill two of his good friends. Before long the conspiracy takes on a supernatural form, marked by lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcanoes, the wrath of God. Davis finds himself torn by the unbelievable realization that God has a message for him. Nothing could prepare him for the final suspenseful twist the story takes, a Da Vinci style revelation that reaffirms his belief in Christ.
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Or, could I learn to stop worrying and love Iraq? A look at the next five years.
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In the early days of the Cold War, as the occupation of a defeated and divided Germany dragged on and questions were raised about the U.S. role on the far side of the Atlantic, the blunt British head of NATO cut through the diplomatic niceties. The goal, said Lord Ismay, was "to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down."
It's still a useful formulation, in its way, for understanding the present and future in the Middle East. Washington's clear intent for decades has been to establish a large permanent American military presence in the region, and that is not likely to change no matter who is elected president in January. The main enemy the United States hopes to contain is revolutionary Iran. And one of the explicit reasons for invading Iraq was to make sure that Baghdad could never again threaten its neighbors—especially Israel and the oil-rich kingdoms of the Persian Gulf. Cutting through the diplomatic niceties, the legacy of Bush administration policy will remain: keep the Americans in, the Iranians out and the Iraqis down.
By those lights, eventually you might even be able to call the last five years a success, and some historians doubtless will. If, for instance, the United States manages to keep de facto dominance over the second-largest proven oil reserves in the Middle East, that could look very smart indeed. The old rank and file of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was never a large organization, will continue to be dislodged and decimated. A few years from now the last remnants of the original Al Qaeda in Afghanistan may have been captured, killed or expired from old age. (The evil geniuses behind 9/11 and most other major Al Qaeda attacks were hunted down in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates by March 2003. Others were caught in Southeast Asia. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with any of them.)
The occupation of Iraq might well settle into a rhythm where people there see their lives improving, even if it's a little like banging your head with a hammer because it feels good when you stop. Right now many Americans are rejoicing because the death toll in Iraq is back down to the levels of three years ago, but those numbers horrified us back then and they remain hard for the Iraqis to live with now.
If the violence continues to subside, ironically, so will pressure from the American public to withdraw the troops. Already it's lost count of the U.S. soldiers killed there (almost 4,000) and according to the latest "Political Knowledge Update" from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the American media have for the most part quit paying attention. In January the percentage who followed news of the Iraq war was half the number who followed stories about the death of "Brokeback Mountain" actor Heath Ledger.
If casualties are down and headlines fade, why pull out at all? Yet Iraqi resentment of the occupiers is going to fester even if the insurgency goes quiet for a while. The situation in that sense is a little like Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, where everything seemed pretty peaceful; the Palestinians were quite passive from 1967 to 1987, and then they weren't.
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