Scarborough: Spy thriller on Middle East offers unique insights
Book Review by Rowan Scarborough

Jonathan Slevin and Charles Sutherland’s Clash of the Gods: A novel.
Abington House, 2008, $24.95 hardcover, pp. 2-465.

Charles Sutherland and Jonathan Slevin have delivered both a reference book on the Middle East and an international thriller in their novel "Clash of The Gods."

Amid a narrative that takes the reader from Washington to Moscow to Tel Aviv to Tehran are the following: an explanation of Israel-Palestinian history; the origins of Islam; detailed information on U.S. foreign aid; and instructions on how to make the bomb.

In short, the reader learns much about the world's most perpetual tragedy—the Middle East—and is entertained in the process.

The authors have extensive backgrounds in international affairs. They rely on diplomatic and military sources to present an authentic mix of fiction and current events. Some characters are decidedly anti-Israel. The book provides somewhat sympathetic profiles of Palestinians who wear concealed bombs and detonate them to kill themselves and to murder Israel civilians.

The story-telling has to do with a somewhat-rogue U.S. president conspiring with his secretary of defense and Israel to do away with Iran's nuclear program. In the meantime, devious Russians plot to destroy Saudi Arabia's oil fields—leaving Russia as the prime provider of oil.

This is a futuristic tale. President James Caufield has succeeded George Bush. An evangelical Christian like Bush, Caufield is obsessed with the survival of Israel to protect not only the tiny democracy but also the land where Christianity was born. He is so worried that Iran is about to destroy the Jewish state that he OKs an off-the-books operation that has the Pentagon booby-trapping Iran—the bombs to be exploded on his order. Or, so the president thinks.

His alter ego is CIA Director Michael Reilly, a long-time friend. Reilly is no Bill Casey man Friday to anticommunist Ronald Reagan. Instead, Reilly sees his CIA role as an ethical check on a president he views with suspicion and whom he was reluctant to serve. The conscience of the administration, Reilly takes it upon himself to do his own off-the books operations, launching investigations to find out what his president is up to.

Reilly is the novel's leading voice for solving the world's problems—one of which, in his opinion, is Israel.

"Most Jews living outside Israel have assimilated into their own countries and do not see the need for Israel as a haven," Reilly tells his deputy, also an Israeli critic. "They often regard Israel as a moral embarrassment, and too frequently a cause of anti-Jewish sentiment."

"Don't any of the American pro-Israeli hawks see this," his aide asks.

"Like the Zionists in World War II, they are consumed with their own geo-political strategies and power plays, even if it's at the expense of their own," the CIA director explains.

In one White House meeting, a clueless Rebecca Bauer, the secretary of state, tells the president, "Right now I trust our Israeli so-called allies about as far as I can throw a case of their Maccabee beer."

The criticism of Israel aside, "Clash with The Gods" creates very believable narratives inside the Oval Office, or inside the cabinet room in Tel Aviv, or inside the mind of a beautiful Palestinian woman who makes a fateful choice. The novel is flawless in its description of the U.S.'s complex national security structure. The authors know what the NSA does and how it interacts with other military agencies to funnel data to the White House.

And characters conduct lengthy debates on major issues facing the world. In one scene, Reilly explains to his British counterparts why economic sanctions would result in Iran abandoning its quest for nukes.

"They can apply economic and trade sanctions and freeze whatever liquid assets are outside the country," the all-knowing CIA director says. "This will put pressure on the Revolutionary Islamic millionaires who at all cost want to protect their assets gained from nationalized industries. Although a lot of mullahs' money is out of the country, the leading theocrats within Iran are still amassing their personal fortunes."

There it is. In one Reilly utterance we get a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem and a tutorial on how its society of hard-line mullahs really works.

More enjoyable is the novel's fast-pace conclusion, as scenes shift from world capitals to military commands who are trying to prevent the end of the world.

-Rowan Scarborough, a former national security reporter at The Washington Times, is a special correspondent for Insight. He is the author of "Rumsfeld's War" and "Sabotage."

Source: www.insight-report.com - April 22-30, 2008