What if, a year from
today, Saddam Hussein is still in power? What if, seven years from now,
he is still there — with a fully developed arsenal of unconventional
weapons of mass destruction? This unthinkable reality is what Joel Rosenberg
explores in the new novel, The
Last Jihad.
Most Americans, let's
face it, have not and will not read the dossiers put out by the United
States and United
Kingdom on Saddam Hussein's regime, his
human-rights violations, his torture of his own people. What Rosenberg
does with The Last Jihad is, in a page-turning novel, make the
case for regime change now. The message is: When it comes to Iraq,
delay promises unspeakable disaster.
The Last Jihad,
written by Joel Rosenberg, a writer and communications aid over the years
to the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, Steve Forbes, and Rush Limbaugh, is
a quick, easy read — and a believable one. Haunting how real each
page is — especially during weeks when the
Secretary General of the United Nations insists the U.S. has no right
to go to war with Iraq. As Rosenberg lays out fictionally, in storylines
that could easily find themselves in headlines just on the horizon, the
U.S. has no right not to act. And, as
President Bush has said, the U.N. proves itself irrelevant if it does
not insist on action against Saddam Hussein's criminal regime.
Rosenberg, an evangelical
Christian, manages, not accidentally, to write a gripping novel, too,
based on contemporary events, without the usual profanity and obligatory
sex scenes that are commonplace in most current novels. For many NRO readers,
I know, that is not a turnoff.
For anyone you know
who is on the fence when it comes to supporting an attack on Iraq, get
them a copy of The Last Jihad, now. It's a Clancyesque read that
will be sure to get a debate rolling, if its devastating scenarios do
not send readers off to enlist.
The most-remarkable
(and frightening) part of The Last Jihad, by the way: It was mostly
written before the September 11 attacks, i.e., it was not written
as a fictional press release for the war on terror; its opening scene:
Arab terrorists hijacking an American plane, driving it into the presidential
motorcade in a large American city, was on paper while the World Trade
Center's twin towers were still standing. That's a reminder, too, that
this Saddam thing is nothing new — and that the status quo is dangerously
unacceptable.
Be afraid, be very
afraid that The Last Jihad is prescient — especially its conclusion.
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