The Lafayette Initiative

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I was at a party in Georgetown during the last stand of the Knights. Senator Cunningham (R-Virginia) had just recounted to me how she was planning to push for increased defense spending in her home state in light of the increased threat posed by the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “After all,” she said with a moderately phony solemnity, “How can they say no when our boys are dying in Taipei and singing the national anthem?”

Everyone there knew, of course, that the formerly secret American special forces unit was holed up in the American Institute in Taipei. A pitched battle had been fought hours earlier when the Chinese tried to overrun the Institute and the footage from the Knights’ helmet cameras had already been uploaded to YouTube. It had been a hard-fought, stupendous victory, and when a Knight had asked if the American flag still flew over the Institute, the Knights had sung the Star-Spangled Banner, a moment that was already being talked about across the country. Even the fairly jaded patricians of that Georgetown soiree effused over the heroism of the unit that had been disowned and betrayed by President Rodriguez.

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