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Executive Orders is the eighth installment of the Jack Ryan series, written by Tom Clancy, and follows Jack in the weeks following a devastating tragedy that elevates him to the top of the government.

In the wake of a suicide attack that resulted in the President and all of Congress being killed, Jack Ryan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reeling from what's just happened, Jack is forced to lead alone as a new threat establishes itself in the Middle East — the Iranian ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, who instigates a coup-de-etat in Iraq, blitzkriegs it and fuses it with Iran to form a new nation called the United Islamic Republic. With Daryaei beginning to conduct terror attacks throughout the world, Jack is forced to take unprecedented steps to protect the country and its citizens. Jack also simultaneously fights a challenge to his leadership by Ed Kealty, the former Vice-President who was replaced shortly before the Congress attack.

The novel is named for the usage of "executive orders", which Jack uses to enforce laws in the weeks after the attack, due to the absence of a Congressional body.


This novel contains examples of:

  • Action Duo: Clark and Chavez, naturally. They lead the mission to smart-bomb Daryaei's compound in the latter half of the book.
  • The Alliance: Iran (soon becoming the United Islamic Republic), India, and China. As in the previous book, this is downplayed by the fact that the latter two are unwilling to risk too much on the other's behalf. China limits its assistance to deniable and apparently innocuous actions meant to distract the U.S, while India initially offers more but backs off after its Prime Minister has a very blunt conversation with President Ryan.
  • Anonymous Ringer: "The President of Iraq" who is assassinated at the start. (Saddam Hussein is actually referred to by name when discussing the Gulf War, but referred to as "the President of Iraq" when his assassination is brought up.)
    • Less obvious, but the unnamed "Premier of Turkmenistan" who is also killed at Daryaei's orders is briefly described in terms that match then-dictator Sapamurad Niyazov - the local Communist Party chieftain who transitioned seamlessly into a new role as an independent dictator once the USSR fell apart.
  • Asshole Victim: The assassinated Iraqi president. Everyone thinks Daryaei did the world a favor taking him out, even if it was for personal gain.
  • Author Filibuster:
    • Used to great effect via Jack's speeches. One chapter in particular, The Ryan Doctrine, has Jack go on at length about how any countries that want to attack the U.S. will be in trouble if they attempt to go through with it.
    • The plot also stops dead in its tracks to lecture readers about the nuances of the U.S. Tax Code, which Jack takes an opportunity to "fix" in the weeks following his ascension to the Presidency.
    • Ryan lampshades this during his interview with Tom Donner and John Plumber, when he notes that he's been wanting to say all this for years, but is still rather nervous about doing so on TV.
  • Artistic License – Economics: "Fixing" the US tax code by removing all the many, many special exceptions and loopholes sounds great in theory. In practice, doing so would result in a massive disruption to the economy, over- and under-funding the government (at the same time, no less), and generally be a bad idea. It's not impossible for it to go well, but it's definitely not something to do immediately and without substantive debate and analysis: the plan offered by George Winston is a libertarian dream, but a economic nightmare.
  • Badass Army: the U.S. Army units who fight the Second Persian Gulf War are made up of two armored cavalry regiments whose normal job is to put other units through Training from Hell simulated battles, meaning they're very good, and a National Guard unit that Took a Level in Badass to succeed in such training (after it was kept out of the first Persian Gulf War because it wasn't prepared enough in pre-deployment exercises).
  • Badass Bookworm: Colonel Nick Eddington, commanding officer of the North Carolina National Guard's 1st Brigade, is a professor of military history in his day job.
  • Badass Bureaucrat: Jack, obviously, as well as many of the individuals he names to Cabinet positions.
  • Badass Bystander: When terrorists storm a day care center to kidnap Katie, the only other adult there is FBI agent Patrick O'Day.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: India and China both ally themselves to the United Islamic Republic in order to help it become a superpower (and take down the U.S.), but this is quashed by the end of the book when Jack has Daryaei publicly blown up with a smart bomb on live television, shortly after forcing the Indian Prime Minister to end her Smug Snake tendencies.
  • Bodyguard Betrayal: Daryaei has sleeper agents placed in the protection details of several world leaders; the plot of the novel gets moving when the President of Iraq is assassinated by the one in his bodyguard contingent, and later in the novel, Aref Raman (the one in the US President's protection detail) is activated.
  • Boom, Headshot!:
    • The President of Iraq gets capped in the back of the head by one of his bodyguards (actually a Deep Cover Agent from Iran) at the beginning of the book.
    • Secret Service Agent Don Russell, with virtually no warning, kills two rifle-armed terrorists with headshots from his pistol, shoots another through the heart, and wounds a fourth before finally going down. Norm Jeffers takes out another group with headshots from his M-16.
    • FBI Special Agent O'Day does this to dispatch the last two terrorists trying to kidnap Jack's daughter.
  • Canada Eh: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are stated in-dialogue to be helping with the investigation into the suicide attack from the previous novel (as the pilot took off from a Vancouver airport).
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Daryaei's plan hinges on this. If he can succeed in conquering the entire Persian Gulf, he figures that no one will be able to challenge him - "it would turn off the oil for the whole world." The biological attack on America is a terrible risk, but a calculated one, since it immobilizes most of the forces the Americans could deploy to the region and thus makes it more likely that his conquest of the Gulf will succeed, after which he'll be untouchable.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: One of the first-wave Ebola deaths in America is a golf club salesman, who also infects his wife. Later, during the war, Tom Donner is interviewing a tank gunner and asking him how he feels about having killed people. Turns out that the golf salesman was that gunner’s favorite uncle, and he is SERIOUSLY pissed off about it.
  • Chewbacca Defense: Used (unintentionally) by Jack when he's asked about abortion. Jack states that he's pro-life, but will leave the decision to the Senate. After he steps off-stage, his Chief of Staff rails at him for alienating both conservatives and liberals.
  • Church Militant: Daryaei, who unifies Iran and Iraq under the guise of religion and intends to force the rest of the world to follow Shi'a law.
  • Compressed Timeline: the events of the novel take place over the course of a month, with the UIR biological attack and conventional war (the second half of the book) taking place over 6-7 days.
  • Corrupt Bureaucrat: Assistant Secretary of State Cliff Rutledge, who steals Ed Kealty's resignation letter from the now-deceased Secretary of State's office so Kealty can challenge Jack for the presidency.
  • Corrupt Politician: It's noted that after the deaths of most of the U.S. Senate, a number of state governors are planning to resign and will be coincidentally appointed to one of their state's open Senate seats. Quid pro quo, the lieutenant governor get to become governor and in exchange they appoint their former boss the Senate.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Played With. After being briefed on the nuclear football, Jack demands to review the plans, and finds orders for several methods on how to devastate Japan with nuclear weapons (including an EMP strike). He orders the plans to be destroyed, but notes in his internal monologue that the Pentagon doesn't actually destroy anything, and that the plans will probably be filed away "just in case".
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • Jack pretty much ends the UIR threat inside of a week, via using martial law to contain The Virus before it spreads, deploying two armored cavalry regiments and a National Guard brigade to the Middle East that utterly ravage three UIR Armiesnote , and finally smart-bombing Daryaei on national television.
      • It's noted that the UIR forces (and Daryaei) are initially thrilled with the prospects of the war against the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, noting that they are utterly destroying the Saudi forces (albeit taking heavy losses in exchange), thinking that they're on the delivering side of a CSB. Then the American forces get involved, and in the space of one night, 90% of the UIR forces are obliterated.
    • The National Guardsmen mowing through two whole corps of UIR troops.
    • The book itself tends to lead towards this conclusion, via emphasizing how it's important to train armed forces with the newest technological tools, all for the express purpose of taking out the enemy as quickly as possible.
  • Deep Cover Agent: Special Agent Aref Raman, Daryaei's American sleeper agent, was inserted into the US as a teenaged "refugee" and spent a decade-and-a-half becoming a naturalized citizen, maintaining an absolutely perfect All-American profile, and working his way into the Presidential cabinet as security detail so he could assassinate the President, if need be.
  • Don't Make Me Destroy You: President Ryan explicitly states this to the people of Iran after Daryaei is killed. If Iran surrenders and turns over those responsible for the Ebola attacks, America is willing to move on and won't continue the war. However, if Iran refuses, then America will wage total war, with the implicit threat that Ryan will use nuclear weapons since Iran opened the WMD can of worms first by using a bioweapon.
  • Due to the Dead: The Japanese Prime Minister visits the Capitol shortly after the suicide attack, and performs a Shinto ceremony offering respect to the fallen Congress members.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Special Agent Russell gets this when Giant Steps is attacked by a group of UIR terrorists. With less than a second's notice, he kills three of them and seriously wounds one before going down.
  • Elite Army: Gennady Bondarenko's main reason for visiting the National Training Center is because he wants to learn from the Americans how to transform the Russian Army (ex Red Army) from Zerg Rush into this.
    • The U.S. Army itself still qualifies. When faced with the UIR invasion, the troops stationed in Saudi Arabia ultimately manage to defeat a far more numerous force, though not without help from Saudi and Kuwaiti allies.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Aref Raman seems genuinely disgusted by the attempted kidnapping and murder of Katie Ryan. This despite the fact that he was planning on murdering her father.
  • Expy: The President of Iraq is this for Saddam Hussein, who was still alive and ruling at the time of the book's publication.
  • Fascist, but Inefficient: or rather, Islamic fundamentalist under a one-man dictatorship, but inefficient. Daryaei's entire government is terrified of displeasing him should they take any initiative and unwittingly do the wrong thing. As a result, they refer everything to his desk, leaving him swamped with petty bureaucratic and administrative concerns that any sane government would've resolved at a much lower level. Daryaei finds this infuriating, but doesn't have the self-awareness to realize that his own governing style is the cause of it. Meanwhile, Clark and Chavez' few forays into the streets of Tehran show that his own people are beginning to chafe under his rule. And of course, the UIR's armed forces turn out to be nothing to write home about, either.
  • The Federation: the United Islamic Republic is a subversion. At first glance, it's exactly this, a merger between countries each represented, in U.S.A. fashion, by a single star on the national flag. In reality, it's simply one country (Iran) subverting and annexing its neighbors.
  • Foil: Mahmoud Hajji Daryaei is one for Jack Ryan. As Ryan is struggling to hold together a country whose political class has just been decimated, and Daryaei is the leader of a brand new country, they face many of the same challenges. The similarities end there, however:
    • Ryan works hard to delegate the power to ordinary people, many times exhorting them to become more involved in politics and even run for office themselves. Daryaei is a control freak who ends up with a much larger workload than he'd like because his underlings are too terrified of making the wrong call to take initiative.
    • Ryan didn't seek out his position and doesn't enjoy it, having been appointed as a placeholder Vice-President who was supposed to resign at the end of the term. Daryaei has no intention of ever relinquishing power and in fact continues to grab for more by expanding his territory.
    • Ryan is daunted by the potential for abuse of power in his situation. What keeps Daryaei up at night is the fear that his people may be "drifting" from what he sees as the only correct path.
    • Ryan intends to either step down or stand for election once the current term of office is out, as the law requires. Daryaei is a dictator who has never been accountable to either his people or any law.
    • Finally, both men are devoutly religious, but Daryaei is guided by the desire to impose not only his religion but his particular form of it on as much of the Islamic world as possible, and regards all those outside of it as "infidels" and "pagans," even his own Indian and Chinese allies. Ryan has no such ambitions, is not a bigot, and even stresses on national television that Daryaei's Islamic religion is as welcome in America as any other.
  • Fridge Horror: An In-Universe example. When Ryan is touring the destroyed Capitol Building, he realizes that if President Durling had picked someone else to be the new vice president, then he would have been sitting with the other members of the Cabinet for the ceremony, with Cathy in the balcony. They both were saved from a fiery death because he happened to be a political nobody who would've been barely remembered as a inconsequential vice president.
  • Friendly Rivalry: Special Agents O'Day and Russell have this, as they continually try to one-up each other to see who's a better shot. After the Giant Steps incident (and Russell's death), O'Day admits that Russell is superior.
  • Gilded Cage: President Ryan considers the White House, and more metaphorically the presidency itself, to be one of these.
  • Godzilla Threshold: To prevent the spread of the Ebola plague, President Ryan declares martial law and shuts down interstate travel, something which is acknowledged to be unconstitutional.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Former Vice President Ed Kealty spends most of the book mounting a challenge to Jack's presidency. In order to counter Jack's executive order quarantining America in the face of an Ebola epidemic, he files a suit to have the order vacated due to violating the Constitution — which refers to President Ryan by his proper name and office, effectively acknowledging Jack's position in a way he'd been careful to avoid up to that point. As a result, he effectively kills his own claim to the Presidency until The Teeth of the Tiger.
  • Home Guard: The National Guard plays a prominent role in one chapter, as they face off against two army corps from the UIR.
  • Hostage MacGuffin: Jack's daughter, who is targeted for capture by the UIR because they want to demoralize him and enact a Bodyguard Betrayal. It doesn't work.
  • It Works Better with Bullets: Subverted. The Bodyguard Betrayal is thwarted when the assassin's bullets for his gun are switched out with duds. Switching the ammo with blanks or removing them completely would have tipped the assassin off because he was experienced enough to notice the difference in weight, though he eventually discovers this too late, once he's already inside the Oval Office.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Ed Kealty sues President Ryan over Ryan's executive order shutting down inter-state travel. Pat Martin privately acknowledges he's right, the order is unconstitutional which a federal court later confirms.
  • Karma Houdini: Cliff Rutledge, who knowingly helps cause a constitutional crisis for personal gain and never gets caught.
  • Keystone Army: Discussed, then averted, then played straight. Daryaei believes that not only all armies but all countries work like this - "from where comes the greatness of a nation, except from the strength of its leaders?" - and thinks that because of it, with its political class decimated by a terrorist attack and an inexperienced politician at its head, the United States is now essentially a paper tiger that will be easy to outmaneuver. This mentality comes back to bite him hard in two ways: first, the U.S. system proves more resilient than expected and the country gets on the road to recovery fairly quickly. Second, the fact that he set up his own country to run like this makes it easy for the U.S. to go Straight for the Commander, after which it falls apart almost immediately.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: The assassination of the Premier of Turkmenistan by Daryaei's agents was done this way to force elections to replace him with someone who would be friendly to the UIR.
    • The airliner incident is set up to look like a stray missile from an accidental dogfight between PRC and Taiwanese fighters. Robby Jackson is convinced that the shot was deliberately fired at the airliner by a PRC fighter, he just can’t explain why.
  • Middle Eastern Coalition: The United Islamic Republic, created by Daryaei due to the uncertainty in the wake of the U.S. suicide attack. It's originally a merger of Iraq and Iran (or rather, Iran taking over Iraq after killing its leader), but Daryaei plans to make it much larger by conquering the entire Persian Gulf and absorbing the newly independent Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. However, it doesn't last long.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: Arnie van Damm's mindset when working for President Ryan. He admits to disagreeing with a lot of Jack's political positions, but remains his chief of staff because he believes in Ryan's honesty and sincerity.
  • Mysterious Backer: Ultimately subverted with Zhang Han San (and, by extension, the Chinese government). He aspires to be this: as in Debt of Honor, his MO here is to quietly support a smaller nation's aggression against the United States, in the hopes of being able to benefit from the fallout without being implicated. However, he's not nearly as mysterious as he thinks, the CIA becomes aware of him and his actions throughout the novel, and his meddling ultimately backfires badly when President Ryan responds by recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation (a huge slap in the face and blow to Chinese diplomacy, as the Chinese consider it a breakaway province that is legally their territory).
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • The Mountain Men's attempt to kill Jack and Kealty with a explosives-loaded cement mixer is unintentionally thwarted by Daryaei himself, who launches a biowarfare attack. As a result, the country is put under martial law and much more scrutiny is placed on bystanders, leading to the duo being arrested long before they reach Washington. It may come across as a "Shaggy Dog" Story but the moral is that evil sometimes defeats itself. There's some irony here as well, in that Daryaei himself laments near the beginning that if only all of these plotters would coordinate with each other, they'd be more successful.
    • The Mountain Men also manage to screw themselves over by overreacting to the cop who stopped them. The cop is actually on the verge of letting them go — he thinks they're weird and vaguely suspicious, but their IDs are in order and he has no reason to hold them. But they decide the way he's walking back to their truck is ominous (the cop has his hand on his gun butt, which the narration points out is basically how all cops walk), and so they try to flee.
    • Kealty's attempt to sue Jack over the latter's legitimacy as President results in the former inadvertently acknowledging him as such, which kills Kealty's claim.
  • Number of the Beast: An Air China jetliner shot down “by accident” has a listed flight number of 666.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Special Agent O'Day uses this to lull a group of UIR terrorists into believing he's a harmless threat when they attempt to attack Giant Steps, just before he guns them all down with no collateral damage.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • The two terrorists trying to kill Jack and Kealty with a cement truck bomb get this when they realize they're being arrested by a random highway patrolman.
    • The Mole gets this when he realizes his bullets have been switched with duds, right as he attempts to shoot Jack with his sidearm in the Oval Office.
  • Patient Zero: Ebola victims Benedict Mkusa in Zaire and later an unnamed businesswoman in Chicago.
  • Permission to Speak Freely: The newly-promoted Admiral Robby Jackson uses this phrase to warn the new Secretary of Defense Tony Bretano about Vice Chief of Naval Operations Bruno DeMarco, as he was promoted to CNO after the Capitol Hill disaster.
    Jackson: Permission to speak freely, sir?
    Bretano: Jackson, in here, that's the only way.
    Jackson: Sir, Admiral DeMarco was promoted to Vice Chief of Naval Operations for a reason.
    Bretano: (Beat) Oh, so that he was safely out of the way of the actual operators? (Jackson does not reply) Noted, Admiral.
  • Pet the Dog: John Plumber goes on national television to apologize to Jack, after he and his more ratings-obsessed partner, Tom Donner, lied to the President and the public so that Donner could ask Jack inappropriate questions about his past (as in, questions that threaten national security) in a live interview.
  • Possible War: The UIR attempts to do this against the U.S., but they don't get very far, due to a combination of Idiot Ball moments and not taking Jack seriously.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
    Mr. Daryaei, here is the reply of the United States of America. (cue a laser-guided bomb taking out Daryaei's compound on worldwide television)
  • Proxy War: To a degree, the Second Persian Gulf War is one on both sides. The Chinese and Indians provide some support to the UIR because they're counting on it to cripple America and later Russia, clearing the way for their own expansionist ambitions. The Russians, in turn, provide covert assistance to the U.S. throughout the war, because they'd rather see the UIR stopped immediately than have to face it alone in a couple of years (with China on the other side as well).
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Badaryn, Daryaei's national security adviser. Used to be more of a believer, but has turned into a cynic who views his leader's religious rhetoric and even his religion itself with considerable skepticism: he's only where he is because he wants the power and perks to be had in the expanding UIR government. This doesn't stop him from being fully complicit in Daryaei's plans, though.
  • Rich Bitch: The Indian Prime Minister is stated to be this, in tandem with her Smug Snake tendencies.
  • Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The "Mountain Men" are a particularly virulent group of right wing militia fanatics who distrust anything, other than the military, that's even remotely connected to the federal government.
  • Rousing Speech: Jack gives one while demonstrating that he's someone not to be messed with, via broadcasting Daryaei's death/the destruction of his compound during a live television broadcast.
  • Shout-Out:
    "Mr President, do you know what the Ebola virus is?"
    "Africa," Jack said. "Some jungle disease, right? Deadly as hell. I saw a movie-"
  • Smug Snake:
    • The leader of Iran.
    • The Indian Prime Minister, who attempts to smarm Jack by presenting a non-threatening face while secretly plotting against the US with the UIR. Jack shuts her up with a phone call, in which he requests her personal assurance that her navy will not interfere with a US replenishment group on the way to Iran. When she evades his request three times, he immediately threatens India, directly and forcefully, with war. She backs down immediately.
  • Sole Survivor: Or rather, dual survivors. Al Trent and Sam Fellows are the only two United States senators who survived the plane crash that killed the rest of the Senate, as the two men happened to be in the tunnels under the capital with Ryan when the attack happened.
  • Spanner in the Works: The random highway patrolman who arrests the two terrorists who were planning to kill Jack and Kealty with a cement truck loaded with homemade explosives. The two men promptly freak out upon realizing that they're being arrested.
  • Spy School: One of the B-plot has John Clark training new HUMINT agents, partially as a way to get back to old-school manpower and tactics after years of seeing the division downsized in favor of Spy Satellites and other technical intelligence-gathering methods.
  • Status Quo Is God: Despite Daryaei's unification of Iran and Iraq as the "United Islamic Republic", the two states split right back into their pre-union borders after his death, and unification isn't mentioned again in the subsequent novels.
    • Justified: the two countries had barely been unified for a couple of months (not to mention they literally have decades of extremely bad blood between them), and given that Daryaei ran the UIR as a one-man show, it's hard to believe that there would've been any state infrastructure left to hold it together after his death.
  • This Is Reality: Occurs when Jack fills Arnie van Damm in on his previous adventures in the CIA after they get revealed on national television. Arnie remarks that in a different universe, Jack would be a hero... which he is, though you wouldn't know it from the way he gets raked over the coals for what he's done.
  • Throwing Out the Script:
    • Jack gets this when he tosses the script prepared for him at former President Durling's funeral, and speaks off the cuff to the children of the deceased president. At a later press conference, he jokes that he's not going to go "off the reservation", and will read the prepared speech.
    • Later, John Plumber stops reading what's on the teleprompter and starts saying what he believes needs to be said instead. (It's not exactly off-the-cuff: he has his alternate speech memorized, but didn't hand it in to be put on the autocue because he knew he wouldn't be allowed to say it. It is from the heart.)
  • Training from Hell: The National Training Center and Negev Training Area is explicitly said to have this kind of program. Marion Diggs, the CO of the NTC, remarks that the training they put American forces through there is deliberately harder than actual combat, and the "Blue Force" almost never wins (one of the units they hosted shortly after Desert Storm, a brigade with actual combat experience, were completely devastated by the OpFor). If anybody ever does break even against the 11th Cav, they can face down three-to-one odds on the wrong end and still decisively defeat the enemy.
  • Underestimating Badassery:
    • The terrorists who attempt to kidnap Jack's daughter clearly didn't expect that the lone Special Agent picking his kids up from school would lull them into a false sense of security before gunning them down.
    • Daryaei's attempts to bully the U.S. (via a series of terror attacks) blows up in his face, literally and figuratively, because he doesn't realize that the man thrown into the Presidential seat had extensive counterterrorism experience and was ready to take immediate steps to shut him down. As a result, the UIR is effectively destroyed within a week.
  • Unexpected Successor: Jack is this, as he's thrown into the President's chair just hours after being named Vice-President by former President Durling. As a result of this, Kealty tries to sue him for unrecognized power, but this challenge is quashed by the end of the book.
  • The Virus: Daryaei attempts to spread a modified version of the Ebola virus in the U.S., though his plan is stymied when Jack enacts martial law.
  • War Is Hell: Ryan is very aware of this, which is why he does everything he can to avert this trope. After defeating the UIR's invading forces, he orders Daryaei killed by an air strike in the middle of a speech to the nation, pointing out that in so doing, he's targeting the dictator personally responsible for the war and not his people. He then tells the UIR that he's willing to leave it at that, so long as they complete their withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in short order, dismantle their WMD program under international observation, and turn over those responsible for the recent bioweapon attacks to the United States. Should they refuse, however, it will be all-out war.
  • Western Terrorists: The "Mountain Men" are a particularly virulent group of right wing militia fanatics who distrust anything, other than the military, that's even remotely connected to the federal government.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Arnie van Damm calls out Jack after the latter complains about having become president. Van Damm points out that he knew the risks accepting the VP job, and that it's extremely disrespectful to the Secret Service agents who died protecting his daughter to say the job isn't worth the trouble. To his credit, Ryan realizes he was wrong and apologizes.
  • Wish-Fulfillment: The idealized version of a government fully staffed by Americans who just want to get things done is finally realized, as the entirety of Congress is killed off and replaced by Jack and his handmade picks, who are all shown to be very capable people who just want to get things back on track.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Part of the reason Daryaei badly misjudges Jack Ryan is that he doesn't understand how the American political system works. In particular, he sees his failure to deal "decisively" with a challenge to his legitimacy by the former Vice President as a sign of weakness towards a "traitor." Unfortunately for him, while eliminating a political rival isn't within the powers of an American President, responding in kind to an act of war very much is.
  • You Are in Command Now: When the Secretary of Transportation refuses to go along with President Ryan's plan to suspend interstate travel, Ryan fires him on the spot and replaces him with his deputy who agrees to implement the order.
    • The same thing happens later when Admiral DeMarco refuses to let the replenishment ships (and their escorts) act dangerously around the unknown obstacle that is the Indian Navy: DeMarco falls back on doctrine that states that a surface group does not engage a carrier group under any circumstancesnote , whereas the replenishment ships must get to the Persian Gulf as quickly as possible and can't wait for the assistance that's 2-3 days away. Admiral Jackson states that the escorts can probably deal with the Indian carrier group if push comes to shove, though it would be risky. DeMarco slaps down Jackson, Bretano dismisses DeMarco by telling him that his services are no longer needed, and Ryan tells him to get out. The suddenness of it actually confuses everyone, and the scene ends with DeMarco and his aide actually packing their things slowly, not sure if they've actually been fired.
    • Also happens to pretty much the entire bureaucracy of the United States government at the beginning. With most of the principle department heads, agency directors, and military leaders dead in the Capitol, their deputies have to step up to the plate. Dan Murray, for example, goes from being a deputy assistant director to director of the FBI at Ryan's direction.
  • You No Take Candle: An argument between Clark and an Air Force pilot wary of flying him through bad weather yields this masterpiece of eloquence:
    Clark:: Me Colonel. Me say go, air scout. Right the fuck NOW!

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