I'm afraid I'm going to be critical this time, Shayne.
For someone who had seemed so levelheaded just a few minutes before, Cyrus had screamed like a girl once they were both in the air.
I found this vaguely sexist. Admittedly, that's a minor quibble.
I was also irritated at Lois's attitude, when she insisted on describing the people from the plane as cultist or as parts of a hoax:
“What do you think all this is, Ms. Lane?” the voice asked.
“It's some kind of hoax, obviously. Maybe a cult related thing.”
She should know better than that by now. The hoax or cult "theory" doesn't explain anything, and what's more, it doesn't even hold up as a description. But then again, I can see Lois playing the devil's advocate to make her source reveal as much as possible to her about the case, so this, too, is a minor quibble.
This, on the other hand, made me freeze:
The nation was in its second war with Iraq; he'd been able to pick up that much.
He was going to have to make some decisions before he went back. He wasn't going to allow these things to happen again if he could help it. If he had to shore up levees with his own hands, he'd do it.
Was he willing to remove a dictator from power if it meant saving thousands of lives?
Clark is seriously considering removing his world's Saddam Hussein from power if he manages to make it back home?
How would he go about accomplishing that? Would he swoop down from the sky, grab Saddam Hussein from his palace or from his hiding-place, and kill him? Or would he swoop down from the sky, grab Saddam Hussein, and bring him to justice? If so, whose justice? The justice of the United States?
Does Clark think he would save thousands of lives if he turned himself into his own world's American super-weapon, aimed at other nations? Particularly if he launched himself against Saddam Hussein? Never mind that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11? If Clark goes back home and prepares to take out Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and the rest of Al Qaeda can go on planning 9/11 in peace and quiet to their hearts' content.
Clark hasn't even contemplated the question of
why his nation is in its second war with Iraq. He hasn't asked himself if it may have anything at all to do with bad judgement on the part of his own country's administration. So instead of wondering if he ought to try to dissuade his own country from launching a needless attack on Iraq, he is wondering if he should attack Iraq and Saddam Hussein pre-emptively himself. He is, in fact, asking himself if he should do, pre-emptively, what George W. Bush wants to be done anyway. He is prepared to turn himself into a pre-emptively striking super-version of George Bush?
I'm sorry about being so harsh and horrified. I don't think you meant it quite like that, Shayne. But just the other day I read about a survey which found that even today, in 2008, people in western Europe still distrust George Bush more than they distrust Vladimir Putin of Russia. To most Americans, this probably sounds like a crazy way of looking at the world, but there is in fact a reason for it. Vladimir Putin has never started a war. Since the Soviet Union fell and became Russia plus a number of smaller nations, Russia has never started a war. (Okay, yes, they did start one against Chechnya, but that was comparable to the U.S. was against Afghanistan... you know, a war against a nation demonstrably sheltering terrorists.) Compared with that, Bush seems like a loose cannon indeed. Remember that if the Pentagon and CIA and other branches of U.S. intelligence had not stepped in and stopped Bush, he might have started a war against Iran by now.
So please, please, Shayne, don't let Clark swoop down from the sky and take out Saddam Hussein, at least not without a massive international backing behind him. Do let him shore up the levees of New Orleans, though, and do let him find out a lot of facts about Al Qaeda so that he can prevent 9/11 from happening to his world.
Ann
